Two years after the invasion of Iraq, it’s abundantly clear that the U.S. needs a bigger Army. How much larger is a key question. How to fill the ranks is a bigger one.
Democrats, including Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Ken Salazar of Colorado, have proposed boosting the Army’s size by 80,000 troops in increments of 20,000 a year over the next four years to bring its strength to 582,400.
But, given recent sagging enlistment rates, the important question is, who’s going to fill the ranks, whatever the number is? The Army is 7,800 recruits shy of its goal for the current fiscal year.
A Rand Corp. study unveiled last week confirms that with 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 17,000 in Afghanistan, the Army is stretched thin.
Frequent deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have forced active-duty combat units to spend more than one of every two years on the battlefield, which doesn’t give combat brigades enough time at home for training to develop new war-fighting skills or to be available for new hot spots, the Rand report said. Ideally, brigades need about two years for training before redeployment.
Frequent deployments also put a strain on soldiers and their families, cutting into re-enlistment rates.
The Rand study listed several possible scenarios, including an expanded role for reserve and National Guard units that would entail being on active duty one out of every five years instead of the current one out of six.
That may not be realistic. Some reserve and Guard troops have already served long, repeated tours on active duty, and recruiting has suffered.
Some have suggested recently that recruiting and re-enlistment have suffered because news coverage has created an exaggerated picture of the dangers of serving in Iraq. We suspect the strain on the troops of repeated and prolonged deployments is a big culprit. That stems from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s insistence on a too-lean fighting machine.
Congress and the Pentagon should review force sizes. And the government needs to figure out how to fill the ranks. Few in the country seem to want a draft, so maybe a patriotic call for volunteers by President Bush is in order.
