War’s impact at home falls hard on relative few

Measuring military's load
Joe’s time in a combat zone already is longer than most soldiers in Vietnam served.

Indeed, the whole approach to providing manpower for this conflict differs from that of the Vietnam War, from 1964-1975. Then, a much larger active military — 8.7 million troops — was bolstered by a draft that added 1.7 million more soldiers to the ranks, according to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. More than 640,000 of the draftees served in Vietnam, constituting about one-quarter of the total U.S. force there, the VFW said.

But the draft ended in 1973, and the active military now numbers about 1.4 million, according to the Department of Defense.

In order to sustain troop levels in what has become a much more prolonged conflict than originally anticipated, the military has relied on repeated deployments, and a far heavier use of “weekend warriors.” More than 434,000 National Guard and Reserve members have been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, about one-quarter of them more than once, according to the Pentagon. In comparison, about 340,000 Guard and Reserve troops were deployed during the Vietnam conflict.

Extended tours of duty in the combat zone — some as long as 18 months — also are a departure from the past. In Vietnam, the standard tour of duty was 12 months. If a soldier was to be redeployed to the combat zone, Army policy mandated a 24-month period of recuperation or retraining between tours, said Larry Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank.

‘The idea was ... you'd reinstate the draft'
“The task of sustaining or increasing troop levels in Iraq has forced the Army to frequently violate its own deployment policy," Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense and now a harsh critic of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war, told a congressional hearing on July 27. That has meant sending soldiers and reservists to combat zones two, three and even four times, and "short-cycling" units back into combat with as little as nine months between deployments, he said.

Korb and other military experts argue that the volunteer military, the Army in particular, was never intended to be stretched this far.

“The idea was that if you needed to, you’d reinstate the draft,” he said.

While military families’ views of the war vary, many feel that too few are being asked to sacrifice too much — a prominent theme among those who shared their thoughts with msnbc.com.

“If this "War on Terror" is the "War of this Generation" and Washington is not going to change that mission, then … Washington needs to mobilize this nation through national service (conscription),” wrote a Gut Check America reader in Baton Rouge, La., who asked that his name be withheld because of concern that his remarks might cause trouble for his son, now in his second deployment to Iraq. “To have 1 percent of this nation's citizens bear 100 percent of that burden is morally reprehensible. ‘Support the Troops’ needs to be more than words to the other 99 percent of this nation's citizens.”

“Our experience is that it’s two different worlds — the one for everybody else, and the one for military families and service people,” agreed Laura Stranlund of Amherst, Mass., whose son, Army Sgt. 1^st Class Jonathan Miller, is on his third deployment since 2001. “Unless you’ve got skin in the game or know someone who does, it just doesn’t seem to matter. America is at the mall.”

General: Burden on troops will ‘inform’ policy
Despite discussion of a gradual drawdown in troop levels, the burden is unlikely to shift soon. Speaking on Capitol Hill last week, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said he would not be making a decision about significant withdrawals for another six months.

“I will … take into consideration the demands on our nation’s ground forces, although I believe that that consideration should once again inform, not drive, the recommendations I make,” he told Congress.

And on Sunday, Defense Secretary Gates said he would urge President Bush to veto a measure introduced by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., that would give soldiers more time at home between deployments. Gates described Webb's measure as "a back-door effort" to speed up troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Meantime, for those with “skin in the game” the impact of the long-running conflict is only beginning to become clear.

As in the aftermath of Vietnam, combat veterans and their families are grappling with the sometimes puzzling and frightening behavior of returning combat veterans. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is on the rise, as are behaviors traced to traumatic brain injury (TBI) caused by concussive blasts from explosives.

After a flood of damning press about treatment of returning soldiers, the military medical bureaucracy is only now ramping up to handle these conditions and other injuries, according to American Legion spokeswoman Ramona Joyce.

“They were not prepared for the number and type of injuries,” she said.

The American Legion continues to lobby Congress for additional funding for studying and treating PTSD and TBI. But Joyce said the military establishment is becoming more proactive about post-combat hazards.

“For the first time, they really are stepping forward to study (PTSD),” said Joyce. “And they are really trying to get rid of the stigma” associated with the disorder so that soldiers and families seek help when they need it.

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