A dose of reality...

On September 1st I was at the football game between my beloved Cal Bears and Tennessee. The game was completely sold out, which meant that there were over 75,000 people in the stadium. While looking at this crowd, it made me think about how small it looked when I equated it to military troops. I thought "what if twice this number of soldiers had to conquer, pacify, and then hold THE ENTIRE STATE OF CALIFORNIA?!"

Thinking about it in those terms really brought the Iraq fiasco home for me. According to the World Atlas, Iraq consists of 166,859 square miles. The same source sizes California at 155,959, only slightly smaller than Iraq. I pictured a mere two stadiums full of guys having to take care of the entire state of California. Impossible! Sure we could send 100,000 heavily armed troops into Los Angeles and environs and quell unrest in that area, but then what happens if the insurgents conduct other operations in the San Francisco Bay area, or Sacramento, or they set up operations in the foothills around the cities ? We would only have less than a stadium full of guys around to deal with the entire state, because we would have a stadium-and-a-half of soldiers committed to Los Angeles.

Sound familiar?

~ Tom