New York Times Editorial - The kind of army America needs

New York Times Editorial - The kind of army America needs
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: November 19, 2006


One welcome dividend of Donald Rumsfeld's departure from the Pentagon is that the United States will now have a chance to rebuild the army he spent most of his tenure running down.

Rumsfeld didn't like the lessons the U.S. Army drew from the Vietnam War - that politicians should not send American troops to fight a war of choice unless they went in with overwhelming force, a clearly defined purpose and strong domestic backing. He didn't like the Clintonian notion of using the U.S. military to secure and rebuild broken states.

And when circumstances in Afghanistan and Iraq called for just the things Rumsfeld didn't like, he refused to adapt, letting the army, and American interests, pay the price for his arrogance.

So one of the first challenges for the next defense secretary and the next Congress is to repair, rebuild and reshape U.S. ground forces. They need to renew the morale and confidence of America's serving men and women and restore the appeal of career military service for the brightest young officers.

That will require building a force large enough to end more than three years of unsustainably rapid rotations of units back into battle, misuse of the National Guard, overuse of the Reserves and conscription of veterans back into active service.

Congress also needs to work harder at rebuilding the links between the battlefront and the home front that a healthy democracy needs. That does not require reinstating the draft - a bad idea for military as well as political reasons. It requires a Congress willing to resume its proper constitutional role in debating and deciding essential questions of war and peace.

If Congress continues to shirk that role, expanding the ground forces would invite some future administration to commit American forces recklessly to dubious wars of choice.

But keeping the army in its present straitjacket would bring bigger and more immediate problems. Even assuming an early exit from Iraq, the army's overall authorized strength needs to be increased by 75,000 to 100,000 troops more than Rumsfeld had in mind for the next few years.

A force totaling 575,000 would permit the creation of two new divisions for peacekeeping and stabilization missions, a doubling of special operations forces and the addition of 10,000 to the military police to train and supplement local police forces. The Marine Corps, currently 175,000, needs to be expanded to at least 180,000 and shifted from long-term occupation duties toward its real vocation as a tactical assault force ready for rapid deployment.

That big an increase cannot be achieved overnight. It will take many months, and many billions of dollars, to recruit, train and equip these men and women. Every 10,000 added will cost roughly $1.5 billion in annual upkeep, plus tens of billions in one- time recruitment and equipment expenses.

But all the needed money can be found by reordering priorities within the defense budget. Thanks to six years of hefty budget increases, there is no shortage of defense dollars. They just need to go where the actual wars are. Contrary to pre-Sept. 11 predictions, the early 21st century did not turn out to be an era of futuristic stealthy combat in the skies and high seas. Instead, American forces have been slogging it out in a succession of unconventional ground wars and nation-building operations.

If the new leaders of the Pentagon and the new Congress are prepared to take on the military contracting lobbies, they could take as much as $60 billion now going to air force fighters, navy destroyers and army systems designed for the conventional battlefield and shift it to training and equipping more soldiers for unconventional warfare. America cannot afford to dribble away money on corporate subsidies disguised as military necessities.

Congress also needs to hold the executive branch accountable for the use of American troops abroad. Administration officials must be pressed to explain intelligence claims and offer plausible strategies. Pentagon leaders should be instructed to stop using National Guard units for overseas combat instead of homeland security. And uniformed commanders should be pushed for candid assessments about conditions on the ground and the realistic choices available to policy-makers.

Rebuilding the army and Marine Corps is an overdue necessity. But it is only the first step toward repairing the damage done to America's military capacities and credibility over the past six years.