Gen. Cody, Vt. native, sees stress on U.S. forces
Toolbox
By Mel Huff Times Argus Staff - Published: July 7, 2008
NORTHFIELD Gen. Richard Cody, vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army and a Montpelier native, says the country's military resources are stretched thin, and American soldiers are paying the price of the country's lack of preparedness.
He described the present situation as "a time of testing
of our wisdom to sustain the all-volunteer Army in an age of persistent and unpredictable conflict."
Cody, who spoke recently to students from five Norwich University master degree programs, retires from 36 years of military service in August, and he reflected on the consequences of a consistent pattern of our national behavior.
"After every major conflict in the last century, the United States has chosen to weaken the very institutions we need to preserve the peace, sometimes leaving the nation unprepared to deter or fight the next war," he said.
Defense cuts after World War I left the nation with an army of 130,000 soldiers and obsolete equipment, he said. In the first major encounter of U.S. troops with German forces early in World War II, American troops were routed by the German Afrika Korps and their superior tanks.
"The familiar lure of peace dividends downsized the Army from 8 million in 1945 to 684,000 soldiers in 1947 and cut the resources for equipping and training units to be ready for combat," he said. In 1950, when Korean tanks crossed the 38th parallel, the American unit blocking the main highway from Seoul to Pusan a task force of 406 soldiers ran out of ammunition in four hours.
The same pattern prevailed at the end of the Cold War, when the Army's active com-ponent was cut from 18 divisions to 10. Since then, the Army has been engaged in 43 deployments, from peacekeeping missions to counter-insurgency operations to major combat, Cody observed.
"This strategy-resource mismatch became fully apparent after the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Today our soldiers endure 15-month combat tours
because the Army is too small," he said, noting that today's combat tours are longer than those of World War II.
"We can no longer allow hope to trump what history and experience have taught us," he said. "When we size and resource the army for the stable world we hope for, and not the full-spectrum dangers before us, it is the American soldier who pays the price for peace dividends and failed assumptions."
Cody called for "growing" the Army to meet increased demand, build depth and sustain the all-volunteer force, which he called in an interview "a precious gift to American citizens. It's one that they should never take for granted, because it took us 30 years to get it right."
In taking questions, Cody listened as a retired lieutenant colonel who approached the microphone with a cane described his three-year effort to get appropriate treatment in the Army medical system and asked the general to use his influence to seek partnerships between the military and university hospitals to provide medical care for soldiers. Cody responded that the country's lack of preparation for war extended to lack of preparation for providing medical care for returning soldiers. Hospitals and rehabilitation centers had been downsized and doctors and nurses let go.
"We're working this thing as hard as we can, but you can't grow doctors and nurses overnight," he said. Cody noted that while the army is investing a huge amount money in expanding its medical facilities, "We've got a long way to go here."
A woman who introduced herself as the wife of a soldier, mother of an Apache helicopter pilot and mother of an adopted son who is on the way to Iraq, asked Cody, "How can we get the press to be accountable with the nonpatriotic statements and nonpatriotic reports that they are doing. Can't we get the Army to straighten them up, too?" Cody replied, "We fight so we have freedom of speech. The American people have to straighten out the media. It's not the job of the government. It's not the job of the Army." He said the Army, like Joe Friday, just gives the facts and tries not to get involved in shaping stories. "We're under civilian control. You wouldn't want it any other way. We stay on the moral high ground."
Other questions involved leadership and discipline. One man said that for four years, he observed leadership that ranged from mediocre to bad and wondered why leaders who should have been relieved of command, hadn't been. Cody said that he was aware of the criticisms and told him that although it is not widely known, officers including generals have been relieved of command. In the early days of the war, Cody said, a lot of "tough decisions" were made by officers who were fighting with very short resources as a result of earlier downsizing. In some instances, people who would normally have had two or three years of training were put into combat, he said.
Cody said later that the Army is getting resources now, but not enough to allow it to grow to a sustainable level. "We're consuming readiness at about the same pace that we're building it," he said, noting that the demand for forces caused by the surge "took all the stroke out of the shock absorber.
"It's going to take us two to three years to get back to where we're not stressing our soldiers as much," he said. "We need to get back to where our soldiers go to combat for 12 months and don't go back for another 24 to 36 months. That takes a larger army to be able to do that if we're going to have the same demand for forces throughout the world. We're growing the Army, but it takes us about five years to grow 35,000."
The most important factor in bringing equipment back to its pre-deployment level of readiness and maintaining the growth of the army is full and timely funding, Cody said.
"Here we are today speaking, and we still don't have the supplemental bill passed that we should have had in October of last year, and the Army runs out of money at the end of the month," he said. "It's that simply full and timely funding each year so we can continue to resource this fight, continue to build back strategic depth in the Army to answer other missions but also to take the stress off the force so we can get them into what we think is a sustainable rotation of one year in combat and at least two years back. That takes full and timely resources to do it."
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