President Bush tells the Washington Post that he plans to expand the size of the U.S. military to better meet the challenges of a long-term global war against Islamic extremists.
I'm inclined to believe that we do need to increase our troops, the army, the Marines. And I talked about this to [Defense] Secretary [Robert M.] Gates and he is going to spend some time talking to the folks in the building, come back with a recommendation to me about how to proceed forward on this idea.
This is great news, but I cannot resist the temptation to say it's about [expletives deleted] time. Secretary Rumsfeld should have recommended this years ago.
The Army has already been temporarily increased by 30,000 over the 482,000 active-duty soldiers in 2001. The Army wants to make the increase permanent and continue to grow by an additional 7,000 soldiers per year. It is estimated that every 10,000 additional soldiers costs about $1.2 billion a year.
A transcript excerpt from the Post's interview with President Bush is available here.
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Comments: 16
1.) Rumsfeld should have been fired years ago. Jan 21, 2001 would have been a good day.
2.) I think the active duty military needs to be twice as large as it is today. The National Guard should not be used as they have been.
The military seems in great shape for a quick offensive war, but in poor shape (in numbers of troops) for what may come after.
As far as the draft; if that's what it takes, so be it. I don't think most people want one, but that should be secondary to "need." Means of increasing volunteers and re-enlistments should be evaluated as well, before going that way I would think.
A lowering of standards would undoubtedly lead to a lowering of performance, which just might get more people killed in the long run. I wouldn't do that in my opinion.
Lowering the standards does ablsolutely nothing to improve things at all. If you want more young men and women to volunteer for military service then the incentives have to be there.
At the present time there is no incentive for those currently serving to stay. The enlisted personnel, in alot of cases, do not even make enough to support their families.
I think we amercians need to wake up to the fact that we have Islamic Extremists, rogue nations, the Chinese And the Russians to be wary of, like it or not that is the way it is and it didn't happen overnight, it has been brewing for decades. We can either ignore the threats and suffer the consequences or confront them.
The choice is ours. Part of our strategy should be to accelerate our technologocal advancement and put ourselves on the Moon and Mars for peaceful reasons and for security reasons.