Atlanta Journal-Constitution
September 14, 2006
Army Fights To Gain Troops

U.S. military leaders seek strategy to boost wartime size

Gen. Dan McNeill, head of Atlanta-based Forces Command, said Army officials want to be able to use National Guard combat units more frequently. Those units are under the control of individual state governors.

“If we are going to prosecute this long war, we need relatively
unencumbered access to the citizen soldier formations,” said McNeill, whose command oversees training and mobilization for all Army forces in the continental United States.

It may go even farther than that, said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy group that focuses on national security.

“There is speculation among Pentagon insiders that [President] Bush may mobilize the National Guard after the elections,” Thompson said Wednesday.

“This war has gone on so much longer than anyone anticipated and the demand on our troops in the field are so great that the Army is just wearing out,” Thompson added.

To mobilize the entire National Guard is, in effect, drafting over 330,000 people. These are people who have real lives: police, firemen, accountants, factory workers, IT technicians, teachers, clergy. Many of them make more in their civilian employment than they do in their part-time jobs. Yes, they all signed up to be “civilian soldiers,” and they signed up to help the country in a time of war. But the vast bulk (75%) have already done a deployment within the last 3 years. The vast bulk have already served more than was ever thought necessary.

Thank goodness this means little to my family personally. Bill is already full-time National Guard. We chose this life. We budgeted for this life. But I am outraged at the possibility that every National Guard soldier and his or her family may be thrown into complete chaos and fiscal hardship involuntarily. And they’d still have the audacity to call it an all-volunteer force.

Young officers attending the conference were told by Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, second in command at the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, which oversees recruiting and training soldiers, that “the rest of your life will be spent in this war.“

And that’s the official opinion about when this will all end.

P.S. Don’t get me wrong. I support wiping out bad guys the world over. I don’t want to live in fear of terrorism, fear of traveling, fear of opening my mailbox, whatever. I don’t mind fighting for our freedoms. Just come up with a better plan, boys, than screwing up the lives of 330,000 people without their true consent simply because it’s an easy solution. And don’t risk a domestic crisis by removing National Guard soldiers from their home state and leaving that state unable to deal with a natural disaster like Hurrican Katrina.

I guess today is just a day for complaining.

Promise: I’ll take a soothing bath tonight after the kids are in bed, and the jolly Michelle will be back.