Major indicators of recruiting problems are beginning to surface. In the past week, I have read the following:
1. The National Guard has begun offering servicemen and women, being discharged from active duty, $15,000 to enlist in the NG.
2. The Commanding General of the 200,000 man Army reserve has (for the very first time) predicted a recruiting shortfall. The estimate is 10% fewer recruits than needed in 2005.
3. Green Berets are being offered up to $150,000 to reenlist.
All of this is coming at a time when we just increased the number of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we are trying to increase the size of our Armed Forces and Special Forces.
I've mentioned before that, historically, our recruiting takes a big dip in the third year of a war. This dip has been delayed a bit this time due to (IMO) the relatively low US casualties. Nevertheless the dip has arrived and just when we want to increase our military end strength.
I continue to believe the only way to sustain our current worldwide deployment levels is going to require reinstating the draft.
I am not a W basher. I've heard nobody else suggest this. Yet I do wonder if yesterday's hastily arranged presidential press conference was not intended to put W in the reporters' target zone to deflect attention from yesterday's casualty reports. I don't think that would have been a bad reason. Maintaining morale at home is as important as the morale of our soldiers fighting.
I do not expect the Iraqi elections this weekend to stop the violence. The terrorists are not running out of kamikaze types. There were 20 suicide bombings in Iraq last month. If anything, the gatherings that politicians typically create and attend will create even more targets for terrorists.
Recently, I have heard two solutions being offered regarding our troops. Both trouble me.
The first is the pronouncement by a number of our government officials that this is now an Iraqi problem and they will have to manage it. Is that going to become our excuse to cut and run? We simply cannot do that before Iraq can manage the terrorist problem and that may be 5-10-20-30 years. Iraq needs the safety net and security only our forces can provide right now.
The second is the suggestion to move US troops into enclaves or base camps and only venture out when the Iraqis ask for help.
Any combat experienced soldier knows that battles, big and small, are won by shooting, moving and communicating. We prefer for our enemies to mass their troop formations so we can obliterate them with massive firepower. I hope we are really not stupid enough to believe our enemies would not use the same tactic against us? Confining our troops to bases in the ME will create a military disaster waiting to happen.
Base camp commandos, or as they are more affectionately known REMFs, provide logistical and admin support. They do not win battles. They are not trained or equipped to do so. They get a lackadaisical and secure feeling once they have been in the same locale safely for a while. Yet they do have jobs to do and that keeps them busy and productive. In similar situations, our combat line units get that same safe feeling, except for them morale deteriorates quickly. How exciting and fulfilling can a sergeant make it seem to pick up cigarette butts twice a day? My point is, the safer troops feel, the more vulnerable they become. They are most vulnerable in rear areas and staging areas.
Surely somebody remembers the attacks on our USMC base camp in Lebanon in 1983 and on our USAF base facility known as Khobar Towers in SA in 1996. Americans will enlist to fight. But if we begin to absorb similar rear echelon losses in Iraq, I predict recruiting is really going to drop.
Reenlistment bonuses may cover part of the recruiting problem for a while. Yet if our troops ever get the inclination that we have lost the will to fight, they will go home.
I see but one solution to the recruiting problem.
Reinstate the draft. That will surely fill the Reserve and National Guard shortfalls with volunteers and create a pool of conscripts to bolster our active forces.
Mike |
