In through the out door

You've probably heard a bit (perhaps a lot - and will likely hear more) about the troops President Obama brought home from Afghanistan recently. You'll hear less about the troops President Obama sent to Afghanistan to replace them - but here's a report on several thousand of them.

"It's a revolving door..."

The recent end to the US troop surge in Afghanistan has reduced the overall number of American troops on the ground, even as some new faces have arrived. It's a revolving door reminding us just how much we've asked of our men and women in uniform. NBC's Lester Holt spent time with members of the 3rd Infantry Division this week and has their story.

They are the new comers to Afghanistan..but old hands at war. Few Army divisions have deployed into battle more often than the Third Infantry Division. This time it is volatile southern Afghanistan... birthplace of the Taliban...where Captain Steve Nepowada leads a patrol in search of insurgent weapons stashes. He says, "We got the call we are going to Afghanistan. Everyone was excited and we were pumped ready to make a difference here for the first time."

The 3rd ID is accustomed to those calls. For the last ten years it's virtually been on the Pentagon's speed dial. In 2003 it led-off the historic invasion of Iraq...becoming the first to reach Baghdad. Business hasn't slowed down since. There were three more Iraq deployments to follow...and now Afghanistan.

I was on the 3ID's 2007 tour in Iraq - the surge - but I'm not going to share those old war stories here just now. (Oh, okay - just one.) A bit of division history is in order here, though - as their Iraq tour that followed that one is worth a look in the context of this latest adventure.

It began three years ago, in late 2009:

Iraq may not be the "central front" in the era of persistent conflict, but clearly it remains the number one destination for deploying troops.

The Third Infantry Division, the Ft Stewart, Georgia based U.S. Army division that toppled the Saddam Hussein regime with the "Thunder Run" in 2003, returned to Iraq in 2005 and again during "the surge" in 2007 is now beginning its historic fourth deployment to Iraq.

Many observers at the time - with violence at low levels in Iraq as Afghanistan was spinning rapidly out of control...

American deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, Jan., 2006 - May, 2011. (More here)

...believed the Third would be diverted to Afghanistan. After all, President Obama had campaigned on the idea that it was the Real Central Front in the War on Terror (from which his predecessor had diverted resources to Iraq), and in fact, Obama had already diverted another brigade from Iraq to Afghanistan earlier that year (though that was actually part of a fraud perpetrated on the American public - he quietly sent another to Iraq in its place). So - given that it's where the troops were needed, and where the president had repeatedly said they were needed, it was hardly surprising that earlier in 2009, 3ID units had diligently completed training in mountainous northern Georgia, anticipating an Afghan tour.

But it didn't happen - and upon departure the division's commanding general explained that even though they weren't going to be in a combat environment like Afghanistan, Iraq was still important.

"For the newest soldiers who don't know what combat is like yet, there might be some, 'gee I wish I was going to Afghanistan'. But for the old soldiers, and take it from an old soldier like me who was in Afghanistan when it was not the main effort and Iraq was, I am now going to Iraq where Afghanistan is the main effort and Iraq is not - it's still an incredibly important fight."

It must have been - the 3ID deployment, along with other units deploying or in theater at the time, enabled U.S. force levels in Iraq to be maintained at approximately 120,000 troops well into 2010. But as they deployed, near the end of President Obama's first year in office, the commander-in-chief hadn't yet figured out exactly what to do about all that war stuff. He was working on it, or at least thinking about it, but the 68,000 troops then in Afghanistan would just have to muddle through for a little while more.

The Third's 2009-2010 deployment to Iraq wasn't uneventful - they did experience combat (and deaths in combat) in Iraq, even though they weren't allowed to call themselves "combat" troops. To some degree they weren't, as they spent much of the tour confined to various FOBs, and the only time they really "made the papers" back stateside was for the backlash that followed after their general expressed his desire to do something about the number of female troops returning to the states early because they had gotten pregnant while deployed.

But other units in Iraq made bigger headlines. For example, later in their own tours - immediately before the 2010 elections in America - if they had time to watch the news, members of the 3ID would be able to "ride along" with a very excited NBC news crew ("It is really, really hot right now," declared Rachel Maddow, "but yet, seeing what we just saw, right here live with that gate closing, the last U.S. combat troop, I'm totally covered in goose bumps") as they accompanied the "last combat brigade to leave Iraq." Still, even after NBC News' official declaration of the end of combat in Iraq, the 3ID troops never considered going anywhere without their weapons through the remainder of their own "non-combat" tour.

End history lesson - and on to the future. We can hope and pray for other outcomes, but their long delayed Afghan tour will certainly be different - with levels of blood and thunder more like their earlier Iraq tours than their last. But once again the men and women of the Third Infantry Division have deployed at an inconvenient moment, this time to a very hot war zone even as the surge of forces their commander-in-chief eventually ordered there ends, exactly as he had publicly pledged it would when he ordered it ("...as Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home...")...

...and just in time for another election in America.

"We got the call we are going to Afghanistan. Everyone was excited and we were pumped ready to make a difference here for the first time."

Spare a prayer for them, when you've got a moment to spare.

(More/comment here.)