President Bush's recently announced plan to increase American troop strength in Iraq belies this administration's inadequacy in dealing with the challenges of the protracted struggle that America's war against terror has become. Clearly, when it embarked on this grand campaign to rid the world of evil just five years ago, the White House did not envision the war requiring the type of sacrifices that it now most certainly entails.
In conceiving of its war on terror, the Bush administration endeavored to use America's standing professional army to carry out its objectives. Time and again, the regular army has been called on to bear the load and costs of the war on terror. This would all be well and good if our standing professional army was suited for this sort of work. However, the American army as we know it today -- a small, all-volunteer force -- is equipped to fight four-day wars against communist proxies, like in Panama or Granada, not lengthy police actions.
This fact notwithstanding, the Bush administration has persisted in its desire to fight this battle with these limited resources, even as it becomes more and more apparent that a more drastic mobilization of the American people is necessary. The president's decision to use the handful of divisions available to the standing army, despite the warnings of his generals, is indicative of the ignorance and general hubris with which he has embarked on his great crusade. The belief that defeating the Iraqi army and Republican Guard with our meager force would be the major obstacle to stability in Iraq -- a belief made public by the now infamous "mission accomplished" speech -- is just as ridiculous as the notion that liberal democracy would be feasibly and forcibly transplanted into an alien environment in a matter of years.
However, reliance on the regular army indicates far more than ignorance. It contemplates a more serious misdeed on the White House's part -- the refusal to assume political responsibility for its actions. Our small, volunteer army relies disproportionately on the least politically vocal portions of the American electorate. As a result, Bush can persevere in his efforts, sending the same troops back for more tours of duty, long after the well of political support for his policies has run dry. Had a more diversified sample of the American people been called upon to bear the burden of the Iraq war by means of a draft, the president would not have such great latitude in his decision-making. The more people directly affected by a war, the less an administration can keep on pushing, despite negligible results.
Because the president relies on volunteers and not draftees, you and I are basically insulated from the events in Iraq. We have our opinions concerning current foreign policy vis-a-vis the Middle East, but these opinions are enjoyed with the knowledge that we will probably not be directly affected by any decision the administration makes. Because we are never called upon to be the instruments of the president's policy, our opinions remain the stuff of irrelevant dinner table conversation. The mobilization of the American people behind the administration's foreign policy would require the president to take greater responsibility for his decisions and provide far stronger justification to the American voters.
In this respect, the president's decision to raise troop strength in Iraq, long after such a surge could have any real effect, is designed to keep the American public at large insulated from the war effort. Rather than call on average Americans to bear the costs of his amateurish reading of the Arab world, and thereby risk the survival of his policies, the president is asking soldiers with upwards of three tours of duty under their belt to carry on instead. While this suggestion may be quite jarring to many people, it is nonetheless the democratic thing to do. The fact of the matter is, as a superpower we simply must be deployed in the far corners of the globe, and the current system simply is not working. It is just unfair to ask the same tired soldiers to time and again march off to distant battlefields to do their national duty. As "politically active" college students who theoretically have much at stake in the future of this country, we should do the painful but responsible thing and encourage the administration to fight its wars democratically or not at all.
