MILITARY ROLE CALL

It’s been known for more than a year that extended, frequent and unpredictable deployments to Iraq are hurting military recruiting. Now the commander of the Maine Army National Guard is warning that sending soldiers overseas to do jobs that they aren’t trained for is further eroding recruiting and retention. As pressure mounts to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, it is imperative that the soldiers who remain are the right ones with the right equipment.

When Maj. Gen. John “Bill” Libby went to Iraq last month to check on his troops, he found a frustrated group. Members of the 152nd Maintenance Company weren’t upset about being in Iraq and they certainly weren’t complaining about the surprisingly comfortable quarters. The problem was that the mechanics were working as guards, spending hours in the security towers surrounding Camp Liberty outside Baghdad. “It is inexcusable, three years into the mission,” Gen. Libby said.

It has long been known that soldiers were needed to monitor and patrol the perimeter of the camp. Why then, he wonders, was the Maine National Guard asked to send a maintenance company, when security personnel were really needed?

The problem for Gen. Libby is that some of the soldiers in the 152nd are so dissatisfied that they aren’t likely to re-enlist in the National Guard. The retention rate among a medical unit that flew medivac missions and treated wounded soldiers is much higher simply because these guardsmen did the job they were trained to do, Gen. Libby said.

On a related front, a government report found that the military is having a difficult time filling key slots. The Government Accountability Office reported that the Army, National Guard and Marines signed up only one-third as many translators, intelligence and Special Forces soldiers as they wanted. To mask the shortfall, the military sometimes overfilled other positions in an effort to reach overall recruiting goals. The result is a shortage of people to fill critical jobs and too many people in other posts.

Michael O’Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, said the recruiting problems should ease if number of U.S. soldiers in Iraq begins to shrink. If it doesn’t, he told The New York Times, “the cumulative problems become really serious.”

Under growing pressure from Congress, it is likely that the U.S. presence in Iraq will slowly shrink. While our troops are still there, they must be doing the jobs they were recruited and trained for.