HOW MANY TROOPS? NO ONE KNOWS

Lots of com­men­ta­tors and arm­chair gen­er­als have shouted that the Army has to be grown, and fast. Some are even call­ing for a return to the draft. But so far, Phil Carter notes in a dyna­mite Slate essay, “no one is ask­ing the most fun­da­men­tal ques­tion of all: How many troops does the United States really need?“

Those who want to make the Army big­ger assume that adding more troops will mag­i­cally solve the military’s over­stretch prob­lems, but that’s not nec­es­sar­ily the case. Without an hon­est assess­ment of U.S. mil­i­tary require­ments, we have no way of know­ing how many troops to add (and what kind) or whether dras­tic mea­sures (like a draft) might be nec­es­sary. More impor­tant, an hon­est study of U.S. mil­i­tary require­ments may tell us that added man­power is not the answer and that other solu­tions will buy more bang for our tax­payer buck. 

June 24th, 2004 | Uncategorized | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.