The North County Times June 25, 2011
MILITARY: Marines await Obama decision on troop levels
By Mark Walker
Freshly minted U.S. Marine Kevin Tellez figures he'll be fighting in Afghanistan within a few months, despite President Barack Obama's expected announcement Wednesday to start bringing U.S. troops home.
The 19-year-old private from Norco said Tuesday that regardless of what the president says in a scheduled 5 p.m. speech to the nation, young Marines like him still will be sent to the south-central Asian nation.
"I know that what he says could affect me, but everybody is expecting to get deployed," Tellez said during an interview in Oceanside a short distance from Camp Pendleton, where 46,000 Marines and sailors await the president's decision.
Obama will detail plans to reduce the roughly 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan by about 5,000 troops this summer and another 5,000 by year's end, according to a senior defense official quoted by the Associated Press.
It wasn't clear whether the president would order a cut in combat or support troops or some combination of the two.
About 5,000 Marines and sailors from Camp Pendleton's I Marine Expeditionary Force are in Afghanistan. Nearly all are in the deadly Helmand province, the nexus of the fight against the anti-government insurgent Taliban, where more than 760 U.S. troops have died since the war began in the fall of 2001.
About 10,000 troops from Camp Pendleton's I Marine Expeditionary Force are scheduled to go to Afghanistan next year. Base officials said Tuesday they had no orders to scale back training or prepare for a smaller number of troops to be deployed.
The Marine Corps has had primary combat responsibility in Helmand since leaving Iraq in the hands of the U.S. Army in 2009.
Until that year, the Marine Corps had a minimal presence in Afghanistan, where 154 locally based troops from all service branches have died in the decade-old conflict launched after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to figures kept by the North County Times.
Eighty-seven of those fatalities have been Camp Pendleton troops, including 25 from the base's 3rd battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. The unit suffered the highest number of casualties of any Marine battalion in the war during its seven-month deployment, which ended in April.
For many veterans, the death toll, as well as a seeming lack of progress in Afghanistan and the slaying of al-Qaida leader and Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, is reason enough to bring all the troops home.
"The Afghans don't want us there, and we can't bring the troops home fast enough," said Bill Rider, president and founder of the Oceanside-based American Combat Veterans of War.
Korean War veteran Earl Millard, 79, the father of a Camp Pendleton Marine sergeant, believes the same. Millard was a bomber crewman and also helped transport wounded troops home, something he said was much more difficult than taking part in bombing runs.
"The sooner the better," said the Redding resident, who was visiting Oceanside on Tuesday. "It's all been just a waste of time and life and limb."
John Pike, head of the independent defense monitoring group GlobalSecurity.org in Washington, said the death of bin Laden has made it increasingly difficult to define the U.S. mission in Afghanistan in a way Americans support. Polls show most Americans want all the troops to come home.
"The whole thing has become quite confused by bin Laden's death and people being unprepared to declare victory," he said.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon and a Marine Corps veteran of combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, is among those in Congress calling for scaling back the number of troops.
Hunter said Tuesday that protecting the U.S. from terror attacks such as Sept. 11, which bin Laden planned from a safe haven in Afghanistan, should be the primary goal.
"Quit trying to do everything and make sure the homeland is secure," Hunter said.
Achieving an Iraq-style success would require about 10 more years, hundreds of billions of dollars more and no reduction in troop levels, he said.
Afghanistan has too many tribes with disparate interests and a corrupt government to justify that course, according to the hawkish Hunter, who just recently began advocating a smaller troop presence that emphasizes special operations forces.
"That's a totally doable counter-terrorism strategy," he said.
© Copyright 2011, North County Times
