WHAT IF THEY HAD A WAR, AND NOBODY CAME

I remember that phrase, dimly, from the Vietnam War era. It expressed the false intellectual depth of much of the anti-war movement at the time. When it comes to war, someone always shows up. If one side shows up in bigger numbers and with more resolve than the other, that side usually prevails and dictates it's will to the folks who, by not showing up, lost.

In recent days much has been made of the recruiting shortfall now impacting the Army. Just today, there are articles by Bob Novak, in Newsday, and elsewhere. Good points are made in all these articles. The central question, though, remains the same. If not enough young people are willing to defend the Republic, is the Republic worth defending? The recent recruiting shortfall could be interpreted, using that question as the framework for discussion, as a dire warning about the health of our Republic in the early years of the 21st Century. Yet, that would be a mistaken interpretation.

The fact of the matter is that the young people of this country have not been asked, nor is it obvious to them that they need to step forward without being asked, to defend the Republic. This is entirely the fault of one man...George W. Bush.

In the days after 9/11, President Bush and his people made the point repeatedly that we were at war. They also made the point repeatedly that this would be a different kind of war than those of the past, like Vietnam, Korea, World War II, or even the Gulf War. This, they said, would be a war fought by using intelligence gathering capabilities, law enforcement assets, international diplomacy and economic measures, as well as carefully targeted applications of specialized military force. As a consequence, in the days after 9/11 applications for positions in the FBI and CIA jumped dramatically, but military recruiting did not.

As it turns out, this was perhaps the most grievous mistake of the many made in those early days of the conflict. When patriotic fever was at its highest pitch, with smoke still pouring out of the rubble at Ground Zero and the Pentagon, President Bush did not anticipate the necessity for a larger military force to aggressively intervene in the Middle East, which is, of course, the homeland of our enemies and their ideology (even if they are surrounded by millions of innocent people who do not share their views). Therefore, he did not call for Congress to expand the size of the Army, or call on the young people of America to enlist in that expanded Army to defend the Republic. He and his advisors, and I specifically single out Donald Rumsfeld as the key person in all of this, did not believe that expansion was necessary. In fact, Secretary Rumsfeld was still determined to aggressively pursue his vision of a smaller, leaner more high-tech military.

We cannot know this for a fact, but I believe if the President had called on Congress to expand the Army they would have voted overwhelmingly to do so, and if the President has asked the young people of America to join that Army many would have heeded his call. As it stands today, he didn't do those things, so now we are faced with a growing crisis in the ranks.

So, how should that crisis be dealt with? Unfortunately, the current situation may be irretrievable barring a large-scale Al Qaeda attack against us here at home. Without the impetus provided by proof of a real, close-to-home threat, most young Americans are going to do the prudent thing. They are going to ask themselves if fighting insurgents in Iraq is necessary to defend their homes and their futures, and the answer for most will be a resounding "No". That will leave the Army with only a very small pool of potential recruits, those who either answer "yes" to the previous question or want to test themselves in combat (yes, there still can be found young men who think that way, even in modern America), or are being left out of the country's economic recovery and see the military as the only way to learn job skills. As we have seen, that last group is gravitating to the Air Force and Navy, where their chances of going into combat in Iraq and Afghanistan are much lower (although not zero, as any perusal of the casualty lists will confirm).

In the Newsday article, Iraq War opponent Congressman Charles Rangel of New York, who is a combat veteran of Korea, and who has sponsored legislation to restore the draft, says he wants the President to ask young Americans to serve in the Army. He is doing this, just as with his draft proposal, to put political pressure on the President to withdraw from Iraq (and to politically damage him and the GOP). It may not be a bad idea, though. If the President were to address the nation and lay out (again) why we must win in Iraq, and if he were to honestly take the blame for not putting enough troops in to do the job, and call on Congress to expand the Army and call on young people to join, that might provide enough of a surge to ameliorate the current situation.

Unfortunately, I don't think that will happen. If not, then expect the recruitment numbers to continue to sag. And expect a political backlash in 2006.