550 Army majors to get pink slips

The Associated Press reports that the Army announced that they’re notifying 550 folks in the rank of major that their service won’t be needed after next Spring. Of course, some of those folks are in Afghanistan today doing the people’s business, but the Army won’t tell us how many.

[General John Campbell, the vice chief of the Army] said it’s difficult to avoid cutting deployed soldiers because of the timing schedules.

All the soldiers being forced to leave have probably already been given a heads-up that they were at risk of the job cut and will meet with a senior officer, according to the Army.

Those who are cut have nine months to leave the Army. And the soldiers who are deployed, including those in Afghanistan, will generally have about a month to move out of that job and go home to begin to transition out of the service.

The cuts have been difficult for many young officers, particularly captains, who tend not to have enough years in service to retire.

The Daily Caller publishes an article supposedly written by an anonymous “ranking Department of Defense official with a background in U.S. special operations and combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan” who doesn’t like the way things are going in the Defense Department;

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.” He was criticized for that remark, but it reflected the reality that he had to go to war with — an Army that had been hollowed out after the Gulf War by the Clinton administration. War is not a video game. You cannot hit the pause button on a crisis and ask the defense industrial base and the armed services to give you what you need to fight a war. That only comes from long-term acquisition strategy driven by doctrine that accurately reflects future threats.

If the administration does not reverse course on its defense strategy and ask congressional Democrats to reverse defense spending cuts, then our nation will find itself in a position where it is unable to defend itself and could become the victim of terrorism on U.S. soil once again.

But we’ve all lived through it before and we all know that the real price for this administration’s lack of will to defend this country will eventually be paid by the soldiers who are next sent into battle.

This administration took seven months after the fall of Fallujah to terrorists before they planned to sell Hellfire missiles to the Iraqis to defend themselves, which is the absolutely least they could do. They’re perfectly happy to let things go as they are, rather than do something to influence history, so we can just get used to the fact that this massive and ill-considered draw-down will continue unabated until we get a leader in the White House.

Category: Military issues, Terror War