Troop strength

Wind Rider is expressing shock:

Hillary Clinton on Fox News Sunday (surprise number one). She's sitting next to Lindsey Graham saying that she agrees with him 100% that the US Armed Forces needs to be expanded, manpower-wise. Let me get this right...Hillary wants a larger US Military.

Yeah, I've got to admit that I'm shocked as well. On the other hand Wind Rider isn't actually convinced we should increase troop strength.

While it sounds great - more troops in uniform, more people to handle the task of defending this country - will the need for a higher level of troop strength be present four years from now? These troops won't be immediately available just because Congress approves an increase in the manpower levels. US troops aren't ready to be fed into a fight after six weeks or two months of basic training - in the case of the vast majority of military specialties, the pipeline is three to five months. For the more technical jobs, the pipe can be as long as 18 months.

Where will we be 18 months from now? In 18 months, Iraq, the 'reason' for increased troop strength, will be a very different place 18 months from now. And it is quite likely that today's reason may not exist.

This is certainly a good point. I think I have an answer though. While I certainly hope not, it is possible that we may end up at war with Syria in few years. (For much the same reasons war with Saddam was necessary.) This is not certain of course. Assad seems to be more canny than Hussein; as a result he's less likely to do anything to provoke us directly. On the other hand, terrorists seem to be operating out of Syria and Assad is either unwilling or unable to stop them. It is possible that over the next few years this situation could escalate. I hope not, but it's possible.

There's also the problem of Iran. It's entirely possible that there will be a revolution in Iran which could solve our problems there. In the meantime though the mullahs have been actively working against our interests. There's no telling what that government might do in its death throws and I'd juas as soon we be prepared.

And, of course there's the matter of North Korea. Kim Jong Il is, to be frank, pretty close to insane. There's no telling what he might do and when we might need to shift large numbers of troops into the Korean theater. (At the moment, we're actually reducing troop strength in Korea.)

When you combine these potential threats with the fact that the army is actually considering rotating part of our OPFOR to Iraq I think that it has become pretty clear that we need to increase the size of our military.