Who Cares More?

After some setbacks on their attempts to end the war, Democrats are aking a new que from John Murtha - caring for the troops. Specifically, they care about troops who are about to be deployed. They care about them so much they want to stop deployment.

The way this works is to announce that the troops in question are not properly trained or equipped. Murtha posted on Huffington a few days ago and his comments are being echoed by other caring, responsible Democrats (AKA partisan hacks). Ohio's new governor Strickland and new senator Brown quickly joined in the chorus (joined by Ohio's nanny-in-chief, Voinovich who might be worried about keeping his job).

How serious are these concerns? he equipment part is nothing but a smokescreen. It is true that many units are not properly equipped. The reason for this is that they leave a lot of equipment behind in Iraq when their tour of duty ends. Poorly-equipped units will find equipment waiting for them in Iraq.

Training is a bigger issue but it is not a simple one. First of all, we are talking about units that have already had 1-3 tours in Iraq so they are not green troops. The training is for specialized missions and for tactics that have changed since their prior tours.

I accept that it would be better if all troops going into combat received all planned training before they went. At the same time, I recognize that staffing needs may not leave enough time for this. Is it better to make the front line troops wait while replacements and reenforcements receive better training? It's a tough trade-off to me but it seems like cutting training time will help more people.

To the Murtha crowd, there is no trade-off. Keeping troops out of Iraq is a goal, not a problem. If they could demand a five-year training period they would. The point is to keep the Surge from working by starving the commanders of troops. At the same time, they want to sound caring. It's not that they want to hurt the front-line troops. It's just that they want to protect the troops who are about to be deployed.