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Originally posted by Timber Loftis:
Thanks for the soldiers POV Felix.
One of my good friends is in the ARNG -- a water guy. He got married earlier than anticipated because he knew he was shipping out soon. This was months before the war's start, of course. All the ARNG guys at the wedding expressed real concern for the number of troops vs. the number of fronts.
You either fight on fewer fronts or get more troops. It's that simple. After Clinton's downsizing of the forces, I feel sure we likely have enough tanks and trucks to mount up more guys. We just need the guys.
Time Magazine three weeks ago had several articles on our thinly-stretched forces. One of the articles talked about hiring civvies to do more of the non-combat functions and putting guns in the hand of non-shooters.
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I don't think that Clinton was wrong in what he did. He was concerning himself with winning wars - rather than occupying countries.
As you saw from the Iraq conflict - putting money into technology rather than 'grunts' saved money and allowed the war to be won very quickly and relatively painlessly in terms of US lives lost.
The alternative to what Clinton did would have been to either give up the technological edge, or increase the already massive defence budget either by raising taxes or by slashing other budgets. Can't have it both ways.