Post by miletus12 on Feb 3, 2023 3:13:56 GMT
Am I alone in seeing how long this "Repair" to one of the RN's most valuable assets is Taking? They don't have the funds to do it any faster.
If there is anything I hate it is making war on the cheap. It never works and winds up either prolonging the killing
on both sides or a pusillanimous retreat like Afghanistan or Saigon or Singapore. Get the picture?
I am sure, our resident Realist miletus12 can address this issue better than I can.
DO YOU HAVE A STRONG STOMACH AND LIKE TO KNOW MORE?
War on the Cheap
By Bob Herbert NYT
By Bob Herbert NYT
Greg Rund was a freshman at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in 1999 when two students shot and killed a teacher, a dozen of their fellow students and themselves. Mr. Rund survived that horror, but he wasn't able to survive the war in Iraq. The 21-year-old Marine lance corporal was killed on Dec. 11 in Falluja.
The people who were so anxious to launch the war in Iraq are a lot less enthusiastic about properly supporting the troops who are actually fighting, suffering and dying in it. Corporal Rund was on his second tour of duty in Iraq. Because of severe military personnel shortages, large numbers of troops are serving multiple tours in the war zone, and many are having their military enlistments involuntarily extended.
Troops approaching the end of their tours in Iraq are frequently dealt the emotional body blow of unexpected orders blocking their departure for home. "I've never seen so many grown men cry," said Paul Rieckhoff, a former infantry platoon leader who founded Operation Truth, an advocacy group for soldiers and veterans.
"Soldiers will do whatever you ask them to do," said Mr. Rieckhoff. "But when you tell them the finish line is here, and then you keep moving it back every time they get five meters away from it, it starts to really wear on them. It affects morale."
The people who were so anxious to launch the war in Iraq are a lot less enthusiastic about properly supporting the troops who are actually fighting, suffering and dying in it. Corporal Rund was on his second tour of duty in Iraq. Because of severe military personnel shortages, large numbers of troops are serving multiple tours in the war zone, and many are having their military enlistments involuntarily extended.
Troops approaching the end of their tours in Iraq are frequently dealt the emotional body blow of unexpected orders blocking their departure for home. "I've never seen so many grown men cry," said Paul Rieckhoff, a former infantry platoon leader who founded Operation Truth, an advocacy group for soldiers and veterans.
"Soldiers will do whatever you ask them to do," said Mr. Rieckhoff. "But when you tell them the finish line is here, and then you keep moving it back every time they get five meters away from it, it starts to really wear on them. It affects morale."
We don't have enough troops because we are fighting the war on the cheap. The Bush administration has refused to substantially expand the volunteer military and there is no public support for a draft. So the same troops head in and out of Iraq, and then back in again, as if through a revolving door. That naturally heightens their chances of being killed or wounded.
A reckoning is coming. The Army National Guard revealed last Thursday that it had missed its recruiting goals for the past two months by 30 percent. Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, who heads the National Guard Bureau, said: "We're in a more difficult recruiting environment, period. There's no question that when you have a sustained ground combat operation going that the Guard's participating in, that makes recruiting more difficult."
A reckoning is coming. The Army National Guard revealed last Thursday that it had missed its recruiting goals for the past two months by 30 percent. Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, who heads the National Guard Bureau, said: "We're in a more difficult recruiting environment, period. There's no question that when you have a sustained ground combat operation going that the Guard's participating in, that makes recruiting more difficult."
Just a few days earlier, the chief of the Army Reserve, Lt. Gen. James Helmly, told The Dallas Morning News that recruiting was in a "precipitous decline" that, if not reversed, could lead to renewed discussions about reinstatement of the draft.
The Bush administration, which has asked so much of the armed forces, has established a pattern of dealing in bad faith with its men and women in uniform. The callousness of its treatment of the troops was, of course, never more clear than in Donald Rumsfeld's high-handed response to a soldier's question about the shortages of battle armor in Iraq.
As the war in Iraq goes more and more poorly, the misery index of the men and women serving there gets higher and higher. More than 1,300 have been killed. Many thousands are coming home with agonizing wounds. Scott Shane of The Times reported last week that according to veterans' advocates and military doctors, the already hard-pressed system of health care for veterans "is facing a potential deluge of tens of thousands of soldiers returning from Iraq with serious mental health problems brought on by the stress and carnage of war."
The Bush administration, which has asked so much of the armed forces, has established a pattern of dealing in bad faith with its men and women in uniform. The callousness of its treatment of the troops was, of course, never more clear than in Donald Rumsfeld's high-handed response to a soldier's question about the shortages of battle armor in Iraq.
As the war in Iraq goes more and more poorly, the misery index of the men and women serving there gets higher and higher. More than 1,300 have been killed. Many thousands are coming home with agonizing wounds. Scott Shane of The Times reported last week that according to veterans' advocates and military doctors, the already hard-pressed system of health care for veterans "is facing a potential deluge of tens of thousands of soldiers returning from Iraq with serious mental health problems brought on by the stress and carnage of war."
Through the end of September, nearly 900 troops had been evacuated from Iraq by the Army for psychiatric reasons, included attempts or threatened attempts at suicide. Dr. Stephen C. Joseph, an assistant secretary of defense for health affairs from 1994 to 1997, said, "I have a very strong sense that the mental health consequences are going to be the medical story of this war."
When the war in Afghanistan as well as Iraq is considered, some experts believe that the number of American troops needing mental health treatment could exceed 100,000.
From the earliest planning stages until now, the war in Iraq has been a tragic exercise in official incompetence. The original rationale for the war was wrong. The intelligence was wrong. The estimates of required troop strength were wrong. The war hawks' guesses about the response of the Iraqi people were wrong. The cost estimates were wrong, and on and on.
Nevertheless the troops have fought valiantly, and the price paid by many has been horrific. They all deserve better than the bad faith and shoddy treatment they are receiving from the highest officials of their government.
When the war in Afghanistan as well as Iraq is considered, some experts believe that the number of American troops needing mental health treatment could exceed 100,000.
From the earliest planning stages until now, the war in Iraq has been a tragic exercise in official incompetence. The original rationale for the war was wrong. The intelligence was wrong. The estimates of required troop strength were wrong. The war hawks' guesses about the response of the Iraqi people were wrong. The cost estimates were wrong, and on and on.
Nevertheless the troops have fought valiantly, and the price paid by many has been horrific. They all deserve better than the bad faith and shoddy treatment they are receiving from the highest officials of their government.
(^^^)
If you practice war on the cheap that means you lie a lot to the people who have to fund it, fight it and support it.
I hated the Iraq Wars lying more than anything else at the time. Bush, the Tree, knew that; "Get in, get it done, and get out." was the honest way to fight a war. Those who criticized him and his administration for not finishing off Saddam Hussein at the time, had a point, but that old reprobate knew the time limits of allied (British and Arab frontline states) tolerance, and the American people's patience was at hazard.
Bush, the Shrub, went all in after the Clinton years interregnum to "finish Daddy's business". He went in under pretenses and lies to fight an unnecessary war against a has been dictator who was on his way out anyway. The mess we still have that he left behind after he second termed out is going to bite us hard when the China-backed Saudis and the Russia backed Persians nuke each other this coming decade.
But how are the BRITISH involved?
You can ultimately trace this whole Iraq wars mess back even further to the British retreat east of Suez leaving the US holding the bag of manure THEY, the British, created.
Why was that? The UKG abandoned their Indian Ocean presence and "downsized" and defunded the Royal Navy to its current fisheries protection fleet status; after 1960.
This was an intensification of previous policies the UKG adopted or rather instituted after WWI. During WWII, because the RN had not invested between the wars in the quality of her people and maintenance of their navy's material, when the crunch time came, they immediately failed in the two oceans the French and WE expected them to cover, the North Atlantic and the Indian Oceans.
How did the RN actually do in WWII?
NOT TOO GOOD.
Let me give you some tangential evidence...
What was ADM Wilcox, who man-overboarded, supposed to be doing as to mission, when the USS Washington was in the WRONG OCEAN fighting the WRONG ENEMY?
The RN screamed for American battleship help to stop this fella...
One lousy badly built German battleship, the KMS Tirpitz.
USS Massachusetts also took a turn in the North and Norwegian Seas to keep the Germans honest...
Why?
Because the KGVs were no good against her. Or at least the British ADMIRALTY knew so and did not dare tell their government what manure ships they actually were.
War on the cheap proved costly. The British spent 10X what it cost the Germans to build and float the Tirpitz in a Norwegian fjord to act as a 1 ship "fleet in being". The monies wasted on HMS Vanguard were because the British needed something battleshippy that could actually face Tirpitz with a reasonable chance of success.
Now extend that to the inept conduct of the Battle of the Atlantic, the RAF air campaigns, the North Africa circus until Montgomery sorted them out, and the war on the cheap mentality of 21st Army Group during the critical weeks of June and July 1944, especially at Falaise?
If you want American examples, I could supply the torpedo crisis, and the Bureau of Aeronautics fiascos of the American navy or Stark's penny pinching on the 2 Ocean Bill when the floodgates of money opened in 1940, but at least when Americans finally spent money and LIVES, it was as many upfront needed for a SHORT war and a long peace, until Korea and we started to do things the "British way".
CYNICAL Miletus