Inertia and Its Cost

Military machines can be sluggish beasts, often guided as much by previous experiences as by future contingencies. There is a common feeling shared by personnel joining the armed services near the beginning of a conflict that training and equipment is at least one war behind. In Vietnam soldiers were first equipped with heavy, unwieldy M-14 rifles, essentially based on the M-1 from World War II. The M-14 is almost uncontrollable when fired automatically and has a wood stock that becomes swollen in a wet atmosphere. It was replaced on the run by the M-16.

The same soldiers originally wore post Korean-era fatigues with bright, easy to spot insignia and leather boots that rotted in the jungles. Army basic training in 1964 included no special preparation for living or fighting in the extraordinary conditions of the Indochina Peninsula.

The U.S. led invasion of Iraq, something George W. Bush had been talking about since 2001, began on March 18, 2003, but the Army's program of training recruits for the fighting they would encounter was not revamped until another two years later.

Soldiers getting ready to be sent overseas a few months after completing nine weeks of basic training were finally being prepared for the dangers of traveling in convoys and fighting in cities as well as being taught how to fire at pop-up targets while riding in trucks, shoot a rifle while wearing full body armor, and fire at moving targets from standing and kneeling positions. Mock villages, complete with contracted Iraqi-Americans to act as insurgents and rubber dog carcasses simulating hiding places for bombs, had just been constructed at Fort Polk, La.

The rationale for our military policies in Vietnam and Iraq aside, it is apparent in both actions that better anticipation and a more timely casting away of outmoded equipment and tactics would have spared lives. When speaking of the new programs designed for Iraq, one basic training colonel admitted, "We asked ourselves, 'Are we fully preparing (the troops) for that environment?' In many cases, the answer was no."

The answer "no" is not due to lack of ability or resources--in Iraq and other conflicts we have had both and have devoted them to our objectives. It is due to a reactionary approach that gets in the way of recognizing and adapting to changed situations. This approach is one of the main reasons we have so many troops today--Berkley Bedell and Jim Frost.