An increase in U.S. troops deployed to Iraq would almost surely affect Hawai'i-based soldiers and Marines, potentially prolonging their deployment or getting them there sooner than planned.

But a troop buildup — the expected topic of a speech today by President Bush — could demoralize military families and erase any expectations about what is considered a normal deployment, said U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawai'i.

"They can expect that if they go, they won't know when they will get back," Abercrombie said. "You can forget the idea that this will be for a specific time and then they return."

He said the troops will "have to pay the price" for the president's decision and suggested they were "political fodder."

"Their professionalism and commitment is being used to cover the bottomless pit of political failure this war has become. That is why it has to end."

Abercrombie said the new Democrat-controlled Congress will challenge whatever plan the president proposes.

"These are life-and-death issues," he said. "These are things we promised people. We told them the ground rules and now we are changing the ground rules."

8,500 ISLE TROOPS

Hawai'i-based troops have been part of the war since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

More than 8,500 soldiers and Marines from Schofield Barracks and Marine Corps Base Hawai'i are now deployed in Iraq.

Most of them, 7,000 soldiers, are from the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks. They left Hawai'i in July and August for a 12-month mission in Iraq.

The Marines have been on a steady rotation for nearly two years. About 1,000 Hawai'i Marines with the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment have been in western Iraq since September. Another 1,000 with the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment — a unit involved in bloody, house-to-house fighting in Fallujah in 2004 — are scheduled to replace them in March.

Other Hawai'i Marines, with the 1st Battalion, 12th Marines, also are expected to go to Iraq in the spring.

Neither the Marines nor the Army could say what their future held if the president wants to increase troop strength.

"Honestly, at this point, we don't know," said Chuck Little, a spokesman for Marine Forces Pacific at Camp Smith. "If there were to be a surge in troops, the decision about where they would come from would be made at a much higher level than here. We would have to wait to see what the Pentagon says."

But the Marines won't shrink from the fight, he said.

"The Marines have always been there when the country needs them," he said.

John Pike, director of military think tank www.GlobalSecurity.org, said it may be too soon to know the exact impact of a troop increase.

Like other experts, he believes the Pentagon could accelerate current training plans and move troops there sooner or choose instead to keep people overseas longer, he said.

Either way, it will affect retention numbers, Pike said.

"They will gripe, they will complain, they will question it," he said. "And some of them will decide they are not cut out for this man's Army and their families will say this is not the Army you enlisted in."

The new demands — and the increased danger they bring — would have a similar affect on Army National Guard members.

"People do not join the Guard so they can get an opportunity to go to Iraq and get their butts shot off," Pike said. "You do not join the Guard so you can be separated from your family for a year to be in combat."

LIMITS ON THE GUARD

About 2,000 members of the Hawai'i Army National Guard — most of them men and women with full-time civilian jobs who wear their uniform once a month — were mobilized in August 2004 and deployed to Iraq from January 2005 to January 2006. They were demobilized in February 2006.

Under current Pentagon policy, Guard members are limited to 24 months of mobilization after which they can expect five or six years to pass before another mobilization, said Maj. Chuck Anthony, Hawai'i National Guard spokesman.

That policy would have to change before they could be called up for additional service, he said.

A Guard unit with time left on its 24-month mobilization could — in theory, he said — be sent on another deployment.

"But that is completely impractical to do that," Anthony said. "You wouldn't call up someone for six months and train them for a longer period of time than they would actually be in-country."

And additional training is a must, Anthony said.

"These are perishable skills," he said. "It isn't something that stays with you unless you are doing it on a daily basis."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.