With the advent of President Obama’s election came a forceful commitment to withdraw American forces from Iraq. However, during both the campaign and in more recent discourse, largely missing from that debate has been considerations from the logistical nightmare involved with such an undertaking. More to the point, counteracting six years of build up intended to supply and support 150,000 military personnel, roughly as many civilian contractors, and the hundreds of thousands Iraqi military, paramilitary, and police personnel that have supported our operations there won’t be an overnight endeavor. With that said, we are now just beginning to take that monumental task head-on.
If you’re having trouble getting a sense of the scope of what we are dealing with here, the Army Times lays it out pretty well:
As U.S. troops near what is supposed to be the final year of combat operations in Iraq, the military’s top logisticians have quietly been working on the “monumental” task of removing mountains of war-fighting equipment from that theater.
“We’ve been in that theater of war for [six] years. This is Ph.D-level stuff. It’s literally millions of pieces of equipment,” said Maj. Gen. Kevin Leonard, the G-3 for Army Materiel Command.
Officials declined to discuss how much the drawdown effort could cost, but Pentagon leaders are debating the price tag, which changes depending on how much equipment is saved and whether gear bought to replace what’s junked is included in the overall tab.
One source has said the total will be tens of billions of dollars.
The cost of the drawdown could be overshadowed by the complexity of the effort, which will include deciding what to do with each piece of gear and scrubbing certain pieces of equipment, such as those that will be transferred to Iraqi forces, of classified components.
Considering that much of this equipment has been with our forces since we rolled over the berm in March of 2003, we certainly have our work cut out for us. Despite the fact that Iraq has seen a large number of high-profile mass killings in the last few months, American personnel have largely been unaffected by the death and destruction. Now it seems the hope lies not only in the safety and security of the people of Iraq, but in a safe and secure return home for the roughly 100,000 military personnel that will be back stateside next year. God speed to all.
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