Mike Rappaport of The Right Coast despairs about Iraq:
[I]t does seem to me that we are now clearly losing in Iraq in large part because the President and Secretary of Defense refused to put enough troops in a couple of years ago. Hardly the first time people will have heard this, but it is the first time that I feel convinced of it.
Perhaps it is not even too late now militarily to put more troops in, but politically the White House seems unlikely to do so. They don't seem to understand that when it comes to war, it is essential to win. And they are not doing that.
Combined with the Lebanon situation, it is enough to make you despair. Five years out from 9-11, and things look pretty dangerous.
Rappaport, like many another conservative, seems to have been hypnotized by the incessant drumbeat of defeatism in the mainstream media. But he points, nevertheless, to a significant truth: At a time when our forward military strategy requires a larger ground-combat force than it did after the end of the Cold War, that force (i.e., the Army and Marine Corps) remains at the low, post-Cold War levels reached during the Clinton era. Here, courtesy of infoplease, is a history of active duty manpower levels since 1940:
Year Army Air Force Navy Marine Corps Total 1940 269,023 160,997 28,345 458,365 1945 8,266,373 3,319,586 469,925 12,055,884 1950 593,167 411,277 380,739 74,279 1,459,462 1955 1,109,296 959,946 660,695 205,170 2,935,107 1960 873,078 814,752 616,987 170,621 2,475,438 1965 969,066 824,662 669,985 190,213 2,653,926 1970 1,322,548 791,349 691,126 259,737 3,064,760 1975 784,333 612,751 535,085 195,951 2,128,120 1980 777,036 557,969 527,153 188,469 2,050,627 1985 780,787 601,515 570,705 198,025 2,151,032 1990 732,403 535,233 579,417 196,652 2,043,705 1991 710,821 510,432 570,262 194,040 1,985,555 1992 610,450 470,315 541,886 184,529 1,807,177 1993 572,423 444,351 509,950 178,379 1,705,103 1994 541,343 426,327 468,662 174,158 1,610,490 1995 508,559 400,409 434,617 174,639 1,518,224 1996 491,103 389,001 416,735 174,883 1,471,722 1997 491,707 377,385 395,564 173,906 1,438,562 1998 483,880 367,470 382,338 173,142 1,406,830 1999 479,426 360,590 373,046 172,641 1,385,703 2000 482,170 355,654 373,193 173,321 1,384,338 2001 480,801 353,571 377,810 172,934 1,385,116 2002 486,542 368,251 385,051 173,733 1,413,577 2003 490,174 376,402 379,742 177,030 1,423,348 2004 494,112 369,523 370,445 177,207 1,411,287 2005 488,944 351,666 358,700 178,704 1,378,014 2006 (June) 496,362 352,620 353,496 178,923 1,381,401 NOTE: Figures for 1998 through 2006 include cadets/midshipmen.1. Military personnel on extended or continuous active duty. Excludes reserves on active duty for training.
Source: Department of Defense.
Information Please® Database, © 2006 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
The problem isn't so much with the present administration (though it can be faulted) as it is with the unwillingness of adminstrations and Congresses since the end of the Cold War to provide adequately for the common defense.
More generally, the problem lies in the mindset that takes the end of a war as a signal to demobilize -- as we did after World War I, World War II, Vietnam, and the Cold War. It is considered dangerous to prepare for the last war. But it is even more dangerous to assume that the next war will not happen, or that it will be easier than the last.
Englishman Douglas Jerrold, speaking to the Empire Club of Canada in 1949, put it this way:
"But", say the strategists, "what is the use of attempting to build up ground forces, because who knows what the next war is going to be like, and anything we do now will be out of date?" That is always the argument used in progressive circles for doing nothing. It is what the politicians call "statesmanship", but statesmen call it by a harder name. There is no record in history of a war which has been lost by preparing for the last war; on the contrary, wars are always lost by those who, failing to do this, inevitably make no preparation at all. If we take the last two great wars, 1914 and 1939, the immense initial successes of the German forces were due solely to the fact that they, and they alone had prepared for the last war. In 1914 they had prepared for the Russo-Japanese War, the war of entrenchments and massed field artillery, and in 1939 they had prepared for the new mechanized war which was used by the British in the Battle of Cambrai in 1917. Had the British and French in 1940 had even half the number of tanks that they employed at Cambrai in 1917, the battle of France would have been won and not lost.
We have got to realize that we have imperative obligations in this matter. The whole of history is one long lesson of the fatal and irrevocable consequences of not being prepared militarily, and there is no technical, financial or other reason why we should not be adequately prepared. Today it is a matter of will power and will power only, and a matter of instructing public opinion in the elements of the necessities of the case.
Hear, hear!
