The (very) active military:
Of the Army’s 44 combat brigades, all but the one that is permanently based in South Korea have been deployed to Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Of the 43 brigades:
12 brigades have served one tour
20 brigades have served two tours
9 brigades have served three tours
2 brigades have served four tours
Source: The Center for American Progress
Tapping Reserves:
More than 434,000 National Guard and Reserve members have been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, and more than 20 percent of them have been deployed more than once. This large-scale reliance on the Guard and Reserve — with about 60,000 on the ground at any given time — represents a shift away from the services’ traditional dual role — aiding in domestic crises, such as natural disasters or civil unrest, and standing by as a strategic reserve force, to be deployed in later stages of a conflict if needed.
Source: Department of Defense and National Guard and Reserve
Indeed, the whole approach to providing manpower for this conflict differs from that of the Vietnam War, from 1964-1975. Then, a much larger active military — 8.7 million troops — was bolstered by a draft that added 1.7 million more soldiers to the ranks, according to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. More than 640,000 of the draftees served in Vietnam, constituting about one-quarter of the total U.S. force there, the VFW said.
But the draft ended in 1973, and the active military now numbers about 1.4 million, according to the Department of Defense.
In order to sustain troop levels in what has become a much more prolonged conflict than originally anticipated, the military has relied on repeated deployments, and a far heavier use of “weekend warriors.” More than 434,000 National Guard and Reserve members have been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, about one-quarter of them more than once, according to the Pentagon. In comparison, about 340,000 Guard and Reserve troops were deployed during the Vietnam conflict.
Extended tours of duty in the combat zone — some as long as 18 months — also are a departure from the past. In Vietnam, the standard tour of duty was 12 months. If a soldier was to be redeployed to the combat zone, Army policy mandated a 24-month period of recuperation or retraining between tours, said Larry Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank.
While military families’ views of the war vary, many feel that too few are being asked to sacrifice too much — a prominent theme among those who shared their thoughts with msnbc.com.
“If this "War on Terror" is the "War of this Generation" and Washington is not going to change that mission, then … Washington needs to mobilize this nation through national service (conscription),” wrote a Gut Check America reader in Baton Rouge, La., who asked that his name be withheld because of concern that his remarks might cause trouble for his son, now in his second deployment to Iraq. “To have 1 percent of this nation's citizens bear 100 percent of that burden is morally reprehensible. ‘Support the Troops’ needs to be more than words to the other 99 percent of this nation's citizens.”
“Our experience is that it’s two different worlds — the one for everybody else, and the one for military families and service people,” agreed Laura Stranlund of Amherst, Mass., whose son, Army Sgt. 1st Class Jonathan Miller, is on his third deployment since 2001. “Unless you’ve got skin in the game or know someone who does, it just doesn’t seem to matter. America is at the mall.”
