Exhausted Troops

Peter Beaumont of the Guardian has an article that everyone should read - "Fatigue cripples US army in Iraq." It is a sad statement on those who planned and now direct the deployment of our troops. The article shares some of the individual voices and situations of those who are serving, but it also speaks to the bigger issue and the effects of overdeploying our troops.

Extended tours, rapid redeployment, and too few troops to carry out the tasks demanded of them have left much of the force beyond exhausted. The article states that troops are on mission for five days and then "off" for two. Those are not five eight hour days, but five twenty-four hour days. That is patently insane. They are being set up for disaster.

When exhaustion of this level sets in, people make mistakes. Their decision-making suffers. Their reflexes slow. Psychological issues move to the foreground. Two days off does not cure this type of fatigue.

It does not help, that in an effort to increase recruitment, that the Army has lowered its standards - particularly in the area of "mental illness."

The consequence is a deep-seated problem of retention and recruitment that in turn, says Caswell, has led the US army to reduce its standards for joining the military, particularly over the issue of no longer looking too hard at any previous history of mental illness. 'It is a question of honesty, and we are not investigating too deeply or we are issuing waivers. The consequence is that we are seeing people who do not have the same coping skills when they get here, and this can be difficult

What is not discussed in this article is the increasing use of "private contractors" to make up for the shortage of troops. Steve Fainaru of the Washington Post writes of the "millions in cost overruns" being paid for contract security:

The U.S. military has paid $548 million over the past three years to two British security firms that protect the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on reconstruction projects, more than $200 million over the original budget, according to previously undisclosed data that show how the cost of private security in Iraq has mushroomed.

And the reason those costs are growing out of control? "The private security industry has surged in Iraq because of troop shortages and growing violence."

But there was a "surge" was there not? A "surge" of 20,000 troops that turned into 90,000? That 90,000 additional forces were not simply new (or returning) forces injected into Iraq, but not cycling deployed troops out of Iraq by extending their deployment.

And hence the "fatigue" that Beaumont discusses.

Posted by rowan at August 12, 2007 8:34 AM | [eMail this article!] |