While President Bush talks as if he's going to keep our troops indefinitely in Iraq, and John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, says we'll stay a hundred years if we need to, an independent commission established by Congress has just issued a report saying that the U.S. military is not ready to defend against a catastrophic attack on the homeland. Excerpt:
The commission's 400-page report concludes that the nation "does not have sufficient trained, ready forces available" to respond to a chemical, biological or nuclear weapons incident, "an appalling gap that places the nation and its citizens at greater risk.""Right now we don't have the forces we need, we don't have them trained, we don't have the equipment," commission Chairman Arnold Punaro said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Even though there is a lot going on in this area, we need to do a lot more. ... There's a lot of things in the pipeline, but in the world we live in — you're either ready or you're not."
Clearly these commissioners are traitors. Waterboard them, quick!
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MI,
I agree with most of what you are saying. Energy independence would go a long way toward solving many of our problems.
We have never really thought about defending ourselves from attack. The best defense that we have, and had during the Cold War, was the ability to strike back.
Mecca is a sitting target for nuclear weapons and, all protestations to the contrary aside, is likely already targeted for destruction if such an attack were to occur. And if it is not, god help any sitting President who did not destroy it in retaliation.
You cannot secure everything, you cannot stop everyone. What you can do, the only thing that you can do, is make the price so high that even the most fanatical will not dare do it.
Striking Mecca would be a ridiculous response. I don't like Islam but you can't destroy a cultural landmark like that. Regardless of what one thinks of their religion that would be a tragedy on par with the sacking of Rome and Byzantium.
Congress fiddles while LA burns! What else is new?
While energy independence is a great idea it remains just that, an idea.
A political body, mentally challenged, bunch of idiots in congress will not even allow drilling on 2000 measly bug ridden tundra acres to help ourselves. Until other energy sources are developed that will carry the load, like it or not, oil is necessary.
The same mentally challenged folk don't like dams, Can't stand nuclear, hate coal, aren't too fond of windmills cluttering up the desert, hate mining so of course one will not have material to make solar panels with. Energy saving light bulbs are bad stuff too ya know.
Alaska has more oil reserves than one could believe and can produce it in a safe manner but NO. Some perceived notion that it could harm a lemming or some other as yet unknown excuse will not allow rational thought. One must wonder what the real agenda coming from the left really is!
We may not be prepared for such an attack (and I'll bet we aren't), but what does that preparedness have to do with our troop levels in Iraq, or walking the American streets for that matter?
The preparedness for these attacks would seem to be two-pronged:
1. PREVENTION. This means using (and developing) our intelligence capabilities, plus preemption. What shape "preemption" takes is open to debate, but how are we really supposed to RESPOND to, say, neurotoxins poured into one of those reservoir lakes that surround Dallas-Fort Worth? It needs to be stopped BEFORE it happens.
2. CIVIL RESPONSE. This means hardening our entire society's armor. We need to become as vigilant as the Israelis, with clear eyes about the threats that exist, and clear plans for dealing with them. Can the military help with this? It seems unlikely.
I'll close by suggesting that while Rumsfeld did himself no favors, and may or may not have been the right man for the SecDef job, his understanding that the methods of conducting war are changing seem to be rather prescient. This new kind of warfare, conducted on U.S. soil, isn't something that can be done with bigger and bigger armies.
Posted by: Fr Basil | January 31, 2008 12:23 PM
Israel has every man and woman for active duty service for three years and two years respectively, and many for Reserve duty for much longer than that. If they are attacked, their "civil response" would be trucked in on Army convoys, flown in by military choppers, and order would be kept by military means. Israel, for all its being a democracy, does not score too highly on certain measures of civil rights. That being said, I think err a little too far in banning all Active Military action within our borders (that is the law, and it can be rescinded in part, by emergency order.)
I agree with you that prevention and civil response must also play an important role. The military is good at moving large amounts of personnel and material at short notice. The civilian sector is good at keeping prices under control (as long as they don't fall under a defense contract, apparently!) The FBI plays an important role, as well as Customs, Border Patrol, and the Coast Guard and National Guard.
The point of this article is that it is normally the National Guard units we would rely on in a true emergency - to fly and convoy into a disaster zone, with medics and doctors, food, transport for evacuation, military enforcement of quarantine if necessary, and simply the thousands of (well-vaccinated - Anthrax and Smallpox are the norm for military now) hands available for the grunt work of tossing sandbags.
I was in Baghdad during Katrina. They actually had to de-mob some folks out of a combat zone to go home to deal with that. They were close to going home anyway, a lot of them, but it was incredible - they did not even know if their loved ones were okay, as communications in the Katrina-struck area were disrupted any lots of people were on the move. They knew they'd get home, and be put to work almost immediately, even if every effort would be made to keep guys who'd just got done patrolling Baghdad from having to patrol New Orleans to quickly.
The point is 80% of Nat Guard units are rated NOT READY. That's because every time you deploy, you leave a lot of your equipment in country. That's simply how they replace equipment now, every new rotation of soldiers brings its gear. You go home and you wait for new gear. For Active Duty, we get our replacements in gear pretty quickly, personnel a little less quickly. I'm not going to put timelines out there, but suffice it to say, it's not optimal. Nat Guard units are on the bottom of the totem pole as far as priority goes. And that's backwards. Their MAIN OBJECTIVE is to be able to act inside our own borders. If they can't do that, we need to grow them in a hurry, and equip them.
That's one problem with maintaining current troop levels in Iraq. Our military isn't big enough to handle this for long. You can argue back and forth how long is too long. The Secretary of Defense recognizes this, but Iraq's security may well trump preparedness at home in the short run.
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