Troop Strength

Presidential candidate John Kerry has called for an increas of 40,000 active duty military. President Bush has called for none. If we're staying here, and I think we are, we might want to bulk up a bit.

Below are points from Michael O'Hanlon at the Brookings Insitute regarding U.S. military strength. For the full article please go here http://www.brook.edu/views/op-ed/ohanlon/20041001.htm

No crisis in Army or Marine Corps recruiting and retention has developed, at least not yet. American military personnel are displaying remarkable perseverance, patriotism and commitment, and are signing up for service in generally adequate numbers.

That said, the Army National Guard was about 5,000 soldiers short of its 2004 recruiting goals, mostly because it failed miserably to attract former active-duty soldiers into its ranks in the usual numbers. With an average of 150,000 Army National Guard and Reserve personnel activated at any given time since Sept. 11, 2001, and 55,000 in Iraq today, joining the Guard is no longer a good way to stay involved in the military while also being able to stay home.

U.S. forces in Iraq still number about 140,000. That is almost equal to their peak number there in the spring of 2003; it is 25,000 more than last winter and at least three times the number Pentagon planners expected for this phase of the operation. The Army, which is providing about 80 percent of the total, is making plans to keep its deployed strength near that level for several more years if necessary.

All of the Army's active-duty combat brigades were deployed overseas to a combat zone in 2003 or 2004, some of them twice. All will have to go back again. In fact, the average unit could have to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan two more times in the next presidential term if the Army's current planning assumptions prove correct.

Already, the 3rd Infantry Division, which constituted most of the left pincer of last year's invasion force, has received orders to return to Iraq this winter. The 1st Marine Division, which provided most of the right pincer, is of course already back in Iraq -- soon to be relieved by the 2nd Marine Division, which in recent years has sent units to Afghanistan and Haiti. The soldiers of the 2nd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division, who spent most of the past year in South Korea, are now to spend another year away from their families, in Iraq.

Does it really? From a concerned white boy. 

Copter gunner 

Words on the war

From today's NYTimes. Said better than I can -

October 3, 2004

Iraq: Politics or Policy?By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Sorry, I've been away writing a book. I'm back, so let's get right down to business: We're in trouble in Iraq.

I don't know what is salvageable there anymore. I hope it is something decent and I am certain we have to try our best to bring about elections and rebuild the Iraqi Army to give every chance for decency to emerge there. But here is the cold, hard truth: This war has been hugely mismanaged by this administration, in the face of clear advice to the contrary at every stage, and as a result the range of decent outcomes in Iraq has been narrowed and the tools we have to bring even those about are more limited than ever.

What happened? The Bush team got its doctrines mixed up: it applied the Powell Doctrine to the campaign against John Kerry - "overwhelming force" without mercy, based on a strategy of shock and awe at the Republican convention, followed by a propaganda blitz that got its message across in every possible way, including through distortion. If only the Bush team had gone after the remnants of Saddam's army in the Sunni Triangle with the brutal efficiency it has gone after Senator Kerry in the Iowa-Ohio-Michigan triangle. If only the Bush team had spoken to Iraqis and Arabs with as clear a message as it did to the Republican base. No, alas, while the Bush people applied the Powell Doctrine in the Midwest, they applied the Rumsfeld Doctrine in the Middle East. And the Rumsfeld Doctrine is: "Just enough troops to lose." Donald Rumsfeld tried to prove that a small, mobile army was all that was needed to topple Saddam, without realizing that such a limited force could never stabilize Iraq. He never thought it would have to. He thought his Iraqi pals would do it. He was wrong.

For all of President Bush's vaunted talk about being consistent and resolute, the fact is he never established U.S. authority in Iraq. Never. This has been the source of all our troubles. We have never controlled all the borders, we have never even consistently controlled the road from Baghdad airport into town, because we never had enough troops to do it.

Being away has not changed my belief one iota in the importance of producing a decent outcome in Iraq, to help move the Arab-Muslim world off its steady slide toward increased authoritarianism, unemployment, overpopulation, suicidal terrorism and religious obscurantism. But my time off has clarified for me, even more, that this Bush team can't get us there, and may have so messed things up that no one can. Why? Because each time the Bush team had to choose between doing the right thing in the war on terrorism or siding with its political base and ideology, it chose its base and ideology. More troops or radically lower taxes? Lower taxes. Fire an evangelical Christian U.S. general who smears Islam in a speech while wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army or not fire him so as not to anger the Christian right? Don't fire him. Apologize to the U.N. for not finding the W.M.D., and then make the case for why our allies should still join us in Iraq to establish a decent government there? Don't apologize - for anything - because Karl Rove says the "base" won't like it. Don't impose a "Patriot Tax" of 50 cents a gallon on gasoline to help pay for the war, shrink the deficit and reduce the amount of oil we consume so we send less money to Saudi Arabia? Never. Just tell Americans to go on guzzling. Fire the secretary of defense for the abuses at Abu Ghraib, to show the world how seriously we take this outrage - or do nothing? Do nothing. Firing Mr. Rumsfeld might upset conservatives. Listen to the C.I.A.? Only when it can confirm your ideology. When it disagrees - impugn it or ignore it.

What I resent so much is that some of us actually put our personal politics aside in thinking about this war and about why it is so important to produce a different Iraq. This administration never did. Mr. Kerry's own views on Iraq have been intensely political and for a long time not well thought through. But Mr. Kerry is a politician running for office. Mr. Bush is president, charged with protecting the national interest, and yet from the beginning he has run Iraq policy as an extension of his political campaign.

Friends, I return to where I started: We're in trouble in Iraq. We have to immediately get the Democratic and Republican politics out of this policy and start honestly reassessing what is the maximum we can still achieve there and what every American is going to have to do to make it happen. If we do not, we'll end up not only with a fractured Iraq, but with a fractured America, at war with itself and isolated from the world.