I have a
post at Needlenose on the need for Democrats to address the collision course between any desire to "stay and win" in Iraq (whatever "winning" might mean at this point) and our plummeting military recruitment -- and how they should address it.
I think it's very important that Democrats challenge Bush on this not as a "gotcha" partisan issue, but as (1) a moral duty to the troops whose who are being asked to risk their lives, and (2) a duty to America's future security.
A key point is that the "Powell Doctrine" is essentially a contract between the government and a volunteer army -- breaking that contract is what has killed recruitment, and the only way to solve the problem is to restore it. I've pasted the post below the fold for discussion here.
I wrote
a couple of weeks ago that if Democrats want to be taken seriously on national security issues, they need to address the most pressing and visceral defense issue facing the U.S. -- the collision course between any desire to "stay and win" in Iraq (whatever "winning" might mean at this point) and our plummeting military recruitment.
Last night, Kos caught the latest development in this story -- the Defense Department has delayed releasing the latest monthly recruiting figures (which are always provided immediately after each month ends) for 10 days while they figure out how to spin the numbers. As Kos surmises, this suggests that the May totals are even more of a disaster than the preceding months, and the Pentagon knows it can no longer dismiss the trend as a meaningless statistical blip.
The question is whether any Democrats will have the courage to take the lead on this issue, or whether they'll stay meekly on the sidelines because they fear a political backlash from speaking up. (And they wonder why voters doubt if they're tough enough to defend America against terrorists?)
There is no doubt that the plunge in volunteers signing up is directly related to the Iraq fiasco; a somewhat poignant New York Times article over Memorial Day weekend found this out by asking veterans of previous wars if they would have served in Iraq:
They all served, mostly in Korea or World War II, some in Vietnam. They're all proud of it. They like to think they serve still. They've organized two huge food drives to collect packages of food to send to the troops in Iraq. "Support Our Troops," reads the yard sign in front of the torpedo by the front door.
. . . Still, when asked the other day, pride mixed with doubt, support with regret. And if the military wants to know why it's having such difficulty recruiting young soldiers, it won't get much comfort from picking the brains of these old ones. Questioned whether they would choose to join the military were they young men today, six of the eight veterans sitting around the bar said no.
. . . "I still don't know what it's supposed to be about. Oil? Is it about mass destruction weapons they had which were never found? I'm not an isolationist, but I can't see what we're doing over there."
. . ."I will always support the troops that are there, but if my son wanted to join, I'd discourage him. I feel sorry for the guys that are over there. . .
Mostly there was the sense of too much risk for too vague a cause.
"You're in a place where you don't know who is your friend and who's your enemy, where someone can walk up to you like he's your friend and then blow both of you up," said Artie Delury, 62, who served during Vietnam. "How can you fight a guerrilla war like that?"
What these quotes make clear is that the famed
Powell Doctrine wasn't just a namby-pamby theory adopted for bureaucratic reasons -- it's an essential contract for maintaining a modern volunteer army in the United States. The unspoken agreement is that if volunteers trust the U.S. government with their lives, the government will honor the value of those lives and do everything to minimize the risk they face.
In Iraq, that contract has been broken. Because we didn't go to war as a last resort, failed to send enough troops to secure the country (much less the "overwhelming and disproportionate" number called for by the Powell Doctrine), cut corners on their equipment, and have never articulated an exit strategy, the Bush administration has sent a clear message to our troops that their lives are not valued.
To the contrary, the Bushites give the vivid impression that they consider U.S. soldiers to be little more than cannon fodder. I can't begin to count how many times I've read about missions in Iraq that boil down to "go somewhere and see if someone shoots at you" or "drive this road to see if there are any IEDs buried in it." Only a fool would sign up for military "service" like that -- and the nosediving recruitment figures show that ordinary young Americans and their families increasingly agree.
It should not just be the strategy, but the duty of Democrats to point out that Bush and the Republicans have betrayed this fundamental trust, and our security is paying the price.