I've been on the ground here in Iraq for almost 2 months, and I've had some time to "take the temperature" of the people responsible for conducting "the greatest movement of man and material" since Vietnam. Hmmm, I just put two phrases in quotes in the same sentence! I forget if that is poor form or not. Does anyone know if Mrs. Thompson is following this blog?
Consider that we have approximately 47,000 troops and 10,000 pieces of equipment to move off 60 bases in 7 months. Put another way, there are close to 190 days until 31 December 2011, the last legal date for military forces to be in country, which means we have to close a base almost every 3 days for 7 months to get home. Quite a daunting task, isn't it?
For the most part, people are fairly calm about the workload. There are many plans in place that are being shaped, tweaked, and modified to account for new information. The senior leaders have more important things on their minds right now than looking at passenger lists and packing schedules, confident that when the time to get going gets here, we're going to get going. You ask what could be on their minds that is more important? Well, for one thing this country is still in the fledgling stages of being able to take care of itself. Not a single day goes by where there aren't double digits of civilians killed by insurgents, and there is no way to know how deep external influences from countries and organizations unfriendly to the USA and our efforts run here. If leadership had the choice between an orderly, timely, and responsible drawdown with more Iraqi casualties and a lower chance of future success, and a chaotic, rushed departure leaving lots of materiel behind but a more secure environment, they'd take the second option.
Those who are not as comfortable with the process worry about the sheer volume of stuff that has to roll out of here, along with the mass of people and their stuff that goes with it. One base that closed already kept its US Post Office open until a week before the closure, and on the last day they had a line going out the door around the building, and they did $12,000 worth of business in a single day. That's how much crap the people who are deployed here have brought with them, had shipped here, or accumulated while here. The obvious, if uncomfortable answer, is that hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars of equipment and material will just be left behind for the Iraqis to use. Most of it would cost more to move back home than it is worth, and the rest just won't be high enough priority to get moved.
My refrain is that we're going to have a timely and responsible drawdown, even if we have to redefine the words timely and responsible. It really bothers me to see the waste of taxpayer resources, but that's the way it is. It will just be the last round of drinks on this 8+ year bar tab we've been running...
Consider that we have approximately 47,000 troops and 10,000 pieces of equipment to move off 60 bases in 7 months. Put another way, there are close to 190 days until 31 December 2011, the last legal date for military forces to be in country, which means we have to close a base almost every 3 days for 7 months to get home. Quite a daunting task, isn't it?
For the most part, people are fairly calm about the workload. There are many plans in place that are being shaped, tweaked, and modified to account for new information. The senior leaders have more important things on their minds right now than looking at passenger lists and packing schedules, confident that when the time to get going gets here, we're going to get going. You ask what could be on their minds that is more important? Well, for one thing this country is still in the fledgling stages of being able to take care of itself. Not a single day goes by where there aren't double digits of civilians killed by insurgents, and there is no way to know how deep external influences from countries and organizations unfriendly to the USA and our efforts run here. If leadership had the choice between an orderly, timely, and responsible drawdown with more Iraqi casualties and a lower chance of future success, and a chaotic, rushed departure leaving lots of materiel behind but a more secure environment, they'd take the second option.
Those who are not as comfortable with the process worry about the sheer volume of stuff that has to roll out of here, along with the mass of people and their stuff that goes with it. One base that closed already kept its US Post Office open until a week before the closure, and on the last day they had a line going out the door around the building, and they did $12,000 worth of business in a single day. That's how much crap the people who are deployed here have brought with them, had shipped here, or accumulated while here. The obvious, if uncomfortable answer, is that hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars of equipment and material will just be left behind for the Iraqis to use. Most of it would cost more to move back home than it is worth, and the rest just won't be high enough priority to get moved.
My refrain is that we're going to have a timely and responsible drawdown, even if we have to redefine the words timely and responsible. It really bothers me to see the waste of taxpayer resources, but that's the way it is. It will just be the last round of drinks on this 8+ year bar tab we've been running...
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