New York Times Editorial - The damage done to America's army

New York Times Editorial - The damage done to America's army
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: October 1, 2006


Even if there were a case for staying the current course in Iraq, America's badly overstretched army cannot sustain present force levels much longer without long-term damage. And that could undermine the credibility of American foreign policy for years to come.

The U.S. Army has been kept on short rations of troops and equipment for years by a Pentagon more intent on stockpiling futuristic weapons than fighting today's wars. Now it is pushing up against the limits of hard arithmetic. Senior generals are warning that the Bush administration may have to break its word and again use National Guard units to plug the gap, but no one in Washington is paying serious attention. That was clear last week when Congress recklessly decided to funnel extra money to the Air Force's irrelevant F-22 stealth fighter.

As early as the autumn of 2003, the Congressional Budget Office warned that maintaining substantial force levels in Iraq for more than another six months would be difficult without resorting to damaging short-term expedients. The Pentagon then had about 150,000 troops in Iraq. Three years later, those numbers have not fallen appreciably. For much of that time, the Pentagon has plugged the gap by extending tours of duty, recycling soldiers back more quickly into combat, diverting National Guard units from domestic security and misusing the Marine Corps as a long- term occupation force.

These emergency measures have taken a heavy toll on combat readiness and training, on the quality of new recruits, and on the career decisions of some of the army's most promising young officers. They cannot be continued indefinitely.

Now, with the security situation worsening in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon concedes that no large withdrawals from either country are likely for the foreseeable future. As a result, even more drastic and expensive steps could soon be needed. The most straightforward would be to greatly increase the overall number of army combat brigades. That would require recruiting, training and equipping the tens of thousands of additional soldiers needed to fill them.

Yet the Pentagon and Congress remain in an advanced state of denial. While the overall Defense Department budget keeps rising, pushed along by unneeded gadgetry, the spending plan for next year fails to adequately address the army's pressing personnel needs. Things have gotten so badly out of line that in August the army chief of staff held up a required 2008 budget document, protesting that the army simply could not keep doing its job without a sizable increase in spending.

A bigger army does not fit into Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's version of a technologically transformed military. And Congress prefers lavishing billions on Lockheed Martin to build stealth fighters, which are great for fighting Russian MiGs and Chinese F-8s but not for securing Baghdad. Foot soldiers are not as glamorous as fighter pilots and are a lot less profitable to equip. Yet we live in an age in which fighting on the ground to rescue failed states and isolate terrorists has become the Pentagon's most urgent and vital military mission.

The credibility of the United States in that fight depends on the quality, quantity and readiness of its ground forces. If America goes on demanding more and more from them while denying the resources they so desperately need, it could end up paying a terrible price.