By Max Boot, Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes a weekly column for the Los Angeles Times.|April 29, 2004
The daily drumbeat of disasters in Iraq isn't helping John F. Kerry politically because he hasn't proposed a compelling alternative. On Iraq and national security policy more broadly, he is offering an uninspired "me too" policy of "staying the course" while trying to gain more international support.
For a better approach, Kerry should emulate the man whose initials he shares. In 1960, John F. Kennedy assailed the Eisenhower administration for ignoring a supposed "missile gap" with the Soviet Union. The charge was false -- the Soviets weren't actually ahead when it came to missiles -- but it allowed Kennedy to outflank Richard Nixon on the right and narrowly win the election.
Today we face a real shortage -- a shortage of soldiers. The Army has fallen from 18 divisions in 1991 (710,000 soldiers) to 10 today (486,000) even as its commitments have expanded exponentially. Kerry should make the "muscle gap" a centerpiece of his campaign by pledging to do what George W. Bush won't: dramatically increase the size of the Army.
Bush is being disingenuous when he promises to give commanders in Iraq all the troops they need. The generals won't ask for many reinforcements because they know they don't exist. Just sustaining the current level of 135,000 troops in Iraq is proving almost impossible. Nine of the Army's divisions are either in Iraq and Afghanistan or just returning from there. The only additional one that can be dispatched is the 3rd Infantry Division, which left Iraq less than a year ago after spearheading the drive on Baghdad.
The Defense Department has tried to address pressing needs by sending 25,000 Marines, but the Marine Corps too is seriously overstretched. If any more Marines are sent, commitments in Haiti, South Korea and elsewhere may suffer.
We are also relying heavily on National Guard and reserve units that were never intended for such long-term deployments overseas. Overusing them could lead to a recruitment and retention crisis.
After stubbornly denying that more troops are needed, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld implicitly conceded the point by allowing the Army to temporarily add 30,000 personnel over the next few years, mainly by delaying the discharge of soldiers. He is also trying to move soldiers from desk jobs to front-line units. These are Band-Aid solutions for the serious wounds that Bush's policies have inflicted upon the armed forces.
