Washington – Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced Wednesday that all active-duty soldiers currently deployed or going to Iraq and Afghanistan would see their one-year tours extended to 15 months, acknowledging that such a strain on the war-weary Army is necessary should the ongoing troop increase be prolonged well into next year.
The decision – coming just three months after President Bush put forth his new security plan for Iraq, including the deployment of at least 28,000 additional troops there – suggests that the new strategy is unworkable without introducing longer Army tours.
The across-the-board extension will affect more than 100,000 active-duty soldiers and will result in the longest combat tours for the U.S. Army since World War II. It will also mandate for the first time that active-duty soldiers spend more time at war than at home.
“This recognizes … that our forces are stretched. There’s no question about that,” Gates told reporters at the Pentagon.
Calling the longer tours “difficult but necessary,” Gates said that all active-duty Army units in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa – as well as those deploying there – will serve tours of up to 15 months, effective immediately, with the exception of two brigades that already have been extended. He made it clear that most units should expect 15-month tours.
“This decision will ask a lot of our Army troops and their families,” Gates said. But he said it would make the rotations “fair, predictable and sustainable” in contrast to prior ad-hoc decisions to extend individual units serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It also will allow the Army to ensure active-duty units have a minimum of 12 months at home.
Families of deployed soldiers reacted to the news with disappointment and resignation.
“I was praying for a year” deployment, said Audrey Frohn- hoefer, whose husband, Tom, is serving his third tour in Iraq with the Fort Stewart, Ga.-based 3rd Infantry Division.
“The worst part about the whole thing is that we know what to expect, and we don’t want to do it,” she said in a telephone interview from her Savannah, Ga., home, as her 5-month- old infant and toddler daughters bawled in the background.
Gates said the longer tours would give the Pentagon the capability – if required – to continue the surge in Iraq for “at least a year” until next April, but he said the progress of the war would determine whether that happens as well as how long the policy of extended tours would last.
Most active-duty Army units have been spending one year at home between 12-month deployments. However, U.S. commanders in Iraq have recently warned their soldiers to plan on tours as long as 18 months.
“Every smart commander is telling their troops to expect longer tours – there is no way to do this without longer tours,” said one senior military officer in an e-mail from Iraq before Gates’ announcement.
Congressional Democrats on Wednesday criticized the decision to extend Army tours, calling it a further escalation of a war that has no end in sight. They called on Bush to change what they termed a “failed strategy” in Iraq that continues to stress U.S. forces to the breaking point.
“The Army has attempted in vain to stabilize a rotational scheme for an unstable and open-ended strategy,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “Once again, the failures of this administration are being underwritten by our troops.” For some Army families, the change will have dramatic consequences – from canceled weddings to, inevitably, the loss of loved ones. For all, it will mean dragging out already painful separations. “Fifteen months is a long time … especially if you leave an infant and come back to a toddler,” said Carolyn Crissman, the wife of Lt. Col. Doug Crissman, now deployed in Iraq.
It is unclear what impact the decision will have on troops at Fort Carson near Colorado Springs.
“We don’t really know at this point how it is going to effect individual units,” said Dee McNutt, spokeswoman for Fort Carson. “The announcement was just made today. Fort Carson is preparing, and we have all the systems in place, to assist soldiers and families for whatever the nation asks us to do.”
