Support Our Troops
On this recent Memorial Day holiday, I got into something of an argument with a pro-Bush fellow, and he fell into the same old party line rhetoric "How can you be against this war? You have to support our troops!" as if the question and the statement were in any way related. It's like saying "How can you be against identity theft? You have to support your children!". The two parts of that quote have nothing to do with one another.
I've said before that the military and our troops are merely a tool, to be used for good or ill, and I support the notion that arguing AGAINST their misuse by the craftsman wielding them is the very essence of support for them.
But in this argument, I keep going back to all the stories we hear about the armor and equipment shortages in Iraq, and while thinking about them, I flashed back to a quote I heard from Donald Rumsfeld, which made my blood boil then and still does now.
He was addressing a batch of troops, and they asked about better armor for their tanks, and he replied (from memory, but pretty close to verbatim):
"When you think about it, you can put all the armor you want on a tank, and a tank can be blown up."
The fallacy here is insanely obvious even to the most brainpower challenged. The question isn’t whether you can make equipment 100% safe, this is war, that’s never going to happen. The question is how much protection CAN you give the troops.
Policemen wear bullet proof Kevlar vests when going into dangerous situations. By Rumsfeld’s logic, they shouldn’t bother, because when you think about it, you can wear a vest and still be shot in the head, or shot with a Kevlar piercing round.
We all wear shoes when we go outside. By Rumsfeldian logic, we shouldn’t bother, because we could still step on a rusty nail that would go right through the shoe and into our foot.
What the Rumsfeld argument misses is that it isn’t about whether you can still be harmed, it’s about how many lesser situations will NO LONGER harm you. Policemen still wear their Kevlar, because while it won’t protect them 100%, they’re certainly a lot safer from the average bullet-to-the-chest than they would be. We still wear shoes because although we might step on that nail, we’re still protected from stepping on a small shard of broken glass or a sharp rock.
In a very real sense, Rumsfeld is in charge of our troops. His actions DEFINE support for the troops. If this is what it means to support our troops, I want no part of it. If we’re asking these brave men and women to risk their lives on our behalf, we owe it to them to give them the best equipment we can find, to make their lives as safe, their mission as successful, and their time there as short as we can possibly make it.
Support our troops. Bring them home or give them proper equipment. But don’t tell me that wanting to bring them home is showing a lack of support, while your keeping them in a war zone with inadequate equipment isn’t.
Copyright © May 31, 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net
posted by Liam at 5/31/2005 11:05:00 AM
7 Comments:
I would sure like to know where you heard that statement from Rumsfeld.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005 4:52:00 PM
"And it's essentially a matter of physics. It's not a matter of money. It isn't a matter on the part of the Army's desire. It's a matter of production and capability of doing it. As you know, you go to the war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.
Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce armor necessary at a rate that they believe – it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that can be accomplished.
I can assure you that General Schumacher and the leadership of the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable to have, but that they're working at it at a good clip.
It's interesting. I've talked a great deal about this with a team of people who've been working hard at the Pentagon. And if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and the tank could still be blown up. And you can have an up-armored Humvee and it can be blown up."
This quote was from December 8, 2004, a Q&A session in Iraq with soldiers there, in response to a question from Specialist Thomas Wilson:
"Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles and why don't we have those resources readily available to us?"
It's the cavalier attitude of the response that really gets to me. Attempting to justify why we can't get equipment where it needs to be, and then saying in effect "But, what the hell, you might get blown up anyway, so why is it really a big deal?"
This is not supporting our troops.
Liam
Tuesday, May 31, 2005 5:36:00 PM
When you put it in context it makes a lot more sense than just using that one sentence. You were trying to support your stated beliefs by making it sound a lot worse than it was (Rumsfeld's speech).
Tuesday, May 31, 2005 8:14:00 PM
I disagree, but you're right, I should probably have included more of the speech in the original message. Keep in mind, I was writing that from memory, and I didn't have the rest handy.
I found that to be highly dismissive. Like having your child ask you for shoes, and you give him/her all the reasons why even though it's winter time, you haven't been able to get them any shoes, and then you say "And besides, if you think about it, you can have shoes on and your feet can frostbite".
I just don't see any context you can put that statement in that isn't basically saying "Well, yeah, we haven't done a very good job of getting armor to you, but when you think about it, you're probably gonna die anyway, so what difference does it really make?"
If I were one of those soldiers sitting at that particular Q&A session, I don't imagine I would have walked away feeling particularly supported, or like the people who were asking me to put my life on the line gave a crap whether I lived or died.
Liam.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005 11:00:00 PM
So what level of armor do you recommend?
Tuesday, May 31, 2005 11:42:00 PM
Liam, this was an excellent essay - and I'm a Bush supporter, well, somewhat. I support some of the purposes of the war in Iraq: I support removing a dictator who by many accounts left hundreds of thousands tortured, several million dead and over 3 million exiled during his tenure. But I can't countenance the half-hearted support our administration is actually giving to the effort, while hiding behind thin logic! My applause - you should submit this commentary in the "bigger world", like editorial pages in some newspapers, IMHO.
-AlanW
Wednesday, June 01, 2005 9:19:00 AM
Ralph,
That's an excellent question of course, and one of the hardest parts about writing essays like this. How do you define "enough" armor? What's available? How much does it cost?
However... there are regular reports of soldiers digging through scrap metal heaps trying to find something they can bolt onto their transports. There are reports of soldiers families having to send them equipment (in one case, batteries, because the Army had supplied radios, but couldn't seem to get any batteries to the company). And a while back there were reports (I'll try to see if I can find some links later) that KBR (Halliburton) personnel were driving around in fairly safe areas in vehicles with much more armor than the troops who are asked to go into the danger zones, and if I understand correctly, KBR is a major supplier in the region.
So, what level do I recommend? I don't know how to answer that question, but all indications seem to point to "more than they have now" as being completely reasonable.
Liam.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005 10:31:00 AM
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