During the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush often charged that U.S. forces were overburdened with unnecessary deployments. "Frustration is up, as families are separated and strained. Morale is down. Recruitment is more difficult. And many of our best people in the military are headed for civilian life," he said. But after three years with Bush as commander in chief, military life has not gotten better; in fact, it has gotten much worse. Military experts are cautioning that longer and more frequent deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and trouble spots around the world are threatening the ability of the all-volunteer force to retain many of its best and brightest.
While President Bush has sought and received substantial increases in the Pentagon's budget to fight the post-9/11 war on terrorism, these funds have not been used to scale up the military's force structure or recruit people with the skills necessary for nation-building operations. As a result, the wars and post-war commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq have opened up a large and growing military manpower gap that threatens to push the all-volunteer force to the breaking point and risk the success of these critical missions.
Nowhere is the strain on a system already under stress more evident than in Iraq. Amid a growing insurgency in both Shiite and Sunni cities, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has announced that troops scheduled for rotation will have their tours in Iraq extended beyond the year originally planned. Approximately 110,000 fresh soldiers and Marines are now arriving in Iraq. Before the recent insurgency, the plan had been for them to relieve the 130,000 troops already in Iraq, in the largest two-way movement of American troops since World War II. Extending the first wave's tour would amount to a dramatic increase in overall troop deployments.
In addition, National Guard and Reserve troops represent nearly 40 percent of U.S. military men and women in Iraq. Not since World War II have so many National Guard units been pressed into service abroad. Since 9/11, more than 143,000 National Guardsmen have been mobilized worldwide, with the biggest single concentration expected this spring, when more than 35,000 Army National Guard troops are slated to arrive in Iraq as thousands of their colleagues rotate home. The huge deployment is redefining the nature of National Guard service, transforming weekend warriors into something very close to full-time soldiers, who regularly leave behind their jobs, businesses, and families for extended periods.
Unlike the Army of 1973, which was largely composed of single draftees, today's all-volunteer Army is largely composed of personnel who are married with children. The long deployments are stressing those marriages and families, and most active-duty personnel have skills valued in the civilian world, as the recruiting posters promise, so there is substantial incentive for them to leave the military.
Even those whose greatest skills are in combat have incentives to leave the military. Senior American commanders and Pentagon officials warn of an exodus of the military's most seasoned Special Operations members to higher-paying civilian security jobs in places like Baghdad and Kabul, just as they are playing an increasingly pivotal role in combating terror and helping conduct nation-building operations worldwide. Senior members of the Army Green Berets or Navy Seals with 20 years or more experience now earn approximately $50,000 in base pay, and can retire with a $23,000 pension. But private security companies, whose services are in growing demand in Iraq and Afghanistan, are offering salaries of $100,000 to nearly $200,000, depending on experience.
A recent survey of Army spouses conducted by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University found that three-quarters believed the Army is likely to encounter personnel problems as soldiers and their families tire of the strain and leave for civilian lives. Approximately 30 percent said they were certain their spouses would get out. About one-half of those polled said they expected their spouses to re-enlist, and that they will support the decision. In isolation, those numbers are not necessarily alarming -- on average, 50 percent of soldiers leave at the end of their first enlistment period. But Army experts are concerned by internal Army data indicating morale problems among troops serving in Iraq. There is a fear that more seasoned soldiers will start leaving in unusually large numbers, as they did during the latter part of the Vietnam War.
The situation has led many from both parties in Congress to advocate increasing the size of the active-duty Army. But with the price of Iraqi occupation running at $1 billion a week, the administration has been reluctant to do anything that would raise the bill. Recruiting soldiers of any kind is not cheap: Each soldier adds $50,000 to $100,000 to the annual Pentagon budget. Instead, the Pentagon has chosen to institute "stop-loss" measures that prohibit troops from leaving the military after their contracts expire, running counter to the very notion of a volunteer military.
But stop-loss measures are a threadbare solution. It should now be abundantly clear to the administration that the United States does, in fact, need to increase the ranks of its military. To alleviate the stress that is wearing on the active-duty troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, we should recruit more people into the Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps. There is an emerging consensus among members of Congress and military analysts that those services need to grow temporarily by 8 percent over five years. That would be a good start.
But in addition to adding new personnel, the military must also move quickly to transform its existing National Guard and Reserve forces. To carry out prolonged stabilization operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, we need to rapidly retrain people with outmoded skill sets, such as those serving in artillery units, to serve instead in the high-demand military police and civil affairs units that are needed to rebuild war-torn nations.
In an address to the nation last year, Bush promised, "We will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom and to make our nation more secure." Yet the president's inaction in the face of the growing military manpower crisis suggests otherwise. The time has come to stop playing politics with the military and face the reality of what's needed to win today's wars.
