Re: Re: Mullen: US military ready to assist in Egypt if ne...

[Guest guest]

Agreed. The military has been stretched to breaking thanks to Iraq and Afghanistan anyway. In fact, we haven't really been able to manage both wars at once very well because of low troop numbers. Maybe if the military were up to pre-Clinton cut levels it would have been better because we'd have had more troops to put in those countries and still had longer rotations between deployments.

If we start sending them to these Muslim countries I see a couple of things happening.

1. The military will fall apart like it nearly did under Clinton with all the piddling deployments around the world but without increases spending to cover the operations. The military was forced to dig into its operations and maintenance budgets to cover the deployment costs and so equipment was being worn out. Already this is happening with many systems like transport aircraft being worn out from heavy use. They aren't being replaced because of politics in the procurement system.

2. Putting US troops into the middle of a situation where a large part of the population sees the US AS the problem will only lead to trouble. Troops will get killed as the locals focus their rage on the troops and God forbid a US soldier kills one of the locals. With this administration, no matter if the soldier followed the rules of engagement perfectly, I wouldn't be surprised if they handed him over to the local government to be tried for murder. If that happened, the military would fall apart in an instant as soldiers resigned rather than face the same fate. Then again, maybe that's part of the grand plan.

3. We've already got tens of thousands of troops deployed throughout these areas. If the situation gets really bad, they might be trapped deep inside hostile territory. We don't have the strength to get them out. The troops in Afghanistan, if Russia and other nations denied overflight permission, would run out of supplies in days and would probably have to fight their way out overland. Same in Iraq and other places.

Sending in the military now as weak as it is and the US having so little fear factor anymore would be the height of stupidity.

In a message dated 2/4/2011 1:02:53 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, no_reply writes:

How? Where will the troops come from? Where will the money come from? How fast could we mobilize?