US military readiness

Overview

"When presidents fail to make hard choices, those who serve must make them instead. Soldiers must choose whether to stay with their families or to stay in the armed forces at all. Sending our military on vague, aimless, and endless missions rapidly saps morale. Even the highest morale is eventually undermined by back-to-back deployments, poor pay, shortages of spare parts and equipment, inadequate training, and rapidly declining readiness." – 2000 US Republican Party Platform

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (not to mention the highly successful 1994 Balkan Intervention) it should be obvious (even to the liberal-minded) that the military is important for reasons other than killing people (a reputation strong in recent memory due largely to the unfortunate way they were used in Viet Nam).

Under the presidency of George W. Bush, however, US military readiness has plunged to dangerously low levels; as of this writing, we are not prepared to deal with even a single significant event, much less two. (Under Clinton, who was aiming for the ability to handle two simultaneous major crises, the military was certainly ready to deal with one.)

The Army, with an active-duty force of 504,000, has been stretched by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. About 400,000 have done at least one tour of combat duty, and more than a third of those have been deployed twice. Commanders have increasingly complained of the strain, saying last week that sustaining current levels will require more help from the National Guard and Reserve or an increase in the active-duty force. (lifted from [1])

Comments

Midian says: As typical with every Democrat president after Kennedy (is this true? see #Notes -W.), former President Clinton cut the military, and President Bush (43) has waited until the military was already engaged to take the time to increase its size.

This is arguably true, but if so the differences are minor and the effect is minor compared to how the troops are being used (or abused, as at present). --Woozle 11:50, 26 September 2006 (EDT)

David Brin says [2] (2006-09-27):

Clinton left Bush a military that had just competently cleaned up the Balkans and was demonstrably ready to take on BOTH the Taliban and Saddam. That is proved by the very events that the neocons are most proud of! What kind of military is Bush leaving us now? Depleted and harried reserves, worn-down equipment, a tormented and low-morale officer corps, gigantic budget deficits and ground counter-insurgency committments that have half of our Army mired-down, unavailable for any other emergency duty.

Related Notes

Apparently Great Britain isn't in much better shape, with 5500 troops in Iraq and 6000 in Afghanistan, out of only about 25,000 "frontline infantry" total:

• 2007-07-21 We're running out of troops, warns head of the Army

Links

Articles

• 2007-05-15 Gangs of Iraq by Seamus McGraw: "Desperate to shore up its flagging ranks, the military is quietly enlisting thousands of active gang members and shipping them to Iraq. Will a brutal murder finally wake up the Pentagon?"
• America's Declining State of Readiness, 2006, by David Brin (also [3], 2004)

News

• 2006-09-14
  • Won't Deploy? Can't Deploy: "There are no more troops to send to Iraq." by Daniel Benjamin and Michèle A. Flournoy
  • Tomgram: Nick Turse on 12 Pentagon Steps to a Misfit Military
• 2006-05-11 Setting the Record Straight: AP's Misleading Military Recruiting Article (White House press release)
• 2006-04-11 Rumsfeld: Recruiting Successes Reflect Troops' Caliber, Commitment by Donna Miles, American Forces Press Service
• 2006-01-24 Study: Army Stretched to Breaking Point (alt: MSNBC, USA Today, Time, BBC News)
• 2005-01-06 Army Reserve breaking down, general warns; mission failure imminent

Notes

Midian added "As typical with every Democrat president after Kennedy, former President Clinton cut the military, and President Bush (43) has waited until the military was already engaged to take the time to increase its size." Clinton was at the tail-end of a decades-long gradual decline in military spending since the end of World War II; not all Democrats have cut military funding, and not all Republicans have increased it. See US Military Spending for more data.