Military Officer - April 2008 - (Page 58) Petraeus hosts a news conference in London. No. I’m not in the recruiting business and haven’t seen statistics on the qualitative indicators lately. But our sense is we have the best and most experienced military in our nation’s history. We’ve never had a professional force that has done repetitive [combat] tours. Even in World War II, the average tour was not as long as most of our troopers have served, if you add up tours. By the time they leave this tour, some deployed here will have three or more years in combat. That is extraordinary. And they have an understanding now of this very challenging type of combat: counterinsurgency. Some say it’s graduate-level warfare, a thinkingman’s endeavor. They get what we’re doing in a way that is very impressive. It’s a tribute to the way the Army and Marine Corps, in particular, have changed preparations for deployment, [such as] the exercises at the combat training centers, from armored forces gliding in the desert to continuous, complex counterinsurgency with several hundred native Iraqi speakers and 1,500 U.S. soldiers role-playing in [mock] Iraqi towns, including buildings and roads and improvised explosive devices, suicide bombers, and host-nation security forces. That preparation for deployment starts with a counterinsurgency seminar and includes another seminar before the combat training center rotation. It includes all kinds of electives at different branch schools and centers. It includes a final, weeklong seminar here at the MNF-I counter- Army Lt. Col. Douglas Crissman, right, briefs Petraeus at Hit, 85 miles west of Baghdad. You see CNN. You get many congressional visits. You hear presidential candidates talk about an immediate or quick force withdrawal from Iraq. Yet you’ve continually cited the need for a long-term commitment. Is it possible for the U.S. to leave Iraq, say, within a year, and still leave a stable country behind? Both Ambassador [Ryan] Crocker and I repeatedly have noted Iraq is a long-term endeavor. That does not mean the U.S. has to be engaged at anywhere near our current level. We are withdrawing — without replacement — a quarter of our combat power by July [from 20 combat brigades at the peak of the surge down to 15]. That is very significant. There’s every intention to continue to draw down as quickly as we can and no desire to extend the strain, particularly on ground forces. But we want to do that in a way that does not 58 MILITARY OFFICER APRIL 2008 jeopardize the progress for which we have fought so hard in the past year. So the challenge is how to reduce as quickly as we can without putting in jeopardy what we have accomplished. Will 15-month tours continue? That’s a question for the Army. [Gen. George W. Casey Jr., chief of staff, said he hopes to shorten soldier tours in Iraq and Afghanistan below 15 months by this summer.] The commander in the field establishes requirements; service chiefs and the Joint Forces Command provide forces to meet those requirements. Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey has lauded the gains made in Iraq over the past year. But he also told Congress in January of a decline in recruit quality, saying 10 percent shouldn’t be in uniform. Have you or your commanders seen a decline in force quality? PHOTOS: LEFT, ROBERT H. REID/AP; RIGHT, CATE GILLON/GETTY IMAGES
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