The Department of Defense has repeatedly failed to fulfill its fundamental mission – the defense of America. The offense is inexcusable. The repeated wrong analysis of war scenarios and their outcomes because of faulty war games run by a deluded civilian military leadership has to be questioned and challenged by We the Maids in order to sweep it out before it is too late. This was best exemplified by the failure of the extensive Department of Defense intelligence gathering apparatus that failed to defend America against the attacks of 9/11. The Pentagon aflame and damaged while military bodies and injured personnel were being attended to by the survivors was a vivid wakeup call of how unprepared the Department of Defense was to protect itself, yet alone the country. The 9/11 Commission made reference to this colossal failure in its final report.
The Department of Defense then compounded its failure by going to war in Iraq – based on bad intelligence, under-staffed, ill-equipped and ill-prepared for the realities on the ground because of rigged war games. How much more offensive can the department become?
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said they did not believe the U.S. was facing a broad-based insurgency in Iraq while their own intelligence services and officials were saying that is exactly what they are facing.
“Hillbilly armor” is what the world’s best equipped army is fighting with in Iraq because the Pentagon failed to turn a Cold War military machine into a force capable of confronting today’s military realities.
The Cold War military doctrine centered on what is known as a linear battlefield — combat units on the front lines while their support units operate in relative safety in the rear. Today’s battles and wars have rendered the fundamental U.S. military assumptions obsolete. In Vietnam, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq guerillas have transformed the battlefield into one that is both nonlinear and noncontiguous that subjects all units, combat and support, to attack. Never have U.S. forces fought in such ignorance of the enemy’s purpose, strength, leadership and order of battle. There are no front or rear lines. All units are subject to attack, especially the unarmed supply and support units that traditionally operated in the rear. As a general rule, support troops outnumber combat soldiers about seven to one.
America’s mighty imposing military machine is badly fractured — over stretched, exhausted, under-staffed, defenseless — with discipline eroding and recruits for the all-volunteer army drying up.
Why hasn’t the Department of Defense reshaped the military to fight noncontiguous, nonlinear battles? Why isn’t every military unit that goes out to the battlefield today properly equipped for combat, both offensive and defensive? Why isn’t every soldier trained to fight as an infantryman? “On the larger scale, the system has broken down: The Pentagon has had more than a decade since the Cold War – and 20 months since the fall of Baghdad – to identify and fix these problems to protect its support troops. There is no excuse for its failure to do so,” Philip Carter, a former captain in the U.S. Army said. I concur.
When going to war – and while at war – the Congress has a duty to hold the Department of Defense accountable for the well-being of America’s fighting patriots. Why has Congress not put the responsibility and blame where it belongs several years after the Secretary of Defense and the Department of Defense went to war based on bad intelligence and ill-equipped that resulted in the death, injury and suffering of so many?