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Apparently @lhfang can’t read. The doc he cites calls for an increase in army endstrength of 100k, to 585k. And it was written in 2005 at the height of the Iraq War. I didn’t write this or advocate for it, but I will explain it.
At the height of the Iraq War, which I opposed, the Bush Administration woefully underestimated the number of troops necessary to conduct the war. They sacked Army Chief Of Staff General Shinseki for speaking truth about how many people the war would take.
The Bush Administration tried to underplay the costs and risks at every turn while inflating what turned out to be a non-existent threat of WMD. And they goosed the nation into war.
They sent the troops undermanned, under equipped, and without a plan or exit strategy. Even those who opposed the war, like my then boss, Senator Kennedy, felt an obligation to try to provide relief for the men and women serving. It wasn’t their choice.
At that time, the Army didn’t have enough manpower for the mission. They extended tours from 12 months to 15. They instituted stop-loss, so that those who had finished their obligation couldn’t get out. Families were having two parents called to deploy at the same time.
It sucked. It was foreseeable. It was a tragedy. But many, not just @ThirdWayTweet, recognized that in order to share the burden, it had to be carried more widely and called for the size of the Army to increase. And it did.
Defense spending and sizing follows mission. The mission, misguided as it was, needed more people. And the American people had just re-elected Bush who was not interested in ending the war.
Eventually, and not fast enough, America realized what a mistake it was. And the following year, gave control of Congress to the Democrats who began to cut off war funding. Bush negotiated an end date for a status of forces agreement in Iraq.
And we elected @BarackObama who promised to end the war. The endstrength of the Army went up and then after the war, it went down again.
But @lhfang misreads the doc and takes it out of context. Perhaps he’s too young to appreciate where the nation was during that war. He certainly didn’t have to deal with the casualty reports and the families of the fallen.
I did not write that report. But I cannot fault those who did for trying to ease the burden on those servicemembers who were risking their lives to serve the nation.
