It’s Getting a Little Drafty

WE need more troops. Ever since the Clinton administration drew down our military, while simultaneously undertaking humanitarian interventions in places like Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, our armed forces have been overstretched. During the Clinton years, despite our stated doctrine, America lost the capacity to fight major wars in two theaters at once. Surely that lost capacity encouraged North Korean provocations during the run-up to our invasion of Iraq. Since 9/11, continued deployments in Afghanistan, counterterrorism operations throughout the world, and increased demands for “force protection” (guarding military installations, power plants, etc., from terrorist attack) have strained our armed forces still further.

The military has resorted to a variety of strategies to address the problem. The Pentagon has issued “stop loss” orders, forbidding troops in some job categories to resign. In January, the Marines put a stop-loss order on the entire service. As Nicholas Confessore pointed out in The Washington Monthly, “large swathes of the U.S. military . . . no longer meet the definition of a volunteer force.”

About the Author

Stanley Kurtz

Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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John McCain

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WE need more troops. Ever since the Clinton administration drew down our military, while simultaneously undertaking humanitarian interventions in places like Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, our armed forces have been overstretched. During the Clinton years, despite our stated doctrine, America lost the capacity to fight major wars in two theaters at once. Surely that lost capacity encouraged North Korean provocations during the run-up to our invasion of Iraq. Since 9/11, continued deployments in Afghanistan, counterterrorism operations throughout the world, and increased demands for “force protection” (guarding military installations, power plants, etc., from terrorist attack) have strained our armed forces still further.

The military has resorted to a variety of strategies to address the problem. The Pentagon has issued “stop loss” orders, forbidding troops in some job categories to resign. In January, the Marines put a stop-loss order on the entire service. As Nicholas Confessore pointed out in The Washington Monthly, “large swathes of the U.S. military . . . no longer meet the definition of a volunteer force.”