You may not have seen it, but the House voted this week on whether or not to continue with the current military activity in Iraq and Syria. When it comes to questions of war and peace, I tend to consider them carefully as it may very well be my own kids going over. And quite often, through that lens, I end up taking a view that doesn’t square with that of most of my colleagues – Republican or Democrat.
In general, my stance on the military could be summed up like this: Number one – make sure you have the strongest military possible. That works as both a strong deterrent and it saves lives should you end up needing to use it. Number two – make sure that your troops have the very best training and equipment possible. That also increases their chance of coming home successful and in one piece. Third and most importantly, before you send these men and women into harm’s way, make sure that sending them is absolutely vital and that you know what success will look like and how our troops are going to achieve it.
Right now, in my opinion at least, we’re getting it wrong on all three fronts.
When it comes to general strength, we’re in the midst of shrinking the size of our force to a level well beneath what’s necessary for them to sustain the capabilities we ask of them – being able to fight a war on two fronts and so forth. This goes from troop levels shrinking to the fact that we’re reducing the number of carriers available out there in the ocean. And in the face of an aggressive Russia, a meddling Iran and an expansionist China, we’re ceding influence and control capabilities to our adversaries. Finally, as we saw after 9/11, when you shrink your force to a level beneath what’s truly necessary, it’s extremely costly and dangerous to rapidly increase the size. Training gets cut short and so on.
And those training cuts have already been an issue. Under sequestration, we had situations where pilots were losing training hours in actual aircraft and instead being taught on computer simulators. We saw maintenance being deferred and equipment going far passed its scheduled dates. Other equipment was mothballed and the taxpayers will have to pay dearly later to bring it back online. It’s just like with your own private automobile. You might very well feel like you’re saving money by skipping those oil changes, but when the whole engine seizes up and has to be replaced, then you end up seeing the true costs of cutting those corners.
Finally, and this is what I really wanted to focus on with you all this week, we have a serious problem right now in Iraq and Syria. Just recently, the Obama administration admitted again that we do not have a “complete strategy” for dealing with ISIS. The President has said that he wants to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the group, but for the better part of a year, he hasn’t settled on a strategy for doing that.
Nevertheless, we have pilots flying countless sorties over Iraq and Syria. We also have thousands of troops on the ground, in some cases very close to the enemy, and there is no clear reason for them to be there. What started with just a few hundred has mushroomed up toward pushing 4,000. We’re measuring success in the number of enemy fighters killed because we have no other metric for success. If that reminds any of our older readers of how we got embroiled in another costly war without much clarity, you could be forgiven for thinking that.
Make no mistake about it, flying sorties and training troops in enemy territory has significant risks. If ISIS gets their hands on one of our troops, it’s not going to be pretty. I think we all know that. In my opinion, you simply don’t put our guys and gals at risk when you have no idea what you are trying to accomplish and no real idea of how you’re going to do that.
So this week, when my liberal friend from Massachusetts, Rep. Jim McGovern, offered a privileged resolution on the House Floor calling on the President to cease all military action in Iraq and Syria, I stood side by side with him. We don’t exactly agree on much. And even on this, we don’t necessarily stand together for the same reasons. He’s generally opposed to war and thinks we should be spending less on the military and more on domestic programs. For my part, I simply think we should refrain from using our military when we don’t know what we’re doing or when it’s not absolutely necessary.
The bottom line is that the President is operating in Iraq using the legal justification from a 2002 authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) that granted President George W. Bush the authority to go to war. He’s also using the 2001 AUMF which authorized the global war on terror against al-Qaeda. That was nearly fifteen years ago and the current fight is against a new enemy. It’s well passed time that Congress debate whether that is appropriate and put themselves on record supporting or opposing what authorities the President should have now. I’m sick of this muddling along because people don’t want to step up to the plate in Congress. It’s irresponsible and it’s an abdication of duty. Simple as that.
U.S. Rep. Rich Nugent represents The Villages in the U.S. House of Representatives.
