tuesday impatience blogging

i know i promised you that punch-in-the-face blogging would be a monday feature, but this was burning a hole in my pocket and, well, i just couldn't wait.

glenn beck, my bottomless well, offered me this gleaming treasure during yesterday's show, on which he discussed democratic congressman charlie rangel's desire to reintroduce a military draft:

"It's not like the stalled progress in Iraq has anything to do with the quality or the quantity of those currently in uniform."

unbelievable. i think i'll make my point through contrast; here are some other things that were said on monday. these things were said in the washington post:

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter said Monday that the U.S. needs to push more Iraqi security forces to the front lines. Other Americans, including some military officials, have suggested boosting U.S. troop levels to help train the Iraqis.

President Bush said Monday he wasn't ready to decide between the rival calls for more or fewer U.S. troops on the ground.

Referring to the Iraqi security forces, Hunter told The Associated Press, "We need to saddle those up and deploy them to the fight" in dangerous areas, primarily in Baghdad. Hunter, a California Republican who is interested in his party's 2008 presidential nomination, took a different tack from Sen. John McCain, a front-running 2008 hopeful who has urged that additional U.S. troops be sent.

these things were said on bbc news:

The review panel's study, commissioned by Gen Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has all but rejected a massive scale-up of operations in Iraq, the unnamed officials told the Post. More troops would be required to do this than the US military and fledgling Iraqi security forces could provide, they said.

But the Pentagon group had also concluded that a swift withdrawal of US troops would be likely to push the country into full-blown civil war, the sources said.

The officials said the panel was likely to favour a hybrid plan that cut the number of troops in combat roles while expanding US efforts to train and advise Iraqi security forces, the officials said.

Under the plan, an initial boost of 20,000 - 30,000 soldiers to the 140,000 already on the ground would be followed by longer term cuts, to as few as 60,000 troops, the newspaper reported.

no mention of how much longer that term might be was made, and i think that's a pretty weighty thing to leave out. will we be down to 60,000 troops by the end of next year, or the end of the decade? enquiring minds want to know.

the next piece is an excerpt from an article written by frederick kagan that was published yesterday on the web site of the american enterprise institute for public policy research. it's good, smart work, and i recommend that anyone interested in the topic take a look at it and that glenn beck be locked in a room and forced to listen to an audio rendition of it for the next 72 straight hours.

The Iraqi military, unfortunately, is still a work in progress. Although there are growing numbers of trained Iraqi soldiers formed into increasingly competent tactical units, those units remain highly dependent on American logistical support for food, shelter, ammunition, and transportation. This situation is not entirely the U.S. military’s fault. It stems also from the failure of the Iraqi government to establish ministries capable of performing their assigned tasks--a failure abetted by woefully inadequate assistance from the nonmilitary agencies of the U.S. government.

Wherever the blame for this failure lies, there is no denying that it has occurred. The Iraqi military cannot function without a significant American logistical presence. It cannot continue to improve in quality without a significant American training presence, which includes a partnership between Iraqi combat units and coalition combat units conducting counterinsurgency operations. These facts make nonsense of any idea of significantly reducing the American presence as a way to “incentivize” the Iraqi military. Redeployment on any significant scale will not incentivize the Iraqi military. It will lead to its collapse.

Consider the current deployment. There are now about 150,000 U.S. service members in Iraq, including perhaps 65,000 in sixteen brigade or regimental combat teams (the troops who regularly conduct raids, patrols, cordons and searches, and so on). There are also about 5,000 soldiers permanently engaged in training Iraqi units. Most of the remaining soldiers are primarily engaged in supporting these efforts and the survival of the Iraqi army. They maintain supply depots and supply lines. They transport essential goods around the country and distribute them at forward operating bases (FOBs). They keep both the U.S. and the Iraqi armies alive and moving. They are assisted by numerous civilian contractors and even local Iraqis, but the military personnel provide the glue that holds the entire effort together.

enough? all of these examples underscore the limitations of both the quality and quantity of the troops currently on the ground in iraq. the quality issues are primarily the result of inadequate training of iraqi forces, but we'll never be able to devote enough troops to that training effort if we don't increase the number of military personnel in iraq, because right now there are just enough bodies to keep everyone (or so we hope) in food and water. if we don't send more troops, the best-case scenario would be things staying exactly the way they are; the realistic scenario would be a none-too-slow descent into unmitigable chaos, and you'd think that beck, whose terror and hatred of islamist extremism surpasses all known boundaries, would understand that this is the absolute worst thing that could happen right now in this part of the world. beck likes to say that people like rangel are badmouthing the caliber of the u.s. military when they say we need more soldiers, but beck, as we've established, is about as sharp as a marble. our troops are heroes, but they aren't supernatural, and 150,000 of the greatest human beings on the planet will never be able to cover 300,000 positions. so many of these troops, some of them just out of their teens, some of them in their teens, are on their third deployments, and every time they go back the odds of them never coming home increase. even lt. col. robert maginnis, whom beck interviewed on the monday show, had this (extremely restrained) comment to make:

Well, Glenn, we have 520,000 in the Army. At least, that`s what we`re authorized to sustain; 141,000 in Iraq. As General Schoomaker, chief of staff, says, it really does strain the Army, especially given that we`re in 125 nations around the world.

So do we need more troops? Perhaps, if we`re going to sustain the current level of activity. Or, you know, God forgive us, if we continue to increase the number of engagements. Then we`re going to need more people, and you can`t grow them overnight.

now, i'm not in favor of a draft, but the problem boils down to math: we can't accomplish more than we've accomplished with the current number of troops. can't. can not. and it makes me want to throw up all over my own shoes when i think about the game of russian roulette we're playing with the soldiers we've got right now, especially when i remember--and i haven't forgotten yet--that they were sent to iraq for NOTHING. NOT A BLOODY THING, AND DAMN STRAIGHT I'M YELLING ABOUT IT. i'm furious that any of this ever happened, i've never supported the war, i never will support the war--but the sooner we get the iraqi forces trained to the point of self-sufficiency, the sooner we can start thinking about bringing america's role in the war to an end. rangel's argument, which may or may not involve some subtle psychological tactics, is, "I don`t see how anyone can support the war and not support the draft. I think to do so is hypocritical."

beck's response?

"[F]or Charlie Rangel to say it`s hypocritical to support the war and not support the war--bull fricking crap, Charlie Rangel."

bull fricking crap, indeed. the rest of the program, which includes a rant about how hollywood is poisoning our youth by sneaking environmental themes into animated films about wildlife, shall be dealt with another time. i feel better to have spoken up, but i fear i may never again feel good.