A Washington Post story Sunday discloses classified Pentagon plans to send more National Guard and Reserve troops to Iraq. The new plans reverse a modest downward trend in the number of National Guard members deployed to Iraq and continue an upward trend in the number of Reserve soldiers mobilized, and reflect the increasingly dire military situation in Iraq.
I’ve argued for some time that the administration will be forced to reinstate the military draft before they leave office, assuming that happy day ever arrives. I first broached the idea publicly in February of this year based upon the troop levels in Iraq, some of the factors reiterated in the Post story Sunday — in particular that large numbers of National Guard and Reserve troops have reached or are close to reaching the end of their deployment limits, and the increasing pace of rotations — and a conviction that the administration have by no means exhausted their capacity for monumentally stupid military adventurism.
Events in Iraq and the administration’s unwillingness to alter course there (or set one, to be precise) have increased the likelihood that a draft is impending, and the Post story offers nothing to dispel the notion. We now have at least 20,000 more troops in Iraq than we did early this year and Pentagon planners are looking to at least maintain and probably increase that number — not to reverse the deterioration in security but to keep it from accelerating faster than it is now. And the worse it gets, the more troops they’ll need to preserve that rate of descent. At some point, even absent an attack on Iran or some other demented show of force, we’re going to run out of bodies.
Military recruitment is becoming ever more difficult and even when recruiting goals are met, they’re sufficient only to keep the ground combat services on a subsistence diet; that’s why the Guard and Reserves are being called on to plug the gaps. As the gaps become bigger, the number of people available to plug them becomes smaller. That’s not sustainable.
The primary argument against a draft is political. Voters don’t want one — although that could change if National Guard members and reservists, who have lives and businesses and jobs outside the military, get fed up — and neither do military leaders: as battered as the volunteer Army is, it’s still preferable to working with large numbers of involuntary soldiers who actively resent being there.
Under ordinary circumstances the political resistance to the draft would be enough to kill it. But these aren’t ordinary circumstances. The Bush administration have never been responsive to political pressure on foreign policy matters — e.g., Iraq — other than during campaign season, and their last campaign season ends tomorrow. From here on out, the only options Congress has to influence Bush administration foreign and military policy are to cut off the cash or to impeach Bush and Cheney (which is why I don’t care whether Donald Rumsfeld goes or stays).
Raise your hand if you think Congress will cut off money for the troops or impeach both Bush and Cheney.
If nothing else changes — if the only pressure on the military remains the need to gradually boost the number of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan — we’re perhaps a year away from running out of troops; only fancy footwork such as stop-loss orders, speeding up and extending rotations and involuntary mobilizations (which sounds a lot like a draft, doesn’t it?) have kept the machine sputtering along for the past two years. Beyond a certain point, those tactics won’t be enough.
If the US attacks Iran, all bets are off: we’ll see a draft within a few weeks afterward because Iraq will blow up.
I don’t know whether or not the prospect of an increasingly abused military force is sufficient reason for service members and their families to vote Democratic. Democrats can’t stop the Bush administration, but at least they can mitigate the contempt with which the administration and the Republican Congress have treated the troops over the past three years and more by voting to fund adequate equipment, decent pay raises and better health care.
Meanwhile, if you have high school or college age kids and you don’t want to send them off to Iraq, you might want to get their passports in order and get ready to convert that college fund, for those fortunate enough to have one, into cash.
Weldon,
I don’t think so. Instituting a draft might offer some relief, down the road, to the current forces, but what makes you think that relief for those forces is more important than trying to set up Jeb for the next presidential run or keeping the forces of justice off the back of W’s “legacy?”
Mostly I just don’t think it’ll be a matter of choice. I’m sure the administration don’t want a draft any more than the rest of us, but I think when faced with the choice of seeing the Army either collapse at their feet or, in the event of an attack on Iran, stranded in Iraq with a few million incensed Iran supporters teeing off on them, what are they gonna do? I suppose the ideal circumstance would be to wait it out until Congress calls for a draft.
When you look at the numbers, it’s just appalling.
Did you notice I got my first ad? Everybody click …
Yeah. In order to institute a draft, we’d have to take the entire military off-line for at least two years. We’d have to completely reverse all the Transformation efforts we’ve made so far.
It’s not doable.
RTO: with all due respect, of course it’s doable and if there’s no alternative it’ll be done. Numbers are numbers.
“Meanwhile, if you have high school or college age kids and you don’t want to send them off to Iraq, you might want to get their passports in order and get ready to convert that college fund, for those fortunate enough to have one, into cash.”
So that they can get an excellent education in Europe. England/Ireland, France/Belgium and Germany/Austria are all good options. Another Farewell to Arms? :)
唐士明 : yes, but not in the “Johnny Got His Gun” sense. Is Ireland still a bargain?
There won’t be a draft in the way you describe it. The National Guard has seen a major upswing in recruiting numbers over the past year and are on track to hit the strength numbers authorized and funded by Congress. As for the Guard and Reserves running up against the limits on deployment, you have to understand that is a self-imposed policy. The Department of Defense can change that rule any time they choose and the problem will go away. One motion of the pen and the basis for your argument is gone.
TC: the numbers are changing for FY 2008, from 24 months per six years to 24 months per four years, which means Guard members could be deployed for four years in each enlistment period. But that’s not sustainable either, it doesn’t kick in for a year, it applies to new recruits (barring a declaration of emergency) and it’s going to make a helluva campaign issue for someebody. The attrition goals weren’t met for FY 2006, and recruitment was near the goal but not quite there. Recruitment will take another hit when the deployment obligations change. And again, all that is to maintain current levels, not increase them.
And while all this is going on the deployed units are losing equipment in Iraq and leaving much of the rest of it for the units rotating in behind them and they don’t have the money to replace it, which means they can’t train on the equipment they’ll have to use when they’re deployed.
On top of that, you have inactive ready reserve members who have been out of the military in some cases for more than a decade getting called up to fill various specialties, and at least a third of them either aren’t showing up or are petitioning for exemptions and in some cases going to court to stay out. I read an article not too long ago about a helicopter pilot who got called up at age 47 after not flying for ten years.
That’s indicative of a serious problem. It’s a not-all-that-slow motion train wreck, and that’s if we don’t get in more trouble than we’re already in.
Very interesting, Weldon!!
But, haven’t the reserve members getting called back been going on for years and years? I don’t think that is anything new.
Also, you keep mentioning numbers, numbers, numbers. Don’t you think that training and technology is more important? What I mean is, take 1 highly-skilled sniper and put him in a room with 500 ordinary people — that 1 sniper could wipe them all out. I don’t think numbers is the answer.
Still, very intresting piece. It got me thinking.
Hi, Jake.
Well, the answer would be figuring out something different to do. Yes, we’ve been calling up reserves off and on for years – they played a huge role in the first Gulf War – but we’re running out of them, which is why we’re now digging into the inactive ready reserves. And yes, training and technology are great, but Iraq is highlighting the limitations of those things in fairly dramatic fashion. I commented a few days ago on a Lt. Col. in Fallujah who mentioned the baseline ratio of troops to population for effective counterinsurgency operations is 20:1,000, and we’ve got maybe a third of that, a little more or a little less as the troop levels fluctuate. And we know it isn’t working out very well.
I’m not an expert on the situation but just from reading and researching it, I get the strong sense that what we’re doing is rapidly approaching a brick wall.
Thanks much for the kind words.
This article appears to be written by someone who never served in the military or who served during Vietnam and is bitter about it. I can tell you from first hand experience that the troops who have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan are proud of their service. This is especially true of those soldiers in the National Guard and Reserve. As an officer in the National Guard, I can tell you that recruiting is not a problem. All recruits join with the full knowledge that they WILL be deployed. I personally know many soldiers who have volunteered to go to Iraq either with their parent unit or a unit from another state. I know officers with graduate degrees who have volnteered to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of these soldiers have volunteered for multiple deployments. Contrary to what you would like to believe, we National Guard soldiers are proud of our service. We are enthusiastic about being deployed and we support the war effort in both Iraq and Afghanistan. We do not need a draft, nor do we want one. Most of us would rather deploy multiple times than serve next to a conscript who does not want to be there.
Tony: What I wrote has nothing to do with the character, quality or enthusiasm of the troops, only whether or not we have sufficient numbers of them to keep doing what we’re doing indefinitely. The shrinking down time between deployments, the stop-loss orders, the increasing inactive reserve callups, raising the enlistment age, lowering the mimium aptitude test scores, authorizing more criminal history waivers, and the pending decision to up the maximum federal deployment limit for the Guard are all indicators that the answer is “No, we don’t.”
Nobody would argue that we do not need more troops. President Bush (42) and President Clinton presided over the dismanteling of the greatest military in the history of the world. They did this to reap the short-sighted benefits of what was referred to as “the peace dividend.” Neither the peace nor the dividend lasted very long. The military is now half the size that it was at the beginning of the first Gulf War. Conscription is not the answer. The answer is to rebuild our volunteer active and reserve forces to Reagan era levels. Recruiting is not the problem. I strongly believe that we would have no trouble recruiting. We need a policy change that actually calls for enlarging forces rather than reducing forces. Currently, the Air Force is in the first phase of a force REDUCTION!! This is a conscious decision to cut the force that is not a result of shortfalls in recruiting. They are actually giving airmen cash incentives to leave!! This is total insanity. The bottom line is that we do not need or want a draft, and I do not believe that the only way that we will return to a draft is if we go to war with China.
Tony: Recruiting is a problem. The Army in particular struggles to meet quotas aimed at maintaining the current manpower levels despite raising the enlistment age to 42, accepting more enlistees with low aptitude test scores, granting more criminal history waivers and raising enlistment bonuses substantially. The Guard is doing better, but not much. That doesn’t speak well for the prospects of success at recruiting larger numbers of people. It’s not a question of belief, just of looking at the numbers and the situation we’re in. I know no one in the military wants a draft, and very few people elsewhere do. I don’t want a draft either, or at least not under the circumstances; I’m just saying that the current situation isn’t sustainable even over the short term, that if it doesn’t change we’ll have to get additional bodies from somewhere, and that we can’t just snap our fingers and conjure them up from nowhere.
I respectfully disagree. Recruiting is a challenge…it always has been and we have always come up with ways to overcome recruiting challenges. Throughout the history of the all volunteer military there were ebbs and flows to recruiting. One month recruiting is down, and the next month recruiting efforts exceed quotas. The difference is that back in the early days of the all volunteer military, the media did not report recruiting shortfalls for fear of returning to the draft. Today, however, the media wants to give the Bush administration a black eye so they highlight those months when recruiting is down and ignore those months when recruiting is up. The reason that we do not have enough troops is because the administration and Rumsfeld in particular would not allow us to grow. It was Rumsfeld’s idea to downsize the Air Force in the middle of a war so that he could by the F22 fighter. Maybe now that he is gone, we will be allowed to increase the size of the military as the Democrats suggested two years ago.
Ironically, after I posted the above reply, I found this article in the Army Times:
Active and Guard start 2007 recruiting year above goal
By Michelle Tan
Staff writer
The active Army and Army National Guard exceeded their recruiting goals in October, kicking off the new fiscal year on the high note, while the Army Reserve fell short by about 6 percent.
Active Army recruiters brought 5,560 soldiers into the service, 108 percent of its goal of 5,150, according to the Defense Department. The Army’s annual recruiting goal is 80,000, the same as it was last year.
Recruiting Command brought 1,457 soldiers into the Army Reserve in October. That’s 94 percent of the goal of 1,550, according to information from Army G-1. These numbers don’t include goals set by Accessions Command.
The fiscal 2007 goal for the Reserve is 26,500, which is 1,000 more than last year.
The National Guard recruited 4,983 soldiers last month, 121 percent of its goal of 4,115.
The Guard’s goal this fiscal year is 65,115, but it also is counting on Human Resources Command to bring in 4,885 soldiers who will transition from active duty to the Guard. That’s a total of 70,000, the same as last year.
Come on, Tony, give me some credit here. I’m not talking about the monthly ebb and flow of recruitment: I’m looking at the yearly figures and at the changes that have been made to meet the quotas, which include, as I’ve noted, raising the enlistment age (three times in four years), upping the bonuses and lowering the bars on criminal history and aptitude tests, all of which are indicative of recruiting woes. I’m not saying the Army isn’t close to hitting its numbers, I’m saying the numbers aren’t sufficient and they’re having to jump through some serious hoops to hit them.
Just FYI, in October of last year the Army hit 104% of its goal of 4,700, while the Guard hit 102% of its goal of 3,970. Both finished up about flat for the year. As you say, things change month to month, including the quotas themselves.
I’m sure Democrats will propose expanding the ground services; whether Gates is more open to it than Rumsfeld is another question and what recruiters will have to do to get there is still another. Rumsfeld did authorize a temporary expansion of 30,000 but I’m not sure he ever requested the money for it.
Upping the recruiting age has been on the table for years. It never made sense to exclude perfectly healthy people with real world experience and common sense from joining the service. When I joined in the early 1990s, officer candidates could obtain age waivers up to age 40. Enlisted could sign up without waivers up to age 35. The increase in enlistment age simply brought the enlisted ranks into line with the officer ranks. Is recruiting more difficult in wartime? Of course it is. But I have to disagree with you that waivers are leading to a crisis in the services. You point to the increase in criminal history waivers. We have always offered waivers in the Army and the Navy but it never made the news. The waivers have always been and still are for minor misdemeanors. If you have a felony, you are not eligible. The Marine Corps does not accept recruits who have a criminal history. The Air Force is offering airmen case incentives to leave the service. You are correct that bonuses have increased. As I said, ecruiting is always more challenging in wartime. We need a larger military. Conscription is not the answer. Conscripts are less effective than professional soldiers. There are exceptions to the rule of course, but the general rule is that conscripts get themselves killed faster in war. It’s a combination of lack of experience and lack of motivation. Maybe one answer is to pull our troops out of Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Sinai. We have been wasting our time there since the 1990s.
Anyway, the premise of your article seems to be:
1. that because the troops are being used in the manner for which troops are intended, those troops will leave the military and we will need a draft.
2. That because nobody will join the military because of the OPTEMPO, we will need a draft.
3. National Guard and Reserve troops will not stay in the service because they feel that they did not sign up in order to be called to active duty.
I say in response, that my own experience, not simply what I see in the media, tells me that none of the above is true. Recruiting is and always will be a challenge. However, retention and reenlistment is at an all time high because the soldiers feel a sense of purpose and responsibility. Soldiers tend to take the Army Value of “selfless service” seriously. Those who are now joining the National Guard and reserves do so knowing that they will be deployed. Those who are in the Guard and reserves are reenlisting at high rates. Those who are leaving are, by a vast majority, are holdovers from the Vietnam era who joined to avoid the draft. We all prefer to see them go anyway. I know that there is a group out there hoping for a draft so that a public uproar and campus riots and protests will return. These are the 1960s holdovers and wannabees. I’m not saying that you are one of them, but when the military says no to a draft and the left seems to be hoping for one it raises a red flag. Again, I’m not lumping you into that group but you seem to accept their arguments.
Tony, this has been an interesting conversation and I think it warrants a bit more exposure, so I’m taking your last comment and my response to it to the front of the site. If you want to continue the conversation from there, email me a response (editor@btcnews.com) and I’ll let you have the final word. The new post will be here in a few minutes if it’s not already by the time you see this.
Weldon, I feel no need to have the final word. The debate has been a cordial and balanced exchange. I thank you for that.
You’re quite welcome, Tony, and thanks for your time and courtesy.