xchagalx Where are our troops? or Where aren't they


There's no doubt the Army and the Marine Corps need more personnel. The problem is the time it will take to recruit and train those same recruits for combat service in Iraq. For whatever reason, be it international politics or fear of stepping on the wrong toes, our Army has literally thousands of available troops trained and in many cases combat equipped. Where are they? Maybe we should ask .. where aren't they? Seems they are marking time in protecting 'allies' who don't want to spend what's needed for their own defense. Specifically, they are in 135 of 192 nations in the world. We have 112,000 troops committed to NATO nations. More than 79,000 of our military personnel are in Germany. Pardon me, but I don't see the Russians as a comparable threat to the immediacy of global terrorism. We have in the neighborhood of 47,000 troops in Japan and another 32,000 in Korea. Most of these committments began in the 1940s and early 1950s. You might say these deployments are habitual. Is our Cold War stance still sensible? Come on General Shoomaker! As Chief of Staff of the Army, make a case for the use of fresh troops and give those two and three-tour troops a rest.