WASHINGTON — Straining to find ground troops to maintain its force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon has begun deploying thousands of Air Force personnel to combat zones in new jobs as interrogators, prison sentries and gunners on supply trucks.
The Air Force years ago banked its future on state-of-the-art fighter jets and billion-dollar satellites. Yet the service that has long avoided being pulled into ground operations is now finding that its people — rather than its weapons — are what the Pentagon needs most as it wages a prolonged war against a low-tech, insurgent enemy.
Individual branches have spent decades carving out unique roles within the U.S. military, and Air Force officials insist that the redeployment of its personnel is temporary. Nonetheless, the reassignments come as another sign that the Pentagon is struggling to meet the demands of what military officials have begun calling "the long war."
As part of the effort, more than 3,000 Air Force personnel are being assigned new roles. And they are being dispatched to combat zones for longer tours of duty — as much as 12 months rather than four.
The changes within the Air Force, even if temporary, run counter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's overall vision of the military as a lighter, faster and more lethal force that relies on technology and efficiency to accomplish national security goals more quickly.
Let's face it. We don't have enough troops in Iraq to do the job we're required to do. And since we don't have enough troops, we play musical chairs--shifting airmen to do customs or driving trucks. We don't have enough money to pay for this war--considering that Bush will refuse to pay for taxes. We've got a renewed insurgency that we can't put down.
This is Vietnam all over again.
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