An Army of More than One
Posted by Matt Bennett, Vice President for Public Affairs Mon, 20 Nov 2006 22:33:00 GMT
“I’m going to take a little risk here, and I’m going to tell you that, intuitively, I think we need more people. I mean, it’s just that simple.”
That was General Peter Schoomaker, Chief of Staff of the Army. But he wasn’t testifying at last week’s hearings on Iraq.
He made that remark about the size of the Army more than three years ago.
What General Schoomaker and many others recognized back then was that the US Army was just too small for the missions that it was being asked to take on.
Along with General Schoomaker and scores of other experts both inside and outside the military, Third Way has been clamoring for an increase in Army end-strength by 100,000 troops for nearly a year and a half. In a May 2005 report entitled Boots on the Ground – Increasing the Size of the Army to Meet the Missions of the 21st Century, Third Way pointed out the myriad strains on the Army. And we were proud to help organize a group of Senators and House Members who introduced The Army Relief Act of 2005, a bill to increase the size of the Army by 100,000 troops that was introduced by Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Ben Nelson and Ken Salazar, and Representatives Ellen Tauscher and Mark Udall. This was covered widely – including in the New York Times way back in July 2005.
Yesterday The New York Times editorial page finally weighed in, writing that, with the departure of Donald Rumsfeld from the Pentagon, it’s time to “rebuild the Army he spent most of his tenure running down.” The paper called for a troop increase of 80,000-100,000.
Well, better late than never. With the fiasco in Iraq spinning out of control and the unfinished business in Afghanistan threatening to bog us down there, it is time to renew the call to rebuild the Army to ensure that it can meet the challengers this nation faces.
“What keeps me awake at night is what will this all-volunteer force look like in 2007,” Gen. Richard Cody, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, said back in 2005. Well we’re losing sleep over that too, General. We hope that the new leaders in Washington will do their best to send you some reinforcements.