Hope and Fail

Promise of more ‘dwell time’ to troops thrown out the window

Not only did President Obama apparently forget to bless the troops during his Afghanistan speech, the administration is breaking a promise to American soldiers to increase the amount of time they have at home between deployments.

Back in January, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced the Pentagon’s goals to give soldiers two years at home for every year deployed by fiscal 2010 and 30 months at home by fiscal 2011:

In his Jan. 27 testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gates outlined the most specific timeline to date regarding dwell time for a force that has endured repeated deployments and, for parts of 2007 and 2008, 15-month tours with 12 months at home.

“The estimates that I’ve been given are that by the end of fiscal year ’09, we should be in a position where our brigade combat teams have a year deployed and 15 months at home,” Gates said. “In FY10 a year deployed, two years at home, and by FY11, a year deployed, 30 months at home. So I think we’re on the right track. The next few months will continue to be hard.”

Now the Defense Department says that’s not going to happen. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress the extended “dwell times” will be put off because of the president’s new strategy in Afghanistan.

The build up also will put more strain on troops by giving them less time than hoped for at home. Mullen said supplying the extra forces for Afghanistan while there are still so many in Iraq will mean putting off for a couple of years the goal of lengthening the time they rest and retrain at home in between tours of duty — a period the military calls “dwell time.” The Army had been moving toward giving two years of dwell time between each one-year tour.

What’s more, the administration apparently promised a veterans group that the build up in Afghanistan would have no effect on the “dwell time” goals. And Mullen said on the day of the president’s speech that “dwell time” wouldn’t be changed:

Deployment lengths for U.S. servicemembers will remain about the same – seven months for Marines, and 12 months for soldiers. With the planned reduction in U.S. forces in Iraq to 50,000 by August 2010, Mullen said he doesn’t expect an adverse affect on dwell time – the time between deployments. Dwell time will increase slightly for Marines over the next year and for soldiers over the next two years, he said.

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