Stretched

The US is planning to redeploy troops from South Korea to Iraq. It's a telling indicator of just how far the US military is stretched - they're having to pull troops from their core defence commitments just to keep their head above water in the Middle East.

The positive side of this is that it means they can't really fight any more wars - they just don't have the troops for it. NeoCon dreams of Syria or Iran being next are just so much hot air. And the negative side is that they can't really fight any more wars - so if things go pear-shaped in Korea, or China decides that now is the time to retake Taiwan, the US will be limited to watching from the sidelines.

Overall, I'm not sure that this is a good thing...

Update: Kevin Drum has more details on what other barrels the US is scraping the bottom of, and its scary. Sometime soon, they're going to have to make some hard political decisions - draft, withdrawl, complete callup of the reserves - and the results won't be pretty.