ONE OF THE least noticed but most intriguing elements of the State of the Union speech occurred near the end, when President Bush called for the recruitment of 92,000 more soldiers and Marines and for the creation of a Civilian Reserve Corps that "would ease the burden on the armed forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them."
Never mind that there is much less here than meets the eye. Included in Bush's recruitment math are 30,000 Army troops already in the pipeline, so the increase is really only 62,000, not 92,000 -- and that number won't be available for five years. A larger, faster increase is needed to relieve the strain on our overstretched armed forces.
As for the Civilian Reserve Corps, the administration has no detailed plans to recruit, train or deploy abroad the kind of experts we need in such fields as law, finance, sanitation and balloting. Nor does it have the money. Odds are that this bright idea will suffer the same fate as another plan devised by the State Department's Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, which asked for $100 million from Congress for contingency planning last year and got zip.
Iraq war ideas: In his Jan. 31 column, Max Boot wrote that, despite the Iran-Contra scandal, President Reagan and a Democratic Congress were able to cooperate in streamlining the U.S. tax code and the military command structure. Those two reforms were enacted before the Iran-Contra scandal broke.
To further address our shortcomings, Bush should take a number of other steps.
For a start, he should open the ranks of the armed forces to recruits who are not citizens or green card holders. This would be the fastest way to increase force size (as well as knowledge of other languages and cultures), and it could be accomplished with the stroke of a pen. Under a law passed last year, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates can waive the citizenship requirement if he "determines that such enlistment is vital to the national interest." To assuage concerns about turning over the defense of our nation to foreigners, Gates could direct that they make up no more than, say, 20% of the total.
Paying for the extra soldiers we need won't be cheap. Even though the defense budget has grown from $302 billion in 2001 to $432 billion this year, the armed forces are facing major equipment shortfalls that need to be addressed. Supplemental appropriations bills have been covering these costs so far, but to avoid having to pare major procurement programs, Bush will need to increase the defense budget some more.
