WAR WHORE KAGAN ON STRESS

In the NRO column Glenn Greenwald linked to, Fred Kagan has this passage:

Lieutenant General Ray Odierno has been pressed repeatedly on the strain that 15-month tours place on his soldiers. He has repeatedly noted that there are two good ways to relieve that strain. First, win the war we’re fighting. Constraining the number of troops that can be sent to war is one way of legislating a “slow bleed” strategy. On the other hand, the sooner we accomplish our objectives, the sooner our forces can come home and stay. And if you believe that the war really is hopelessly lost, then the issue should not be the “dwell time” of soldiers and units, but ending it. Second, we could increase the size of the ground forces.

I searched for a statement by Odierno that amounted to this and this is what I found (8/17/07):

GEN. ODIERNO: Well, I mean, I think the issue is, I would just say that what
we're trying to do here is reduce -- we want to get to a situation here in Iraq
where we reduce our commitment here. I mean, that's really what I'm trying to
do. If we can reduce our commitment here by our success, then we can start reducing the -- we can increase the time between deployments, we can maybe decrease the time length of our deployments. If we can increase the size -- you know, we're talking about increasing the size of our Army and Marine Corps. That's why that is so important -- so we can have the forces necessary to rotate through here, so we gave -- give more time for our soldiers in order for them to have more time at home, have more time in less stressful situations. That's why
those are so important.

Kagan neglected to mention this observation by Odierno (5/31/07):

While security is important and creating stability for the Iraqi people remains
paramount, ultimately success cannot be achieved without those diplomatic, political and economic endeavors that also make progress. Therefore, it must be a combination of all of those for us to be successful.

The political and economic efforts are largely beyond our control, so in KaganWorld, we are in effect held hostage by the Iraqis.