RogerRabbit
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Joined: 05 Sep 2004
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Location: Oregon
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 Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2004 4:17 pm Post subject: A Nuance Too Far - Brendan Miniter |
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http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bminiter/?id=110005680
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A Nuance Too Far
The military is in much better shape than Kerry acknowledges.
BY BRENDAN MINITER
Tuesday, September 28, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
John Kerry has a national-security problem. Anyone wondering why the Democrat is now talking about Iraq and agreed to allow Thursday's presidential debate to be about foreign policy--President Bush's strong suit--need only look at the polls that forced Mr. Kerry to refocus his campaign two weeks ago. In one of them, a New York Times/CBS survey, 60% of likely voters didn't think Mr. Kerry could handle an international crisis. That's not a healthy number for a challenger during wartime.
To beat this voter assessment, Mr. Kerry is trying to make the case that the war in Iraq has made the U.S. less secure because it has degraded international alliances, military readiness and efforts to win hearts and minds in the Middle East. We've heard the international alliance argument ad nauseam, and Ayad Allawi handily dispelled doubts about whether the U.S. is making any allies in the Middle East. Indeed, Iraq's prime minister sounded a lot like Mr. Bush in telling a joint meeting of Congress that the Iraqis understand the sacrifice Americans are making and will help win the war on terror.
The third component of Mr. Kerry's strategy, however, is not so easily dismissed. Whether or not Iraq eventually proves to be a quagmire, keeping 138,000 troops engaged in a shooting war halfway around the world isn't easy, and some signs of strain are beginning to show. The U.S. is pulling back some troops from the demilitarized zone in Korea and repositioning troops out of Western Europe to better meet security needs. Without the war in Iraq, such rebasing may not have proved necessary. The military is also using "stop loss" rules that prevent soldiers from leaving the service while their unit is deployed in a combat zone. And, of course, since Sept. 11 the military has leaned heavily on the reserves--partly because military police and other sought-after skills are heavily concentrated there.
Last summer a rash of reports of low morale in the Army appeared in the media. Today we see similar reports that the National Guard is likely to miss its recruiting goals this year in part because reservists aren't happy with long combat deployments and won't reup at the end of their enlistments. Mr. Kerry hopes to take the concern about military strain one step further by telling those likely to be most affected--service members and their families--that during a second term Mr. Bush would make their lives a lot harder. Mr. Kerry has said Mr. Bush has a "secret plan" to escalate the war after the election, and while other Democrats keep raising the specter of a return of the draft, Mr. Kerry says what the administration is doing amounts to a "backdoor draft."
The problem for Mr. Kerry is that there isn't a lot of substance to these attacks. Wars are tough and they are costly, but that doesn't necessarily mean the military is weaker as a result. Fighting an insurgency in the heart of the Middle East has arguably made the U.S. military more adept at identifying the bad guys in that part of the world. The combat lessons they're learning on the battlefields of Iraq are making their way back into military classrooms in the U.S.
What's more, Iraq is proving to be the front line in the war on terror. The Marines stationed near Fallujah are camped out in a massive complex that housed four terrorist training camps during Saddam Hussein's regime. The military is also successfully killing and capturing terrorists every day in Iraq. With al Qaeda operatives active in Iraq and foreign fighters comprising half or more of the "insurgents" killed in some battles, it's really a misnomer to describe what's going on there as an insurgency. No patriotic American enjoys seeing American servicemen killed in battle, but most of us would rather see the war on terror fought out in the streets of Najaf than in New York.
It's true that the National Guard will likely report 51,000 new recruits this year, 5,000 short of its goal. But that's only half the story. The number of people trying to get into the military isn't decreasing. In fact a record number of students applied to the Air Force Academy this year. One of the reasons the military is finding it hard to hit its recruitment numbers is that the force size is actually increasing. The military is larger now than it was on Sept. 11 because the administration has been able to add about 20,000 troops to the rolls temporarily. Meanwhile, Congress is readying legislation that would add as many as 30,000 soldiers to the Army along with 10,000 Marines. And yesterday the New York Times reported that the Army is considering getting away from 12-month deployments in Iraq in favor of six-month combat tours. That's what the Marines do now, and they aren't having any trouble meeting their recruiting goals.
Mr. Kerry knows he's rallying his base when he complains about firehouses being opened in Baghdad and money going to the war effort rather than "after-school programs" and when he says this is "the wrong war at the wrong time." But he's also hoping to avoid the fate of George McGovern, while also capitalizing on the natural unease Americans feel while their sons and daughters are in harm's way. Unfortunately for Mr. Kerry, that is likely to prove to be a nuance too far. |
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