Strategic Peril

By Ken Silverstein

“No one with a brain in his or her head thinks that the U.S. Army isn’t now progressively starting to come apart.”

These are the words of retired General Barry McCaffrey, in a memo about his recent trip to Iraq that he sent last week to colleagues at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he now teaches. The memo, which Stars and Stripes and Military Times, among others, have written about, says that “readiness ratings” are unraveling for the Army and Marine Corps. “Ground combat equipment is shot in both the active and reserve components. Army active and reserve component recruiting has now encountered serious quality and number problems. In many cases we are forced to use US contractors to substitute for required military functions…Waivers in US Army recruiting standards for: moral turpitude, drug use, medical issues, criminal justice records, and non-high school graduation have gone up significantly. We now are enlisting 42 year old first term soldiers.”

McCaffrey notes that some combat units “are being returned to action…with only 7-12 months of stateside time to re-train and re-equip” and that as many as nine National Guard combat brigades will be called up for an involuntary tour this coming year. “Many believe that this second round of involuntary call-ups will topple the weakened National Guard structure--which is so central to US domestic security,” he writes.

McCaffrey praises General David Petraeus, the new commander of American forces in Iraq, and says that a stable Iraq is still a possible outcome. But he's generally gloomy about the overall situation, saying that the war has left the United States “in a position of strategic peril” and the whole operation “is on the edge of unraveling as the poor Iraqis batter each other to death with our forces caught in the middle.” Meanwhile, even as the U.S. and its allies kill and capture large numbers of enemy combatants, “the armed insurgents, militias, and al-Qaida in Iraq without fail apparently regenerate both leadership cadres and foot soldiers. Their sophistication, numbers, and lethality go up—not down — as they incur these staggering battle losses.”