Fiddling while Rome burns
See if this makes sense. The following items have all been taken from
Today in Iraq.
First up is an item about the continuing difficulties the US army has in recruiting new soldiers; so much so it is now offering 15 month enrolments, the shortest ever:
The Army, faced with a severe and growing shortage of recruits, began offering 15-month active-duty enlistments nationwide Thursday, the shortest tours ever.
The typical enlistment lasts three or four years; the previous shortest enlistment was two years.
Maj. Gen. Michael Rochelle, the head of the Army Recruiting Command, said 2006 could be even worse than this year, a continuation of “the toughest recruiting climate ever faced by the all-volunteer Army.”
The reason of course is the ongoing war in Iraq. The second item I wanted to share was an article about female soldiers serving in Iraq, which makes clear that no matter what official policy might say, women soldiers have become an indispensable part not just of the army as a whole, but also of its combat units:
In sheer numbers, women are essential to the American military effort in Iraq — where tens of thousands have served — and are playing a bigger role than in any previous U.S. conflict. Historically, women’s involvement in the military has surged in wartime. Today, that pattern is amplified by the all-volunteer U.S. military’s growing share of women, which has steadily expanded in recent years to 15 percent of the active duty force.
Moreover, in contrast to their roles in past wars, women are serving in a widening variety of Army ground units — from logistics to military police, military intelligence and civil affairs — where they routinely face the same risks as soldiers in all-male combat units such as infantry and armor.
Fifteen percent of the active duty force is quite a lot of soldiers and with the army needing every warm body it can find, you’d think that people would know better than to hinder any soldier from doing their job, male or female.
So guess what the chickenhawks back in Washington are doing… That’s correct, not satisfied by driving homosexual soldiers out of the army, those dunderheads are
actually attempting to limit the roles women can fulfil in the army:
Republican representatives on Wednesday sought a ban on women in combat support units despite objections from the Army that the limits could confuse soldiers fighting overseas.
The House Armed Services subcommittee on military personnel passed a measure along party lines as part of the 2006 defense budget. It would prohibit female soldiers from joining forward support companies, defined as any unit supporting a ground combat battalion or even located in that battalion?s operating area.
There’s more than a hint of decadence about cutting the efficiency of your army for symbol politics while it is actively engaged in a very difficult war. More than anything else, it shows the contempt the Republican ruling classes have for the army and its soldiers. How anybody can still think it’s the Democrats who are weak on defence is beyond me.