Clinton's Military

One of the right's campaign platforms was rebuilding a military that atrophied badly under the Clinton administration. The Army, which had 18 ground divisions during the Gulf War (and sent seven of them to the Gulf), has exactly ten now, and several of them are not capable of going into action. Friends of mine in the military - many of whom served under Carter, Reagan and Bush the First - were forthright and ferocious in their condemnation of the slide the military underwent on Clinton's watch.

Now, with the military's great performance, many on the left are claiming that the conflict in Afghanistan is a referendum on the Clinton Military, and it has passed with flying colors.

Not so fast.

While the conflict in Afghanistan is important, it involves a relatively tiny number of our troops - and they are our best troops. Special Forces, Rangers, Deltas, a battalion of Marines, and a few Air Force squadrons; aircraft numbering in the dozens to low hundreds (a Rapid Deployment Wing, basically, plus a wad of transports). They - our "elite forces" - were among the few units that maintained their budgets to train, actively, for this sort of mission during the previous administration. All of these troops have been painstakingly trained and equipped to do exactly what they did - fly or sail around the world on short notice and carry out mayhem on an enemy. This, they've done.

Now - if Saddam Hussein opted to invade Saudi Arabia again, how would we react? Of the seven Army divisions that retook Kuwait, three no longer exist (the 24th Infantry and 2nd and 3rd Armored Divisions), and two are scattered about the globe on peacekeeping missions. If we had to react in serious force to a real military threat somewhere, we could not.

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said yesterday that we have more troops on scene at the Olympics in Utah than we have in Afghanistan. He's being modest. We also have more troops in the former Yugoslavia. The British sent more men to the Falklands in 1982 than we've sent to Afghanistan.

In other words; claiming that Afghanistan is a positive report on the "Clinton Military" is like claiming my grilled-cheese sandwich makes me a gourmet chef. It might be a dang fine sandwich, but it's not a real test of cheffery (?).

And Afghanistan is not a true test of a whole military.