It’s our Army too

The mythical they and some son of a gun running the military has some truth. But in the end it is an American Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines, and we have much to say about it. Much of the say is dictated by our Congress, and the idea that the Defense budget is a jobs program, as in bring the taxpayer jobs home is based on reality, many believe.

The military is almost always blamed for planning to fight the last war. Point well taken, and a sensitive point it is. But the politicians and media and pundits still suffer from the same, and seem slower to respond, upgrade, be smart, or just read the tea leaves. Many think lack of experience in gun fighting has something to do with this. Here’s a trick question. If the USA has 1.5 million Americans in the military, how many are trigger pullers? The answer is a guess, since nobody knows for sure, but it is around 150,000, or about 10 to 1. Let we be generous, in Iraq we have somewhere between 13,000 and 20,000 trigger pullers. It is a shockingly small number to most of the American public. Yet that is the way it is, today.

When we Americans organize for war, we have smart choices. In a nutshell, we can do it in big or small chunks. How we organize depends on the situation, and the mission, which is a big deal term. Think of GM as an allegory. If the mission is cars, that is one thing. If the mission is jobs, that is another thing.

So this is what is happening today about our Army. Good news, and bad news. The Army is breaking down big chunks into smaller chunks, along with the support needed, as in the tooth to tail ratio. This gives future American military leaders more flexibility in small wars situations, like Iraq. And the Air Force is becoming more expeditionary in supporting foreign deployments. And the Navy and Marines are about normal, which has always been expeditionary.

Alarming to this citizen is the tea leaves I read. If the American Army organizes for future Iraq wars, fine. But if Americans get involved in a war overseas, or at home, they need bigger chunks as a way to fight war better, as in a way to win. Americans can be smart, as in selfish.

Americans have many smart military American people thinking about our future. At worse we can accuse them about fighting the last war, in this case Iraq. At best, we can think they are being listened too, and acted on. After all, it is our American Army.