|
Members warn of “national crisis” in military readiness |
|
By Roxana Tiron
|
|
Posted: 11/25/07 03:13 PM [ET] |
Although Democrats in Congress have not been able to force an Iraq withdrawal, two House Armed Services Committee leaders are sounding the alarm that readiness shortfalls could prevent the U.S. military from responding to new threats at home and abroad.
Reps. Solomon Ortiz (D-Texas), the chairman of the Armed Services Readiness subcommittee, and Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Air and Land Forces subcommittee, this week introduced a resolution detailing the challenges facing the military and the resulting impact on national security.
The two veteran lawmakers are working on getting co-sponsors for the bill, and the Armed Services panel could have a hearing on the issue at the beginning of next year.
“While the Congress has been unable to agree on policy related to Iraq in veto-proof numbers, we should all be able to agree on one thing: the U.S. military constitutes our first and last line of protection – and they are in a world of hurt,” Ortiz said in a joint statement accompanying the resolution.
“Our military’s ground forces are broken by the ongoing operations, particularly in Iraq, and we are watching the making of a full blown national security crisis,” Ortiz added.
The Ortiz-Abercrombie resolution comes at the conclusion of a year in which they and other committee leaders have tried to raise awareness about the state of military training as well as equipment. Congress has spent considerable funds to restore military readiness, as Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) made that one of his panel’s priorities.
Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the defense appropriations committee, also sounded alarm about the state of the military. The 2008 defense appropriation bill that President Bush signed into law earlier this month contains funding to expand the Army by 7,000 soldiers and the Marine Corps by 5,000 troops, as well as funding to equip and train the additional personnel.
Appropriators also included close to $1 billion over the budget request to buy essential National Guard and Reserve equipment so that those troops have equipment to meet overseas deployment demands and respond to natural disasters at home.
Despite the additional congressional funding, however, military experts believe that it would take several years and billions of dollars to repair the military’s shortfalls.
The Ortiz-Abercrombie bill is the first piece of legislation to address the nature of military readiness, underscoring the concern among policymakers over the impact of the high tempo of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan on the military.
The resolution calls on Congress to “restore and maintain the ground forces at the highest levels of readiness in the interest of national security and to ensure the integrity of the entire military force.”
“Nearly five years of continuous combat against an insurgent enemy in an unbelievably hostile climate have taken a terrible toll on our military,” said Abercrombie in the joint statement.
The resolution states that the Army and Marine Corps are facing recruiting and retention challenges. To keep its existing personnel as well as attract new recruits, the Army has increased its bonuses and lowered its standards to have a higher number of eligible personnel.
Furthermore, the fast pace of combat operations overseas has decreased the life of ground and aviation equipment. To address equipment shortages, the Army and Marine Corps have drawn from pre-positioned war stocks of equipment needed to rapidly deploy military units that are strategically stationed around the world. The services do not have plans to restock the equipment in the near term, which hinders their capability to respond rapidly to any emerging crisis.
While the two lawmakers are sounding alarm over the state of the military, the Pentagon is painting a dire scenario if Congress does not approve war supplemental funding for 2008. The Pentagon this week warned that as many as 200,000 contractors and civilian employees will begin receiving layoff warnings by Christmas unless Congress acts on President Bush's $196 billion war request.
But House leaders are not budging until the Bush administration changes its Iraq policy. House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) and Murtha have said that no war funds will be approved until then. |
