Face it.
The War against Iraq was not integral to the Global War on Terrorism, but rather a detour from it.
Moreover, most of the Global War on Terrorism's declared objectives, which include the destruction of al-Qaeda and other transitional terrorist organizations, the transformation of Iraq into a prosperous, stable democracy, the democratization of the rest of the autocratic Middle East, the eradication of terrorism as a means of irregular warfare, and the ( forcible, if necessary ) termination of WMD proliferation to real and potential enemies worldwide, are unrealistic and condemn the United States to a hopeless quest for absolute security. As such, the Global War On Terrorism's goals are also politically, fiscally, and militarily unsustainable.
People like Senator John McCain have already been quite vocal about how "thin" we are running our military and the dramatic effect that the war on Iraq is going to have on the resources of our military, and the budget for future weapons programs.
Currently, over 370,000 troops or 75% of our total force of military is spread across 120 countries worldwide, and we only have about 100,000 troops availible to defend our country from a hypothetical attack and safeguard its borders.
One military analyst has called the massive scale of this unprecedented US military deployment the equivalent of "civilization building", resulting in a serious and costly overextension of our ground forces. Furthermore, for the first time in contemporary US history, there are no active US Army brigades available for deployment in the event of a crisis. Operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Balkans have stretched the Army so thin that when Lt. Gen. John Vines, the senior U.S. commander in Afghanistan, recently requested one more Army battalion be deployed to that country, service leaders could not find one in the active force.
In an emergency, the Army National Guard, which has the equivalent of 14 divisions, could be called up. But as of July 21, 74,551 National Guard soldiers had been mobilized and sent overseas, along with 61,590 Army reservists.
"One of every six reserve soldiers is on active duty now," said John Hillen, a decorated veteran of the first Gulf War who served on the congressionally mandated U.S. Commission on National Security Structure for the 21st Century. "It's pretty hard to see how [the Army] can strain this stream even more."
Specul8or, you must be doing some pretty serious drugs to think that our military is able to sustain even more operations that it is currently capable of. You are living in a dream world my friend, and are extremely naive to what our military is capable of.
Nation-State building has been the downfall of every major civilization . . . But I guess you fail to understand why that is. Scroll back above and re-read some of the facts that I listed above and maybe you will be able to figure out what could actually make us even more vulnerable than we are now.
