When he was Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld said, "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time," in answer to a question about why ground troops in Iraq were having to scavenge supplies to armor their vehicles which had been inadequately armored.
My response to that is, BULLSHIT! In some cases, like Pearl Harbor, that is true. However, the invasion of Iraq was not an emergency. It wasn't a surprise. We weren't attacked by Iraq. The whole thing was poorly planned, badly thought out and in all likelihood, shouldn't have happened at all. But, thanks to Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney and others of their ilk, it did. And thousands of our soldiers have died in combat. Tens of thousands more have had their bodies and/or minds damaged or destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died.
Back when I was deploying all the time, often we'd be using the same base as an Army Dustoff (medevac) unit. These army pilots would bring their night vision goggles (NVGs) to me and practically beg me to work on them. Those poor guys were using old, out-of-date equipment, the same model NVG I took along to issue to passengers on our birds. To be clear, passengers means people just along for the ride on training missions, not mission-essential combat troops flying actual rescue missions. Not only that, but they didn't have anyone in their unit on hand to maintain or fix them. Their NVGs were trashed.
NVG's are not easy to fly with. You lose a lot of your depth perception. They get damaged easily, especially when flying in the desert 100 feet off the ground with the doors open. One of their pilots told me he generally had a splitting headache within 15 minutes of leaving the ground. To give you an idea of what they were going through, imagine your left eye pointing down and to the left while your right eye is looking up and to the right. You can only see in grainy shades of green, and your vision is blocked by big, black dots (the result of dirt in the tubes) and you're flying 100 feet off the ground with the doors open, going between 150 and 200 mph with knuckleheads shooting at you for recreation.
I ended up cannibalizing our old generation goggles to fix theirs. Of course, I had to do it on the down-low because it was strictly against regulations, but what else could I do? It was a moral, albeit illegal, obligation. Those Army pilots were literally taking their lives in their hands every time they left the ground. Their always dangerous missions were rendered even more so by having to rely on out-of-date, badly maintained, essentially inoperable equipment. I did the best I could for them and they were grateful enough that their squadron commander gave me his squadron coin (rare enough that only he and their First Sergeant had one) just to say thanks. This may not sound like a big deal, but trust me, it was.
The thing you have to remember: This was all in 1998, and before. When this was going on, we weren't even at war. Back then, 911 was just how you called the police. We were deploying in support of the no-fly zone over Iraq, put in place at the end of the first Gulf War seven years earlier. In the eight years between the first Gulf War and that terrible day in the Nevada desert, I spent approximately four years deployed in support of the war or the various operations that followed it. There were lots of troops who spent much, much more.
Remember, we weren't at war and many of our troops were already overworked, over-deployed and ill- or under-equipped, to the point that they were dying. The country's leadership knew this and still led us by the nose into the quagmire of our longest war.
What I did for those guys should not have been necessary in the first place. There is no excuse for our troops being put in harms way with inadequate equipment. If we really care about our troops, we need to do more than just post self-congratulatory Facebook memes before we start up our grills and shatter the night with fireworks (regardless of any vets with PTSD who might be unfortunate enough to live around us.)
Rumsfeld's statement is just offensive — at least it is to me. It should be to you too. It is an insult to every member of our military. He, along with Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice and the others knew all this, knew the condition of our troops and their equipment and they could have done something about it. They should have done something about it. They just didn't care. It's a mindset that continues to this day.
We have now been at war for 15 years. Think about that. Think about how overworked, over-deployed and ill — and under-equipped — those poor men must be now.
The F-35, America's newest fighter jet, has been in development since 1996 (two years before my friends died) at a cost, so far, of over $400 billion. That's billion, with a B (for all you fellow English majors out there.) A single aircraft will cost around $185,000,000. Think for just a moment how many NVGs, how much Humvee armor, how much other much-needed equipment and training could have been purchased for the cost of one or two of those fighters (which, coincidentally, are still not operational.) Think another moment about the arms and legs and minds and lives that could have been saved.
Then let your elected representatives know what you think.
