Much Larger Army

I just read that Fred Thompson is proposing increasing the size of the Army to 775,000 people. Here is where I read the story: http://www.startribune.com/10215/story/1546788.html

Wow! I believe this is really important. This would drastically reduce the strain on Soldiers from long deployments... and would get us back in line with the size of the military that would be appropriate for a nation our size, with the demands being placed on us.

I should note that this is not an endorsement of Thompson (or any other candidate). I understand that most candidates, from both parties, are talking about increasing the size of the Army. This, however, is the most robust proposal I have heard. A larger Army would reduce the total number of deployments for all of us, and might also shorten the length of deployments.

Back to Blogging on Veteran's Day

It's been a long time since I've posted. There are a ton of reasons why, but here are the two biggies:

1) I've been busy getting back into the swing of civilian life. Of course, it's not that I wasn't busy while in Baghdad :) but after being in Iraq for a year, my military related thoughts just seem more mundane.

2) I've struggled with where to go with the blog now that I'm home. I would like to add more of a theological dimension to it (since the majority of my posts from Baghdad focused on my experience of a combat zone), but I also don't want to completely change the direction I've gone.

But at the end of the day (or, rather, the beginning of today), I've just decided to blog, and it will be what it will be.

With that said, I want to say that I'm very excited about what I've been seeing/hearing in terms of our success in Baghdad now.

But this has also been a hard part of the transition: I don't feel completely at ease telling people back here (in the US) about how well things are actually going in Iraq because people here are SO negative and cynical about the war.

Things are improving. Here are just a couple of articles from the past couple of days:

-Rocket and Mortar fire at 21 month low-


-Brutalized Iraqi capital begins to breathe again-

I also recently read an excellent article in the American Legion magazine titled "12 Myths of 21st Century War." It's a great read (and a must read) which explains what most Americans misunderstand about the war in Iraq- here is the link: Click Here.

Well, that's enough for now. Today's is a day off for government employees for Veteran's Day, so it seems like a good day to get back to posting.