Stars & Stripes: Bush team seen as tone deaf on ‘people’ issues

Military Update: Bush team seen as tone deaf on ‘people’ issues
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=18975

By Tom Philpott, Special to Stars and Stripes
European edition, Saturday, November 29, 2003


With President Bush signing the first-ever $400 billion defense bill, including another military pay raise and housing allowance increase that will more than match growth in wages and rents nationwide, it would seem hard to argue that this administration has lost touch with troops.

Yet beneath the surface image captured by an amiable signing ceremony at the Pentagon on Nov. 24 are currents of worry and disappointment inside the military over actions of the Bush administration.

No president since the all-volunteer force began 30 years ago has used the military as aggressively. Bush, after all, elected to invade Iraq and to remove whatever threat Saddam Hussein and his elusive weapons of mass destruction posed. The war and occupation of Iraq, and also efforts in Afghanistan, have left U.S. military operations at their highest sustained level in decades.

They also have left many servicemembers concerned, mostly over the length and frequency of deployments given the enormity of Bush’s promise to establish a democracy in Iraq, for a people more used to tyranny and more inclined by culture and geography toward Muslim fundamentalism.