- WASHINGTON -- Nearly everyone
-- generals, Pentagon strategists, politicians and soldiers -- agrees the
United States needs more troops, the key to waging war against Muslim insurgents
in Iraq and around the world.
-
- But on the campaign trail, President George W. Bush and
his Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry, hardly address the need to put more
American youths in uniform.
-
- Although both support a slightly larger military, neither
Bush nor Kerry has mentioned the added cost or how he would press tens
of thousands more young Americans into service.
-
- Under Bush, the Army is quietly working to add 30,000
soldiers to its active-duty force of half a million. Kerry has proposed
adding 40,000 troops. That's less than half what's needed, most experts
agree: 100,000 new soldiers. And they are needed quickly. The cost could
top $10 billion a year.
-
- "The U.S. military has been heroic and resilient
-- but strategically, they are woefully inadequate for the threat we are
facing," said Eliot Cohen, director of strategic studies at Johns
Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
-
- A study by the Defense Science Board, a Pentagon advisory
group, has concluded that even with another 30,000 troops, the current
force cannot meet "our current and projected global stabilization
commitments."
-
- Within the Army, there is deep concern that the manpower
demands of Iraq and Afghanistan have left the United States with no strategic
reserve of ground forces, short of a total mobilization and deployment
of all active-duty, reserve and National Guard troops. At present, about
21 percent of the Army reserves and National Guard are mobilized, according
to a Sept. 22 Pentagon report.
-
- And the Bush administration's strategy of aggressively
promoting global democracy to prevent terrorists from building strongholds
in failed nations will require significant new ground forces, said Thomas
Donnelly, analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, a
Washington think tank.
-
- "In the simplest terms, this requires the expansion
of the active-duty component of the U.S. Army," Donnelly said.
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- Then why don't Bush and Kerry discuss it openly?
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- "Part of it is muddled thinking," Donnelly
said in an interview, "and a reluctance to say that this is a big
war and we will be in this for a long time."
-
- Inevitably, some political experts say, mere mention
of a larger army reminds voters of the draft -- a hugely unpopular subject
for military-age youths and parents, even if the military has discounted
the need to conscript young Americans. In May, pollster Peter Hart concluded
that 73 percent of today's college students oppose a draft.
-
- "You can't talk about sacrifice in an election year,"
said Peter Feaver, a political scientist at Duke University who has written
about the public's attitudes toward war. "I don't think our electoral
system is responsible enough" to make judgments on such technical
issues as the number of combat troops needed and how to get them.
-
- That leaves military officials and strategists struggling
for solutions.
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- The top U.S. commander for Iraq, Army Gen. John Abizaid,
acknowledged last week that more troops are needed there than the 138,000
U.S. soldiers and Marines now deployed. But he said he hopes the additional
manpower could come from allies and from the Iraqi security forces in training.
-
- But efforts to train and equip new Iraqi security forces
are lagging far behind schedule, U.S. military officers have said.
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- http://www.freep.com/news/nw/pols29e_20040929.htm
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