Fresh Troops -- or Fresh Thinking?

Six years after Donald Rumsfeld agreed to a second tour of duty as secretary of defense, to rebuild the military, Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker told Congress his Army "will break" if not relieved of the present burdens. Colin Powell says the Army is "almost broken." This week, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there is a significant risk that the United States today may be unable to respond quickly and fully to another crisis should it arise.

Howls erupted across the spectrum for more billions for more men for the Army and Marine Corps. What these revelations ought to trigger, however, are hard questions of our leaders and fresh thinking among our elites about the limits of American power and the extent of American commitments.

For, by any measure, Iraq and Afghanistan are not major wars. The United States had twice as many troops in Korea, resisting a million-man Chinese Army, and took 10 times the casualties we have taken in Iran and Afghanistan, and America was not overstretched.

We put three times as many troops in Vietnam, fought longer and took nearly 20 times the casualties we have taken in these two insurgencies, while maintaining 300,000 troops in Europe and 40,000 in Korea. Yet, though we are spending today as much on defense as the next 10 nations combined, the U.S. Army is "about broken."

In a National Review essay, "The Crying Need for a Bigger U.S. Military," ex-Sen. James Talent details what happened to the armed forces that were Ronald Reagan's great legacy to the nation.

"The active-duty Army was cut from 18 divisions during Desert Storm to 10 by 1994 — its size today. The Navy, which counted 569 ships in the late 1980s, struggles today to sustain a fleet of only 276. And the number of tactical air wings in the Air Force was reduced from 37 at the time of Desert Storm to 20 by the mid-1990s."

Inheriting Reagan's estate, Bill Clinton sold off much of it for the big party of the 1990s. But bemoaning what Clinton did yesterday does not address today's crisis.

What Desert Storm and the Iraq war should teach us is a simple lesson: The U.S. Army and Marines are capable of winning a small war in weeks against a middle-sized power. They are not large enough to wage a long war against a middle-sized power on the Asian continent.

While they can defeat an enemy army and seize a capital, they cannot rebuild a nation. Nor are the marginal increases in the U.S. Army now being proposed going to create such a capacity.

Gen. Eric Shinseki said that to defeat and occupy Iraq would have required two to three times the force we sent in. Yet even that would not have prevented or defeated the insurgency we face.

Most Americans realize that our mistake was not just in how the occupation was botched by Paul Bremer — failure to stop the looting, disbanding the Iraqi Army. The blunder was in attacking a nation that did not attack or threaten us, or any U.S. ally.

Before Congress decides on the enhanced size and new weaponry of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, we need a bottom-up review of U.S. commitments and to begin shedding them rather than adding to them, as we have done, willy-nilly, since the end of the Cold War.

Why, for example, when Congress is demanding that Iraqis take responsibility for defending their own democracy, are we not also demanding that South Korea take responsibility for defending its own democracy? Cannot the South, with twice the North's population and an economy 40 times as large, defend it self?

And as we are not going to fight yet another land war in Asia, why not move all our forces offshore, as Gen. MacArthur urged in 1951?

And as Europe is richer and more populous than we, why not shift responsibility for Europe's defense to the Europeans, and bring the U.S. troops home? This is what Eisenhower urged Kennedy to do — in 1960.

In the War Party, many wish to confront Russia and extend NATO to Ukraine and Georgia. Are Americans really going to fight Russia in the Black Sea over the Crimea, or to prevent secession of Abkhazia or South Ossetia from Georgia? What concern is that of ours?

Americans welcomed as a godsend the liberation of Eastern Europe. Yet, no president — not Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ, Reagan — ever broke relations with Moscow when Soviets blockaded Berlin, effected the 1948 coup in Prague, crushed the Hungarian Revolution, built the Berlin Wall, snuffed out the Prague Spring or crushed Solidarity.

Now, we are willing to go to war with a Russia with thousands of atomic weapons — over Estonia. Have we lost our minds?

Before we decide how many ships, planes, guns or troops we need, let us first decide what is so vital to us that we are willing to continue having the planes come in to Dover, and the ambulances rolling in from Andrews to Walter Reed, to defend it.

And there are not many things that can justify that.

To find out more about Patrick Buchanan, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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