The Clinton Military meets the Dean Foreign Policy

Some pundits on the left continue to point at the results in Iraq and Afghanistan, and get the sort of grin you see from toddlers who've just made really good pants, and yell "See! The 'Clinton Military' wasn't so bad after all, was it? Hmmmmmmm?"

Well, yes. It was.

I got another letter from a high school pal of mine, who's flown more fighter planes than I've owned cars in the last fifteen years, writes:

I'm not sure of the exponential increase defense spending has seen under the "Bush Administration" but, this is clearly another case of a biased reporter spinning an article while ignoring the fact that for eight years prior to the "Bush Administration" the military was gutted by an administration whose opinion of those whom chose to serve their country with honor was somewhat akin to the reaction of a high-society debutante faced with something ugly, slimy, and smelly.

Don't even get me started on paradigm shifts and the institutional resistance to change inherent in DOD. Let's just say it is difficult at best to focus some decision-makers upon future threats and the requirements to counter them.

Of course, if you quote me on this I would recommend a GPS jammer from Radio Shack that might give you a false sense of security when the JDAM is inbound!!!

He sends a piece from the NYTimes editorial page, "The Thinning of the Army".

Over a third of the Army's active-duty combat troops are now in Iraq, and by spring the Pentagon plans to let most of them come home for urgently needed rest. Many will have served longer than a normal overseas tour and under extremely harsh conditions. When the 130,000 Americans rotate out for home leave, nearly the same number will rotate in. At that point, should the country need to send additional fighters anywhere else in the world, it will have dangerously few of them to spare.

This is the clearest warning yet that the Bush administration is pushing America's peacetime armed forces toward their limits. Washington will not be able to sustain the mismatch between unrealistic White House ambitions and finite Pentagon means much longer without long-term damage to our military strength.

I'm confused.

Does this mean "The Clinton Military" was only suitable for winning quick, hit and run brushfire wars, and standing guard over quarreling factions in borscht republics?

The left needs to get its story straight.

The only solution is for the Bush administration to return to foreign policy sanity, starting with a more cooperative, less vindictive approach to European allies who could help share America's military burdens.

Let's stop right there.

First - No. It's not the "only solution". There are several others. We could mobilize the nation for war; we could start turning factories over from civilian to military production, call up more reserves, even consider the draft. We could get serious, like we did on the eve of World War II.

Is it advisable? Probably not; it'd gut the economy. Which is why another solution - focus our military on fighting wars rather than the Clinton-era focus on a Peace Corps with guns, and increasing their budget to give it the training and equipment that the Clinton administration scrimped on - is a better idea.

As to our allies "sharing our burdens": this is akin to the Howard Dean claim that we could generate 100,000 "moderate moslem" allies to take over in Iraq, always made without naming a "moderate moslem" country with 100,000 troops to spare. Which allies? What troops? The German military is a shadow of its Cold War self, and except for its elite forces (the HSK special forces and Fallschirmjaeger paratroopers that already served in Afghanistan) serves largely as a post-reunification make-work program, which is logistically, doctrinally, legally and politically incapable of operating outside German borders. The French military, aside from its tiny Marine Corps, Special Forces and Foreign Legion, is worse - an ill-equipped draftee army that has not trained to fight an actual enemy in nearly 20 years.

In fact, what allies do with militaries that are actually capable of doing something useful, and have troops to send? Let's see - the Brits, the Poles with their great military traditions, the South Koreans with their high training and motivation...

...oh, wait - they're already there. Never mind.

Meanwhile, if a sudden crisis were to erupt in North Korea, Afghanistan or elsewhere, the Pentagon might be hard pressed to respond. For a time, it could make do by sending tired troops back into action, mobilizing reserves and borrowing forces from areas that are quiet but still highly volatile. Such expedients have severe long-term costs. The White House must recognize the damage its unilateralism is inflicting on the Army and change course before the damage becomes harder to undo.

That, or spend less money on Medicaid pork-barrel schemes, and start rebuilding a military that can fight a long war.

During the Reagan years, the regular Army had 20 ground divisions, the Marines two more, and the National Guard and reserve added (as I recall) 10. Anticipating the "Peace Dividend", Bush Senior cut the Army to 16 ground divisions (and the Navy and Air Force were cut proportionally). Today the Army has 12 divisions, the Marines one and some change, and the Guard and Reserve contribute proportionally fewer combat units. In war, the math is fairly simple; a division can only fight so long before it needs to rest, refit, absorb new guys to replace the ones that have had too much action. You can't do it on the cheap and politically-expedient - which is what Clinton did - and expect to win a war.

Which is what we're in.

Posted by Mitch at December 31, 2003 06:50 AM