…on those earlier e-mails:

These readers just don’t get soldiers or soldiering. If we need to provide more rifles to the front, no problem: Gen’s just need to say ‘make it so’. Poof, the Pentagon and the beltway will hate the intrusion against their carefully laid 14 year plans and their legislative strategies. But they’ll direct and support and a solid professional unit will go do. Most artilleryman travel in Hummers. And they fight as infantry, their cannons left in the states. Lots more folks are acting as MPs that aren’t MPs. And when they have to they fight as infantry. We fall in on equipment left by the last unit and refurbed with the latest gadgetry. Great stuff (I know, how will we EVER afford to replace it in 10 years, the usage rates weren’t programmed, the investment accounts are already bare, yada, yada, yada). Stryker versus Heavy vs Light infantry versus SOF could lock an entire Leavenworth class in debate well past graduation. A strawman never fully developed such that a talking head or non-responsible gov’t official can later claim title as Cassandra—the strawman knocked or embraced whichever way the news takes it that day. So what. Sucks that I’ve been to Iraq twice, Afghan once, but – ya know- it aint breakin anything but paradigms in the Pentagon and in Newspapers and even in VFW halls. Folks just can’t help but fear the Army stretching thin and then cracking or snapping or failing in some structural manner— its just not neat and ideal and budgetable and program-able-. Hey– Need Iran done? —the major combat ops won’t take much more than a month, then we can leave or dilly daddle around with democratizing the joint for a few years. Or not. Besides, lots of us haven’t been there yet! Just kidding about that last, there… Enlistments are fine, and the massive reenlistments still baffle people who don’t get soldiers or soldiering. We’re good at war. Very good. Our mission is important, personal for many of us, even profound for most. We’re ready to do more.