Tour Reductions: Toothless PR Stunt by a Failed President

by: Brandon Friedman

Thu Apr 10, 2008 at 16:51:08 PM EDT

To ease the burden on our troops and their families, I have directed the secretary of Defense to reduce deployment lengths from 15 months to 12 months for all active Army soldiers deploying to the Central Command area of operations.

These changes will be effective for those deploying after August 1st.

This is a ridiculous assertion.  Make no mistake about it: With an effective date of August 1st, this means that not one troop will benefit from this deployment reduction until August 2009--seven months into the next Presidential administration.  This means that even if you're not scheduled to deploy for another three months from now, you'll still be conducting a 15-month-long tour in Iraq.  And of course, it certainly doesn't affect anyone there now.

Jon Soltz has responded on the Huffington Post:

So this is a promise he can throw out there, and never has to keep. What it is, though, is a lifeline to Senator McCain. It makes it look like we're easing the burden on troops before the election. It's an illusion, allowing Senator McCain to try to make the case that conditions on the ground are so good that we can ease the strain on the military now. That talking point will come in handy when Senators Obama or Clinton try to raise the breaking of our military. It's also a little mirage of sugar, to help the medicine go down. Since the president announced he's stopping troop redeployments, his faux promise to reduce deployment times is an attempt to make the news sound not so bad.

It absolutely blows my mind that the White House can continue to say it support the troops.  With the "pause" in troop reductions and the extension of 15-month deployments for another, well, 15 months, we can see that the Bush administration has every intention of wiping out the American Army, while at the same time allowing Osama bin Laden to live as a free man in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

As Soltz continued today:

If the president, and Senator McCain, want to put their money where their mouth is, then they can stop standing in the way of the Webb-Hagel "Dwell Time" Amendment. That amendment would put into law a reduction of deployment time and give troops as much time on the homefront as they spend in the field -- 12 months deployed, 12 months at home.

That wouldn't even come close to fixing the damage done to the military by the Bush administration.  But it would be a start.