The Army is undertaking a review and making plans to cut combat deployments to nine months, and increase dwell-time to three years. That is the good news. The bad news is, it will take years to implement the changes.
[Army Chief of Staff Gen. George] Casey said that 12-month tours are too long and that repeated deployments have taken a toll on the Army's troops and families.
"We're actively studying right now the timing and the possibilities of going to nine-month deployments as a standard," Casey told the Army Times. "Fifteen months is too long. Twelve months is too long to sustain indefinitely. Six months is too short."
However, the Army is unlikely to fully implement the nine-month deployment plan until 2014, Casey said.
Twelve-month deployments have been the standard for the Army for most of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2007, the Army extended deployments to 15 months as part of a troop surge in Iraq.
The Army also has struggled to ensure that soldiers get sufficient time to recuperate. Frequently, troops have been forced to deploy with less than two years at home.
Expanding dwell time to 36 months should help soldiers better recover from the rigors of combat, Casey told the Army Times.
"We've done these mental health assessment team studies for six years now - between nine and 12 [months] is where a lot of the stress problems really manifest themselves, where the family problems really manifest themselves," Casey said.
Human beings have limits - those who deploy and those left at home to worry non-stop. For over seven years, the previous administration treated our military like so many toy soldiers. No one batted an eye at extending Army deployments to fifteen months in Iraq to make the "surge" work. I had a friend and a family member get extended, and another friend lost a neighbor who grew up just a couple of doors down, just days after a plaintive email to his mother that he had been extended and was "never going to get out of there." He didn't. Not alive anyway.
The sanctity of end-dates was violated, and you just don't fuck with that. Especially not when you rely on an all-volunteer force.
The Army has been so ill-used and abused that the system needs a reboot. A whole bunch of Generals need to turn in their packets and we need to draw down and get out of both theaters. At home, we need to get serious about bringing down the number of suicides that is increasing at alarming rates for several years now.
Ending the wars won't fix the military. It is just a necessary first step. |
