Remember Campaign 2000, when George W. Bush, speaking before a military audience said, "Help in on the way," the subtext being that Clinton had stretched the military thin in the Balkans, and that the military was woefully underserved by that draft-dodging, military-hating ultra-liberal Bill Clinton?
Today, Think Progress has a report on Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' report that the US military is woefully unprepared for any contingent emergency, primarily because of the stress of the over-commitment of the Iraq occupation. Unprepared to face down North Korea (the only substantive military threat on any horizon); unprepared to face down the Russians who are beginning to stir from their post-Soviet torpor; unprepared to face the Chinese, who continue to make noises about Taiwan; unprepared to face any new conflict that may arise.
They send too few troops into battle, ill-equipped. They refuse to equip them properly even after it is public knowledge they are not equipped properly. When they are wounded, they get sent to hell-holes like Walter Reed, privatized to a Halliburton subsidiary. They are unceremoniously dumped on the street to fend for themselves. Serving military are called cowards for opposing the war by cowards who refuse to wear the uniform. Now the Secretary of Defense admits publicly what the military chiefs have been insisting for months - the military is a broken shell.
I am so tired of Republicans and conservatives talking about "supporting the troops". Honest to God, I am tired of every single person who boosts this war, but refuses to hold accountable those who have run our military into the ground in pursuit of wrong-headed, misbegotten mission like the one we are currently stuck in. I am tired of having my love of my country questioned by people who refuse to do their real patriotic duty and demand that we run this country intelligently and openly, not like some tin-pot Third World dictatorship overseen by a junta of ignorant colonels. This isn't Myanmar or Equatorial Guinea, but the United States of America - and the criminals who run this country need to be hauled off stage before the damage they do is irreversible.
