Bush Will Expand Size of Military

[Boris]

Throwing even more money at the military won't do much to stem imperial decline.

That has nothing to do with it.  Our standing volunteer force was decimated due to budget cuts and post Persian Gulf War high.  The mindset of public flag officers and politicians was that we can do more with high-tech weapons than with people.  The US contingent in the Gulf War was more than double what it was in 2003.  That is completely unsat.

Maybe I'm a moron, but for what specific situations will we need a larger military force than we do now? A Korean Peninsula conflict would require a vast number of troops (from not just the U.S. and South Korea either; the European nations would have to chip in also), due to the fact that it would probably quickly turn into a war of attrition. But this article mentions that this is for dealing with terrorism. Within the context of the the "War Against Terrorism" or whatever you want to call it, what scenarios would an increased military be of use? For fighting in multiple locations at once (i.e. Afghanistan and Iraq)? With the way Iraq has gone, I honestly cannot envision the United States undertaking any large scale military actions within the Middle East for a long time. I'm no military strategist, but my common sense says that special forces and other small, elite military units will be doing most of the work in the near future.

[Boris]

You're not a moron, but the purpose of a standing army is to protect the nation from future attacks.  Right now we've had to tap into our national guard troops to perform the role of the standing army, and we're involved in only two small operations (yes, they are small compared to what our military is suppose to be able to sustain).  The army is suppose to be able to sustain a large two-front war.  Right now we cannot meet that obligation since we reduced the funding of the military and redirected funds that would have paid for an extra 100K troops and placed it into high-tech weapons.  Now, we do need these weapons to maintain the strategic advantage, but we also need the people to use them.

I understand what you're saying, but aren't you establishing a cold war doctrine to the 21st century? IIRC, the two ability to sustain two wars was based on a hypothetical  Warsaw Pact vs. NATO World War III, in which the United States would have to defend Western Europe and some other strategic point that the USSR would need to take, such as South Korea or parts of the Middle East. With no Cold War, I fail to see how that doctrine is  still relevant.

But yeah, I see what you're saying. Our army is streched far too thin with our commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, with National Guard troops doing things, they well, shouldn't be doing. I think that this expansion would have been more prudent before invading Iraq, however.