The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
More Books by James Dunnigan
|
Dirty Little Secrets
Death by a Thousand Restrictions
by James Dunnigan
February 8, 2005
Discussion Board on this DLS topic
The U.S. Department of Defense wants something done with the personnel shortages
caused by there being no declaration of war for the war on terror. By law (10
USC 12302), the president can declare a partial mobilization (which he has done)
that allows putting reserve (including the National Guard) troops on active duty
for up to 24 months. The president can mobilize up to a million personnel this
way. Many reserve and National Guard troops have reached their limit. For
example, the Army reserve, with 200,000 troops, has only 37,000 people left who
can be activated.
To mobilize more personnel requires a full
mobilization, and only Congress can do that, at the request of the president.
With a full mobilization, an unlimited number troops can be called up for the
duration of the war, plus six months. A full mobilization allows the use of the
Standby Reserves (former active duty or reserve troops who volunteer to make
themselves available for wartime service) or the Retired Reserve (all retired
military personnel automatically pass into the Retired Reserve.) The Standby and
Retired reserves provide over 100,000 well trained and experienced personnel.
The number is vague because eligibility for active service depends on whether
the reservists could pass the active duty physical exam.
The situation is
made worse by the fact that many reserve troops were called up for six months
after 911, then for nine months for the Afghanistan campaign. That’s 15 months,
leaving them with only nine more months. This is not enough for a 12 month tour
in Iraq. The Department of Defense wants a change in the regulations that govern
how often reservists can be called when the nation is at war, and war has not
officially been declared. Why not just declare war? There are political and
practical problems with that. For one thing, there’s no country to declare war
against. Al Qaeda is an organization, and a vague one at that. Moreover, there
are actually several major, and many minor terrorist “organizations” to deal
with. Then there is the situation in Iraq itself. As more Iraqi troops and
police become available, the United States will be able to withdraw troops from
there, and the manpower problems will go away. But that’s where the political
problems come in. Many American politicians believe that U.S. troops should not
have gone into Iraq in the first place, and fear that if enough troops are
available, the president may try to go after terrorist operations in Syria or
Iran. Then there’s North Korea, but if anything happened there, a declaration of
war might be a lot easier to get.
The basic problem is that the war on
terror does not require as many troops as the kind of major war the current
reserve system was designed for. So a traditional national mobilization, and
conscription, are not needed. But the web of rules and regulations governing the
use of reserve troops in anything but a national mobilization, limits the use of
the reserves. The army and marines, the two services supplying most of the
troops in the combat zones, are able to continue recruiting enough troops to
keep their active duty units up to strength. But the reserves are having trouble
getting new recruits. The Pentagon is confident that it can get the reserve
recruiting numbers back up. The confidence comes from knowledge of why people
join the reserves, and why people don’t stay. By adjusting the incentives and
terms of service, the enlistment, and re-enlistment, rate can be modified. This
approach has worked for the last twenty years, and continues to work even with a
war going on.
The biggest problem at the moment is the thicket of
regulations restricting the use of reserves in anything but all out war. This is
what the Department of Defense wants changed, otherwise the reserves become
increasingly unavailable, and useless. Anti-war politicians, and demagogues in
general, will try to block this. That is not unusual, every wartime president
has to deal with this sort of thing. But the longer the impediments to the use
of the reserves continue in force, the more dangerous it is going to be for the
troops who are out there in a combat zone.
|
|
