Kerry Got Baited

Though it's been very difficult arriving at this conclusion, I've decided to write a column in support of a Bush campaign initiative. I felt baited while weighing the issue out and I wasn't able to solidify my own position until hearing Kerry's weak rebuttal. The issue was George Bush deciding to bring home 70,000 troops from their Asian and Western European posts. Bush supported this decision with his own ideology of "Force Transformation," which I feel was inapplicabable and was only brought up to successfully bait Kerry.

"Force Transformation" has been a stable of neocon lexicon for the past four years, referring to the now discredited belief that we simply do not need as many infantry in our Army because of advances in weapons technology. Rumsfeld & Co have been trumpeting the idea of a leaner, stronger, more mobile army without tanks and artillery that packs more punch with fewer logistical requirements. While we do need a more mobile force, few of the reservists in Iraq that left families and idling careers half a world away would agree that our current active duty army is too large.

Bush has packaged this ideology with a military necessity that John Kerry should be behind too - changing our militaries basing structure. We're on the brink of a global realignment of our military posture. With the Cold War over, we no longer need troops poised to stop Soviet armor from passing through the Folda Gap into Western Europe. What we need now is the ability to contain possible Chinese expansion in addition to being able to project our forces anywhere we need them in the Terror Wars - which has a front stretching from the Atlantic coast of Morocco, as far north as the Caucuses, and as far east as the Philippines. It looks as if the center of this will be in Iraq, where we will be sure to have a large military presence for many, many years to come so long as we "win the peace." The conventional wisdom has held that he troops stationed in Western European NATO countries will be moved into the more amiable "New Europe," as Rumsfeld so eloquently put it. These are the former Soviet Bloc nations eager for US aid and protection, and are consequently more easily in line with our foreign policies

Instead of building huge new bases and simply shuffling troops around, Bush wants to build a series of skeleton bases around the globe that would easily expand to carry tens of thousands of troops and their pre-positioned weapons. Far from shrinking the size of the Army, this would be an anecdote for the "Second Christmas Syndrome," wherein soldiers are far less likely to stay in the military after spending a second Christmas away from their families in a far off corner of the globe.

Tags: Treyopia Current Events Spinnaker Bush Kerry Force Transformation