Too Many Wars, Too Few U.S. Soldiers

Robert H. Scales, a retired U.S. Army major general and former commandant of the Army War College, is president of the consulting firm Colgen.

I guess I knew it would eventually come down to this: Blame the Army’s institutions in some way for the horrific and senseless slaughter of 16 innocent Afghan civilians in Kandahar, allegedly by a U.S. infantry non-commissioned officer (NCO). In their search for a villain, the media seems to be focusing now on Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, where the accused soldier was stationed before his fourth deployment to a combat zone.

Before we get too involved in attacking institutions, perhaps it might be right and proper to suggest that the underlying issue here is not about failure of our Army. Perhaps the issue might be that no institutional effort can make up for trying over the past 10 years to fight too many wars with too few soldiers?

The accused NCO is an infantryman. Two weeks ago I talked with infantry soldiers at Fort Benning, Ga., and I couldn’t help contrasting them with those of my generation of Vietnam veterans. What caught my attention were the soldiers’ amazing stories of patient, selfless, introversive commitment. First I took to heart the enormous disparity in stressful, extreme experiences between the infantry and other branches and services that have come back from Iraq and Afghanistan. The senior NCOs I spoke to all had at least three, and in some cases five, tours, virtually all in close combat units.

Contrast this with returning Vietnam NCOs and junior officers, most of whom in that era had only one tour in Vietnam. Of course infantry combat in Vietnam was perhaps more intense, but close fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan was more pervasive and lasting, thus more likely to cause personal trauma in my mind...