Republican Support For Our Troups (And Democrats Lack Thereof)

Rhetoric speaks louder than action.

I have long been opposed to accusing anyone of not supporting our troops. I think pretty much everyone wants the best for our troops. I can't understand the vote from these Republicans, but I'm sure it won't stop the rhetoric.

 

The Frist vote is a surprise since he's considered to be one of the Republican front runners for 2008.

 

That is complete BS, No Worries, I have conclusive evidence that says all Republican Senators have "Support our Troops" magnets on the rear of their car and no Democrat senators have a single magnet on theirs, clearly showing that they don't support troops and want them to get AIDS. Therefore, these results must be a complete lie and this "USA Today" is clearly a liberal propaganda newspaper.

 

Ok, I'm going to say something that's probably going to piss people off, but here goes. It sounds callous on the surface, but that's part of the problem...

First, as background I want to make it clear that I think GW is a simpleton and his cabinet is loaded with armchair generals who would never send their own sons off to fight the wars they so dearly love to start.

Next, I think it's clear that the paradigm of "front line" is over for the near term. 50 bazillion ton M1 tanks on the "front" followed by unarmored hummers behind the lines is a "classic war" paradigm. Nobody is stupid enough to try to fight a classic war with the US under the current circumstances. We don't need so much more "tip of the spear", but we need to understand that there's not so much front line, so I very much agree with the concept of armoring transport vehicles.

But, the bottom line is that I'm fairly convinced by tangential examination of the facts, that if we were to "up armor" every transport in Iraq the war would become logistically and economically unrealistic. It's simply not possible to do it. Donald Rumsfeld knows it and the Democratic leadership knows it. They know that the Army can't afford to fix the problem and more importantly they understand that if the administration admitted it, it'd be the headline of the century, so it's a win/win. The Democrats keep hammering the issue, and the Republicans either appear as cruel heartless bastards who don't care about American soldiers, or the "war" or whatever it is becomes doomed to failure from logistic inevitability and bloated budgets.

The first Iraq war, contrary to popular opinion, didn't end because of a lack of international willpower. It ended because the US Army was logistically incapable of providing the tanks with long enough supply lines to run gas across the entire desert. Similarly, after 10+ years of studying and planning for the problem, the Army still had to take their 2 day break in the desert to allow time for supplies to catch up.

Up armoring all the hummers, even if you forget the cost which would look bad but would be doable, would probably come pretty close to doubling the volume of gas expended. As silly as it sounds, the Army has been lean on gas all along, and probably couldn't cope, and even if it were possible, you'd end up with a marked rise in "soft target" gas trucks and the like driving around the country waiting to be blown up.

In short, up armoring the hummers is logistically unfeasible, but if anybody ever admitted it they'd be destroyed, and I'm convinced that that is the circumstances that lead to the odd results.

The Republicans and Democrats who voted for the bill did so I'm sure with full understanding of this fact, and the "lesser name" or more secure Republicans who could afford to do so voted the way that the top Republicans would liked to have done. (The Republican "for" list looks like a list of top Republicans. If all of these guys were really behind it do you think the vote would have really turned out that way?). Almost everybody who voted "for" did so for political reasons, I'm sure.

 

Further evidence -

I did a quick web search for "senate midterm elections". I came up with the following editorial -

http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/article.php?id=LJS2005033101

Just about every Republican seat which is listed as in trouble for the midterm elections is reported as voting "for".

Coincidence?

 

I'm sorry, Ottoman. but $213 million is a piss in the pot. It's nothing. i know your point is that the real problem is fuel tanker trucks being "soft targets," but be that as it may, if we're going to fight wars like this, we have to be able to protect them and our troops. The armored humvees are not perfect, but are a hell of a lot better than the unarmored ones.

Hitler lost WWII in part because he couldn't supply fuel to his mechanized forces. To think that the same problem is something we can't take care of is ludicrous.

By the way, the GOP budget just passed in the House adds another multibillion dollar tax cut. I'd much rather see the money spent on what our troops need.


Keep D&D Civil!!

 

A couple of points.

• There's a geeky military truism that I heard recently that is incredibly true. It is: "Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics." Logistics are always the prime concern of the military. Soldiers eat just as many tons of food as they did in WWII. I'm willing to bet that when Hannibal brought his Elephants into Europe, he was primarily worried with how to keep his foot soldiers from stepping in Elephant excrement.
  
  Tanks today are almost an order of magnitude heavier than they were in WWII, and have high performance, high fuel turbine engines. If we were driving WWII Sherman tanks we would be fine, but we've got indestructible equipment designed to beat the Soviet Union in a quick tank war in Western Europe. There is always a trade off somewhere, and to have high performance, high survivability equipment, you invariably end up with more consumables and more expensive support and upkeep. That's simply reality, and when you add to survivability, you increase cost. Sometimes that can be prohibitive.
  
  Logistics is always the limiting factor.
  
• Putting the previous out of the picture, can you come up with a logical explanation as to why the vote skewed out the way it did if it was anything other than an acknowledged political game? Do you really think that all of those Republicans who voted against did so because they don't care about soldiers? Even if they did, slimy politicians are smart enough to know the value of kissing children and shaking hands.
  
  Following from that they also must be able to understand the value of manufactured outrage against the other side. If you have a logical explanation that can describe the situation as anything else, I'd love to hear it.

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They talk about ‘the people’ and ‘the proletariat.’ I talk about the suckers and the mugs. It’s the same thing. They have their five-year plans, and I have mine.


- Orson Wells as Harry Lyme in The Third Man (1949) speaking about the similarity between politicians and black marketers