We are particularly interested in the mental health programs and policies that support our troops and their families before, during, and after deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.
I signed up for military service in the months following 9/11, and later, as a military intelligence officer, I felt called, like so many others, to volunteer for deployment and service in Afghanistan.
Well, first, the situation in Afghanistan is much better than it was. But there is no comparison between Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq has a bureaucracy, Iraq has wealth. Iraq has an educated class of people who are positioned to come in and take over.
We have a strong military deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan. In countries like Syria, we need a diplomatic breakthrough to end the war. In Libya, the country must first of all be stabilized to stop IS. This means supporting the Libyan government, including in terms of security. We don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past in that country. The situation is extremely dangerous and the next days could be decisive.
I was fortunate to have served in leadership positions throughout my entire service in the Army. I was in my first unit for two or three months before deploying to Desert Storm. I immediate knew I was in the right place.
Afghanistan would have been difficult enough without Iraq. Iraq made it impossible. The argument that had we just focused on Afghanistan we'd now be okay is persuasive, but it omits the fact that we weren't supposed to get involved in nation-building in Afghanistan.
We're here so that Afghanistan does not once again become a sanctuary for transnational extremists the way it was when al-Qaeda planned the 9/11 attacks in the Kandahar area, conducted the initial training for the attackers in training camps in Afghanistan before they moved on to Germany and then to U.S. flight schools.
I am a military police officer and I have served on two deployments; my first was to Iraq, in a medical unit, and my second deployment was to Kuwait, as a military police platoon leader.
I am a military police officer and I have served on two deployments my first was to Iraq, in a medical unit, and my second deployment was to Kuwait, as a military police platoon leader.
We will send an additional 475 service members to Iraq. As I have said before, these American forces will not have a combat mission - we will not get dragged into another ground war in Iraq. But they are needed to support Iraqi and Kurdish forces with training, intelligence and equipment.
Afghanistan would have been difficult enough without Iraq. Iraq made it impossible. The argument that had we just focused on Afghanistan we'd now be okay is persuasive, but it omits the fact that we weren't supposed to get involved in nation-building in Afghanistan.In my new book, I open with a quote from Donald Rumsfeld. In October 2001, he said of Afghanistan: "It's not a quagmire." Ten years later there are 150,000 Western troops there.
Johnny Apple, a New York Times correspondent, wrote a front-page story saying Afghanistan could be a quagmire and he was mocked and derided. What is certainly true is that all sorts of resources that would have been used in Afghanistan were diverted to Iraq. Would those resources have helped? Almost undoubtedly. Whether or not Afghanistan would be a peaceful nation-state had we not gone into Iraq I doubt. Afghanistan is going to be Afghanistan, no matter how hard we try to make it something else.
In a professional service environment, you often work on one engagement or deal after another, with one ending before the next begins.
I had been pursuing a Ph.D. in political science when my National Guard unit was sent to Iraq. Eight months into our deployment, in November 2004, a rocket-propelled grenade fired by Iraqi insurgents tore through the pilot's side of the Blackhawk helicopter I was flying.
An army to be useful must be a unit, and out of this has grown the saying, attributed to Napoleon, but doubtless spoken before the days of Alexander, that an army with an inefficient commander was better than one with two able heads.
I was in a mountain biking accident and broke my sternum about three months before my unit was supposed to deploy to Iraq, and it's such a close-knit community that the idea of not getting to go is hugely jarring, so I tried to get put back in training and wound up injuring it worse.