| 20 December 2006 Big Footprints I am a little wistful that there is no danger of imminent deployment this Christmas. It is a relief to regard the daily news in a strategic light, rather than a tactical one, with direct implications on personal liberty. A pal of mine just came back from the other war, and I marveled at his account of how that happens, remembering. Home for the holidays started with being moved into transient quarters from the CONEX box where he lived on deployment to make room for the incoming people. Who could object to that? The inconvenience just meant that home was that much closer, right? Then down to the transient flight line, and a small plane, connecting to some Emirate, and a wait for a contract flight at a collection point for a few days, rack-in-the-back of a tent and a three-beer limit on good times at the CONEX Canteen. Eventually the long air leg to Germany, arriving at another collection point, and then finally across the Pole and into the States, where only another flight remained. It is better than troopships, of course, but man, it is not the way you would prefer to travel. That is the way it is for all the people we have scattered overseas. We know about the 130,00 troopies we have in Iraq, though the 100,000 contractors who support them are off the radar screen. We have thousands in Afghanistan, of course, and the Army will tell you that there are soldiers on any given day in eight or more countries around the world. The Green Machine says it with a certain pride, even though they are overstretched. But there are others who are not so sure. The Post ran an article this morning about the number of military folks who are in the Embassies overseas. They say in some of them the military outnumber the State Department people. That could be reason for alarm, I suppose, unless you read these things for sub-text. What the article actually was meant to be was a shot across the bow at the new SECDEF, and an attempt to get him to repudiate the Rumsfeld doctrine of doing things the DoD way. I learned my logistics at the Black & Decker school of the Armed Forces, and know that the Army had a large and insistent footprint. Rumsfeld was furious that he had to rely on the CIA to take the lead in the Afghan war, and he determined that he would deploy special operations forces wherever he needed to do so. Whether the US Ambassador or the Chief of Station were onboard with the concept, or not. The Secretary was zealous in his pursuit of higher truths which could not necessarily be seen on the ground. Apparently there are some in town who resented that attitude, and who would like to change things, and they are dancing on the Pentagon tomb of the old Secretary's policy and seeking to influence the new. As a former CIA Chief, they must think there will be a positive reception from Mr. Gates. I don't know. My first experience with an embassy with a large military component happened to be the one in Tehran. When the radicals stormed it and the Marines were directed to surrender by the Ambassador, I was riding one of the ships that were sent as a demonstration of naval might to steam ominously off the coast of Bandar Abbas, the Iranian port city just outside the straits of Hormuz. I was not aware that anyone in Tehran paid much attention. I could be wrong, but the crisis seemed to have a life entirely of its own. Still, the naval presence was what Mr. Cater was willing to do, and I suppose that it was the best options available. I was thus interested to note that in a stirring policy demonstration, the Administration is directing a naval buildup in the Gulf to help intimidate the Iranians. In Tehran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that neither UN sanctions nor military threats would stop Iran from pursuing its uranium enrichment program. He says it is for the peaceful development of energy. His candidates did not do very well in the elections last week, and it may be that the Iranian people support power more than they support weapons, and that the radical agenda is losing steam. Of course, providing more aircraft carriers on the horizon could provide a rallying point for the radical agenda. Of course, we don't have anything to worry about. We no longer have an embassy in Tehran anymore, or more precisely, we have one, but someone else is using it for a museum. Do you ever get a feeling of déjà vu when you read the paper? I swear, it drives me crazy sometimes. We could avoid a lot of these problems if we could just follow the footprints that got us to where we are. They are very large ones, after all. I think you can see some of them from space. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |