04.08.2003, 17:57
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Zitat:Has the time come when the best course is to consider an increase in the size of our Army, after two decades of whittling it down from 18 divisions to 10 divisions, squeezing it from 750,000 soldiers to 480,000 soldiers?
It is instructive that in a recent Pentagon briefing, Gen. John Keane, acting chief of staff of the Army, was asked how he intended to provide combat forces for an emergency on the volatile Korean Peninsula if he was now sending a goodly number of those units on standby for duty in Korea to Iraq and Afghanistan as replacements.
The general acknowledged that deploying the 1st Cavalry Division and brigade elements of both the 25th Infantry Division and the 2nd Division would eat deeply into the reserves held back for action in Korea. But he said that, in the event of an emergency, the Army would simply ship those units newly returned from Iraq and Afghanistan to Korea.
Never mind that units returning from a combat deployment such as that in Iraq often need six or more months to do maintenance and repairs on their vehicles and equipment. Soldiers also need leave time to spend with long-neglected families. And they may well require a rotation to one of the national training centers to tune up maneuver skills.
The Army today has 368,900 soldiers deployed overseas in 120 countries -- 215,000 of them unaccompanied by their families. Besides the 167,000 based in Iraq and Kuwait, there are 31,460 in South Korea and 9,600 in Afghanistan; 5,100 in Kosovo and Bosnia; 1,550 in Guantanamo guarding the Taliban prisoners; and 1,151 in the Philippines.
The Army couldn't manage that level of manning except for the 136,000 Army Reservists and Army National Guard troops already on active duty and counted in the 368,900.
No one believes or forecasts that the numbers tied up trying to secure Iraq, at the cost of one or two or three dead soldiers per day, will somehow miraculously begin dwindling in the next year.
In fact, when the Army began casting about for troops to rotate into Iraq to replace those who fought the war and have been on dangerous occupation duty ever since, only three of the Army's total of 33 active-duty combat brigades were actually available to go immediately.
The rotation of troops to Iraq will require activation of two more brigades of the Army National Guard: the 30th Infantry Brigade from North Carolina, augmented by a battalion from the 27th Infantry of New York, and the 39th Infantry Brigade of Arkansas, with an added battalion from the 41st Infantry of Oregon.
So it is not only the active-duty Army that is stretched dangerously thin. Count in there the folks who signed up for one weekend a month and two weeks of summer training and now find themselves federalized for a year or more.
They leave behind families, jobs, businesses, careers. Their departure strips towns and cities of many of their best police and fire department officers. Many may find their sudden popularity as full-time soldiers costs way too much when re-enlistment time rolls around.
There is no question that the United States as a nation must finish what it started with the invasion of Iraq. Success in Iraq is the foundation upon which any meaningful policy in the Middle East must be built and the bedrock upon which the war on terrorism must be based.
So the American military is going to be there, in strength, for the foreseeable future. It is going to cost us $4 billion a month for the foreseeable future. And no one believes that the French or the Germans or the Indians are going to rush to provide soldiers or money to help secure and rebuild Iraq.
A few on Capitol Hill have suggested -- to the horror of Defense Secretary Donald L. Rumsfeld and his civilians who run the Pentagon -- that the Army end-strength needs to be increased by as much as a fourth, or as many as 114,500 more troops.
As painful as this may be in a time of huge budget deficits, it may well be time for those who have gotten used to spending money squeezed out of defense for other things to prepare to do the right thing, however painful it may be.
If we are going to police the world -- and no one besides our British cousins seem eager to help -- then we are going to need enough policemen to do the job.
Joseph L. Galloway is senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers. 700 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045