Juan Cole makes the point that Bush's response at his recent Press conference that we have enough military force to deal with military threats can be explained by the fact that we have only overstretched the Army, Army Guard, and Marines. The Air Force and the Navy can still respond where required.
The US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq pretty much exhaust the conventional army capacity of the US military (and then some-- the reserves are being over-used). This according to Gen. Richard Myers. Washington spinmeisters scrambled to attempt to cover up the contradiction with President Bush's recent assertion that the US military is not over-stretched and can handle new challenges. Apparently the contradiction can be resolved if we leave out the army and remember that the navy and air force are still fairly freed up for action. I suppose you could ask, "What if the challenge required a response by the army?" But why be a spoilsport.
The fact is that there is currently no conventional threat to the United States anyway, aside from the asymmetrical menace of al-Qaeda-- for which a big army would not be that useful. I suppose what might be being said is that the US army could not respond very easily to a North Korean attack on South Korea or Japan. But then why wouldn't it be the air force and navy that responded to that sort of thing?
The LA Times makes it more clear than the NYT that the army being tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan has made it impossible for the Bush administration to get up any more wars, against, say, Iran or Syria. Given the perfect mess they have made of Iraq (and Afghanistan has its problems, too), I'd say it is better for everyone that Bush not have an army to dispose of. And maybe his successor will be less of a war mongerer.
Amen.
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