Posted on 06/25/2005 10:10:21 AM PDT by StoneGiant
ARE THEY IN THE ARMY NOW?
Cries of shortfall, exhaustion, and overstretch
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review
July 4, 2005
Figures on U.S. military recruitment just released for 2005 show that the Army missed its monthly announced goal, achieving only 75 percent of its anticipated enlistments for this May. The Army National Guard and the Army Reserve also missed their desired monthly targets. Stories in the press followed, claiming that the Pentagon is lowering Army standards to pull in new recruits and address the fallout from the depressing news from Iraq.
Recent dips in Army enlistments also fueled a new conventional wisdom: that the U.S. military is almost dangerously undermanned, exhausted, and overstretched. An unpopular war, domestic opposition, televised casualties, extended service, divorce and social dislocations, an improving economy, and supposed disparity in the sacrifices made by troops of different races and classes have all, it is said, conspired to cut recruitment to the volunteer army and reserves to alarming levels.
In turn, fears of undermanned armed forces have prompted existential questions about who should serve and the nature of U.S. foreign policy. Opponents of the war in Iraq also make the argument — perhaps legitimate in its own right — that our options are limited in dealing with Syria, Iran, and North Korea because we are overextended in Iraq and Afghanistan. Such critics also know that the cover of an exhausted military means they will never be called to spell out their exact position on the future use of force elsewhere.
Behind most critiques, oddly enough, is the promise of the draft. Some critics of the current war profess support for a return to conscription — both to address the purported manpower shortage and to ensure less military action abroad in the future. If a broader cross-section of the population serves in the military, it is argued, won't we all be more careful how it is used? And isn't the present system making inordinate demands on minorities, the poor, and the undereducated?
We might ask how accurate is the current picture of military disarray.
First, the Marines have suffered disproportionate fatalities in the war in Iraq. They are about 30 percent of all combat deaths, yet make up only 11 percent of current American forces. But in May the Marines slightly exceeded their recruitment goal. The Air Force and Navy likewise met 100 percent of their requirements. The Army traditionally has had the hardest time meeting its targets, given the reputation — warranted or not — that the other branches offer more specialized training and skills that will better enhance civilian careers without the same level of risk as ground combat.
Second, the year is only half over. The Army may well rebound and meet its full 2005 quota, as nearly all branches of the active services (the Army and Air National Guard were exceptions) did in 2004. Much depends on whether the economy continues to improve and thus competes for high-school graduates, and whether the Iraqi military can take over its envisioned preponderant military role, keeping the insurgency out of the daily headlines.
Third, on demographic grounds, our current troop mobilizations are hardly a drain on the U.S. population base. In a country of about 300 million residents, we have about 1.4 million troops deployed worldwide. Yet in 1974, during the first full year of the all-volunteer army, the United States deployed 1.9 million soldiers, drawing on a population of more than 210 million. In other words, when the population was just 70 percent of our current size, the armed forces sustained troop levels 1.3 times larger than our present military.
Critics harp on the expenses of the War on Terror and suggest that we are unable to sustain such a drain. Yet in the first full year of the volunteer army, military expenditures accounted for 58 percent of discretionary spending, or about 5.5 percent of the gross domestic product. In 2003, when we invaded Iraq with 200,000 troops and conducted reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, we allotted only 49 percent of discretionary spending to defense, some 3.7 percent of GDP — itself a moderate rise from 1999–2000, when defense expenditure had descended to the historical low of about 3 percent of GDP. This suggests the armed forces were inadequate to meet the security profile of the United States well before September 11.
If it turns out that we need more troops in the military, based on historical precedents and current resources, we surely have the population and national wealth to field larger forces than we presently deploy, and to pay them more than we do now.
But if critics insist that the 140,000 troops in Iraq are nevertheless too costly for the presently constituted U.S. military, and the current armed forces too costly for the United States, then they should examine very carefully our troop allotments elsewhere. We still have around 110,000 soldiers in various places in Europe, and almost another 80,000 in Japan and South Korea. Even if the argument can be made that the rise of China has replaced the threat of the Soviet Union and mandated that we maintain current troop levels in Japan, still thousands of troops in Europe and South Korea could be cut or deployed closer to the Middle East.
The problem most often raised, however, is not so much the cost or size of our military, but rather the disproportionate sacrifice of the underprivileged. Yet statistics of combat fatalities from Iraq are kept current, and the most recent numbers suggest that the continual cries of unfairness are not substantiated by hard data. Indeed, the claim is eerily similar to the past hysteria that blacks and Latinos died in disproportionate numbers in Southeast Asia, when, in fact, statistics confirmed that they did not.
Data on combat deaths in Iraq as of March 2005 surprised critics of the war. Contrary to the perception that citizen soldiers are bearing an inordinate portion of the overall burden, National Guardsmen constitute about 24 percent of all military personnel but accounted for 16 percent of those lost in Iraq. Some 95 percent of the fatalities had high-school diplomas, though only 85 percent of all Americans have finished high school. Blacks and Latinos made up 10.9 and 11.5 percent of the dead, respectively — about their same percentages in the general population, but in the case of blacks less than the 18.6 percent currently serving in the military. Twenty-nine percent of those who died attended high schools in poverty-stricken areas, versus about a 30 percent poverty rate for all high-school graduates. Seventy percent of those lost were white men, although they currently make up only about a third of the U.S. population.
If our current debate about the military transcends proportionate costs and relative sacrifice, perhaps our unhappiness derives from the terrible loss of 1,700 combat dead in Iraq. Yet this discontent arises not from numbers alone. After all, at catastrophic moments in our history far more were killed either in a single day or in a few weeks than all those we have lost since September 11 in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Between five and six thousand Americans were killed on September 17, 1862, at Antietam. D-Day cost around 3,000 Allied dead, and another 6,000 were wounded. During the Battle of the Bulge, some 19,000 Americans died and another 60,000 were wounded, missing, or captured. In the first few minutes of Pearl Harbor, about 2,400 Americans perished. And so far the 1,700 killed in action in Iraq make up about 60 percent of those lost on the first day of this war in the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
The problem is not just absolute numbers, then, but the growing perception after two years of Iraqi reconstruction that our dead were not lost in a war of national survival, or that such deaths are incompatible with a contemporary society that no longer believes force is desirable or necessary to maintain its security. In that case, the problem is not a military one per se. Going 7,000 miles across the globe, toppling two fascistic governments and establishing democracies in their places, and doing so at a cost (albeit a painful one) of less than 2,000 soldiers, is, by historical standards, an unprecedented military achievement.
Arguments persist over the proper troop levels in Iraq. But given the nature of the insurgency, more conventional troops do not seem to offer solutions, especially when the more critical task is lowering the American profile and working in the shadows to support and train a new Iraqi military. Rather, the controversy is really a political challenge of explaining the nature of the American sacrifice in Iraq, putting it in a historical context, and convincing the American people that such brave soldiers have both made Americans far safer and given the Middle East a future.
A related issue involves the proper role of the American military in an increasingly complex post–Cold War world. There was enormous pressure to use American troops to stop the Balkan holocaust, which nearby Europeans either could not or would not end — despite the absence of Senate approval, U.N. resolutions, and a clear-cut connection to American national security.
Similar cries arise to deploy to Darfur to curtail the slaughter of innocents. All could agree that a U.S. carrier should speed immediately to Indonesia on news of the tsunami disaster. The message of Robert Kaplan's recent Imperial Grunts is that there are tens of thousands of American soldiers stationed in unknown places in Africa, Latin America, and Asia engaged in the daily training of forces, civilian development projects, and what we might call old-fashioned foreign aid, all quite distant from any notion of conventional fighting. Such commitments are usually off the radar screen, do not involve many combat losses, and meet the postmodern criteria of nation-building rather than fighting wars. As long as Americans are not dying on television, the American people seem willing to pay for and support such extensive commitments.
Our current debate is not properly a military one, since the American armed forces are performing exceptionally well in Iraq and probably have enough aggregate strength to re-deploy to meet foreseeable crises elsewhere. Given our size, material wealth, and underutilized resources, we could easily expand or contract our military as we see fit. Rather, the rub is one of perception: The real question is whether Americans wish to continue their efforts to establish democratic states to replace deposed Middle East autocracies, and in general whether we wish to use forces abroad at all in wars that may require messy occupations and reconstructions that follow rapid and successful conventional victories.
Mr. Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of the forthcoming A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War (Random House).
"An Army Of One" is to blame for a lot of this stupidity. "Be All You Can Be" was a lot more effective.
I like his essays, but they'd have more impact if they were about one-third or one-half as long. Other great writers seem to be able to say as much or more in a lot less space.
Why aren't those caught engaging in the "insurgency" put to immediate death? War is hell, but we are acting like a police force not an army. To win a war against overwhelming savagery, we must unleash the dogs.
One more point. We are getting such awful non-coverage of what we are doing in Iraq that I think it is fair to ask what it is Americans have to support, car bombings?.
bump & pings
All wars will shake out miitary forces especially National Guard and Reserve units. In peacetime these forces are rarely stressed. One weekend a month and one two week a summer will not stress the soldiers and their families. A war like Iraq where units are deployed and cycled for 6 month stints will shake out who is there for a check and who truly understands what military service means. It would be interesting to interview National Guard/Reserve soldiers who re enlist. You will find that they will repreent the core cadre of a new future Guard/Reserve force. The two years have shaken out the sunshine patriots and only the true veterans are left. As a side note, several weeks ago 100 insurgents attacked a 40 men police barracks in Baya suburbs of Baghdad. The battle could have been a diseaster for our side, because the two guards fell asleep when the attack started in the early hours (rest of the garrison was asleep). The nearby Iraqi Army unit summoned to rescue the police was also pinned down during the well coordinated attack. The police were on their own. The barrack was raked by RPG and small arms, and rammed by cars packed with explosives. If this happened two years ago, the Iraqi police would have surrendered or worst turn their weapons over to the insurgents and fled. Instead they fought on till the next morning when relief forces broke through. The insurgents lost 12 KIA and forced to retreat leaving 20 wounded behind. The Iraqi free forces are going through the same shake out process. The ones fighting for pay have left, and the ones who are fighting for a purpose stayed. Today these Iraqi veterans are forming the core of a new effective Iraqi force that can go toe to toe with the Sunni insurgents lead by seasoned and military trained former Saddam officers. The insurgent attacks have killed too many innocent Sunni, Shiites and Kurdish civilians. In the early days of the US occupation, these groups stood on the side line letting the US do all the heavy work and waiting to see what will happen. Now the war is personal. Many Americans do not realize the Iraqi forces is also a volunteer Army. I spoke with a buddy of mind who is serving in Iraq, and he tells me that there is no shortage of Iraqi recruits. The people supporting us in Iraq are voting with their feet. They are not sending their wealth overseas, have a packed bag and US visa by their door. They are kissing their love ones goodbye and heading to the recruiting station. The only people talking about quiting is the American people.
When September rolls around and recent high school graduates cant get the required funding to pursue college work or maybe for lack of work prospects, then those Army TV spots will be very powerful attractors.
If recruiters were smart they would do their work in the months of September to January.
so he doesn't do soundbites.
*shrugs*
one of his strengths is the way he lays it all out, forming a strong argument which is difficult to naysay or counterargue.
"The insurgent attacks have killed too many innocent Sunni, Shiites and Kurdish civilians."
I have maintained for a long time that these terrorists do not have popular support and will not win. They have pissed off alot of Iraqis who, as patriots, have volunteered to serve their country.
Your last sentence: "The only people talking about quiting is the American people". It's a good thing we re-elected Bush. The job will get done with him in office.
Interesting points. Is the force better with the "I only signed for one weekend a month and college money" folks gone?
Like all free people, we have to learn the hard way. Rome had to fight three wars with Carthage before finally saying, "enough" and wiping them off the map.
Good analysis. I'm hearing the same things from my former students who are now officers and servicemen in Iraq. No, the Iraqi forces aren't perfect (may I remind Freepers that the American units at Kasserine were horrible?), but they are improving and within two years will be able to crush any suicidal jeeee-hadists that come at them.
Yes, it is. But I would add that the Army has learned that people serve a lot longer if they get the field they want---armor, air, propaganda, whatever. (West Point did this and traded additional time in service for a guarantee of field, and got 52 additional service years in a single signup). A soldier who feels well-placed and well-used is an effective soldier.
Yes, and we did it with a predominately male military where the army had a large number of conscripted soldiers...just as the Koreans and Israeli armies continue to do.
Enlisted soldiers already get the field they want, assuming they qualify.
read later - VDH bump
When General Abrams designed the reserve forces such that we could no longer go to war without the reserves, the assumption was we'd resume the draft in the event of a prolonged war. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, in wartime the draft is a necessity.
No. The only people talking about quitting are the fifth column of commie Democrats seeking political gain from defeat aboroad, their shills in the press, and a handful of "Republican" kooks (Hagel) or RINOS.
The decadent political class living in the MSM echo chamber of DC will crack long before the American people do.
Bush needs to go out over their heads directly to the American people and go back to DC and kick their a$$es.
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