News Analysis: March 30, 2009
The additional 4,000 troops being sent to Afghanistan to train local security forces will be from the 4th Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division. Good luck, soldiers. We wish you a successful operation and a speedy, safe return home to your families. Battles continue to rage in Afghanistan. Its domestic security forces are also suspect, following the deaths of two US sailors at the hands of an Afghan soldier. Afghan and Pakistani leaders continue to offer praise for the new US strategy for containing violence in the region. It just may take working one farmer at a time.
President Obama will not accelerate the troop withdrawal from Iraq, despite the taming of violence there recently. US-backed Iraqis just quelled an uprising in Baghdad. Even so, our Guard forces continue to deploy, deploy, deploy to Iraq even as the need for them to be rested and ready for calamity on the home front is obvious. Residents of Minnesota, Colorado, and both Dakotas are now desperately dependent on their citizen-Soldiers for safety. And our troops are exhausted and have paid a steep price already. Consider Staff Sgt. Willie Martin, who has been deployed four times to Iraq, has spent most of his 20s there, and missed the birth of his middle son and much of his children’s young lives. His marriage has splintered. He’s not alone. And he’s not even talking about the post-combat trauma that grips our troops. And even for those lucky enough to return home unscathed and untraumatized, there’s the economy and unemployment looming. The problem is so many return from war with the war still raging inside of them.
The strain and stresses of war plague not only our troops and their families, but their very equipment and vehicles as well. Now the Navy is conceding that its surface force is stressed due to high operational tempos, smaller crews and the need for quick fixes over full repairs.
Is it time for yet another next generation airplane for the Air Force, or for next generation treatments for the signature injuries our troops suffer in the two ongoing wars they continue to fight? Improving veterans’ insurance benefits is a good idea. Rushing untested medicine and procedures into a war zone isn’t always the answer.
After fighting on the field, our veterans shouldn’t then have to fight for their benefits at home…
The military and TBI…