October 2006
Abercrombie Calls for Restoring Military Readiness
Dear friend:
The Iraq War is plunging U.S. military readiness to historic lows. Congressional inaction in the face of this crisis translates into a failure to support our troops.
These facts speak for themselves:
- Only a handful of Army and Marine Corps units in the United States are fully combat ready, based on the military’s own objective standards for equipment, troop strength and training.
- National Guard units have only one-third of their authorized equipment — trucks, radios, armored vehicles, and night-vision devices. Two-thirds of their equipment must be left behind in Iraq for Guard units rotating in.
- The Marine Corps is calling back 2,500 reservists involuntarily — many of whom have already served in Iraq.
- The Army and Air National Guards continue to miss their monthly recruiting targets by 10 to 15%.
- The active Army is meeting its recruiting goals only by loosening its age and education standards.
Overall, the United States has no strategic reserve, because the military forces available to confront threats in other theaters face alarming shortages of people, equipment and training. Their deployment is impossible without putting them at risk. In military terms, the Iraq War has taken our options off the table because they can’t be implemented.
The U.S. Central Command recently admitted that the current level of U.S. forces in Iraq will have to be maintained until at least until mid-2007. What does this mean for the future?
First, the President will have to fully mobilize all 600,000 members of the Army National Guard and Army Reserve indefinitely. There simply are not enough troops on active duty to sustain present deployment demands.
Second, Congress will have to add massive funding— tens of billions of dollars—to support this expansion of the military, requiring massive tax increases and cuts in every other government program.
Third, when the President calls up the National Guard, it will take a crash program in vehicle and armament manufacture to make up the deficiencies in equipment and training.
There is, however, an alternative:
- Get our troops out of Iraq. The cost — in financial and human terms — of maintaining the U.S. presence there is driving the military readiness crisis. Dramatically reducing the size of the U.S. force in Iraq will also allow the military to refit, rebuild and train.
- Replace Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. We can not change defense policy without new leadership.
- Repair the broken force. Restore the United States Army and Maine Corps to their former status: the best trained, best equipped fighting force in history, as they were before they were deployed to Iraq.
Our soldiers and their families are the ones paying the real price for the war in Iraq and for our misplaced spending priorities. Military readiness can be real or rhetorical — but bumper sticker slogans are no substitute for substance.
Congress must act now.
Aloha,
Neil Abercrombie
Member of Congress
