Will withdrawing the troops early work?

In addition to more combat units, they need civil affairs, military police, explosive ordinance disposal and other combat support elements that have already been deployed more than once. Also, when raising force levels in Afghanistan, changing the force mix will mean once more going back to the Reserve Components for some of the needed capability.

At current levels of commitment, Active Duty units run at a pace that means jamming into a year or less, recovery and refitting from the last deployment and retraining, re-equiping and redeploying for the next. We already have troops who have more time in combat in this campaign than their grandfathers served in combat between mid 1942 and August 1945 in World War II.

To sustain the U.S. role in the long war that Gates has written about as the major challenge we face, the Army and Marine Corps must throttle down to a less demanding deployment scheme, at least a ratio time at home to time in combat of three to one. Ideally one would like to see a longer period for recovery, reorganization, and retraining. If we are to embed the lessons of this campaign into the force, the Services need the additional time for leader development and professional education.

If the Services are to retain their best, those leaders need time to go through the withdrawal from 365 days of living on adrenalin and to come to grips with what they have been through. They need time to invest in family and friends. One learns very quickly in counseling young leaders about staying in the Service, if the choice becomes family or Service, family dominates.

So, one can bet that when Petraeus’ recommendations become known, they will incorporate a drawdown in Iraq. They will also aim at preventing the situation from slipping back to where it was last Fall and to helping the Iraqis to increasingly manage their own security. Those recommendations will support the need to expand our force capability in Afghanistan, the area of operations that has all along been the most critical to success against al Qaida. By removing the specter of a U.S. “Occupier” of Muslim lands, they will also support the larger strategic objective of a U.S. role most helpful to moderate Muslim governments in handling their own internal problems with the causes of Islamist insurgency.

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