Ronald Brownstein Washington Outlook - LA Times January 17, 2004 Even Bush's Most Loyal GOP Soldiers Alarmed by Strain on Troops The strains on the volunteer military from the war in Iraq are now unsettling as many Republicans as Democrats â and exposing an enduring contradiction in President Bush's agenda.
Conservative defense analysts and GOP legislative leaders are raising alarms over the pressures that Iraq is imposing on the military, especially the part-time Army National Guard and Reserve. With growing urgency, these critics argue that the Pentagon is relying too heavily on the citizen-soldiers of the Guard and Reserve in Iraq because the administration has refused to enlarge the size of the full-time military enough to meet new demands. "The problem for the United States is not imperial overstretch, it's trying to run the planet on the cheap," American Enterprise Institute fellow Tom Donnelly, a leading neoconservative defense commentator, wrote recently. Military historian Frederick W. Kagan delivered a similar indictment in the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine. Most strikingly, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) this month urged an increase in the active military and condemned lengthy deployments that he said were compelling Guard and Reserve volunteers to effectively "serve in the permanent forces." These dissents signal an important shift in the political weather as Bush begins his second term. Until recently, complaints about the Pentagon's personnel strategy came from Democrats and a few maverick Republicans such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona. But it's a more ominous sign for the White House when a GOP leader such as Blunt, ordinarily a loyal soldier for Bush, breaks ranks. These warnings reflect the accumulating evidence that the grueling struggle in Iraq is stretching both the reservist and active-duty components of the volunteer force. In Iraq, tens of thousands of Guard and Reserve members are serving much longer overseas missions than had been common for reservists. About one-third of active-duty Army troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan have served a second tour of combat duty, a previously rare burden. Thousands have been presented with "stop-loss" orders that prevent them from leaving the military when their commitment is completed. Yet the need in Iraq is so great that Lawrence J. Korb, an assistant secretary of Defense under President Reagan, says the Pentagon may need to send some troops back for a third tour next year if the U.S. doesn't significantly reduce its presence by then. One senior military official recently disclosed that the Pentagon was already considering rewriting Guard and Reserve rules to allow longer tours of active duty than the current 24-month maximum. That trial balloon helped trigger Blunt's unusual public complaint. "I'm absolutely confident it would contribute to further deterioration of the Guard and Reserve," he said. Not surprisingly in this environment, the Army National Guard failed to meet its recruiting goals in 2004. And although the Army Reserve met its quota last year, it too has fallen short in recent months. Looking down the road, the Defense Science Board, a Pentagon advisory panel, recently concluded that the military was too small to meet the global commitments America was assuming. The origins of these problems long precede Bush. Between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11, both major parties understandably supported reductions in the full-time force. The active-duty Army contracted by 21% during President George H.W. Bush's four years and another 21% during President Clinton's eight, dropping from 770,000 to 482,000 troops. More http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-outlook17jan17,1,6314788.column?coll=la-headlines-nation&ctrack=1&cset=true or http://tinyurl.com/46lfb Gary Denton _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
