Is Congress Trying To Insure That The U.S. Military Do Not Have The Manpower To Win Future Conflicts? -- A Commentary

A group of 80 soldier-medics, whose duties adhere to the Hippocratic Oath to provide ethical medical treatment, pledged allegiance to another credo -- the oath of re-enlistment during an Oct. 2, 2008, ceremony between the reflecting pool and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The oath was administered by Lt. Gen. (Dr.) Eric B. Schoomaker, Army surgeon general. DoD photo by John J. Kruzel

Trying to Lose The War We're In -- Weekly Standard

On Monday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave another in the remarkable series of speeches of recent months, laying out the course he believes the U.S. armed forces must follow to prepare themselves for the conflicts of the 21st century. Addressing the National Defense University, he again complained of “Next-War-itis,” and “the defense bureaucracy’s priorities and lack of urgency opposed to a wartime footing and a wartime mentality.” In marked contrast to Donald Rumsfeld, the man he replaced at the Pentagon, Gates described the war on terror not as a high-tech global manhunt but as “in grim reality, a prolonged, world-wide irregular campaign.”

Even as Gates was telling unpleasant truths to people in uniform--for it is they who will most bear the brunt of the Long War--congressional Democrats revealed how deeply they remain a state of denial. Rep. John Murtha, the chairman of the House appropriations defense subcommittee, announced his opposition to the Bush administration’s plan (and the supposed position of presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama) to increase the size of the active-duty Army and Marine Corps. Taking a page out of the Rummy pre-9/11 playbook, Murtha told Congressional Quarterly's Josh Rogin that the Pentagon “is going to have to cut personnel in order to pay for procurement.”

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My Comment: The trend with the current U.S. Congress is to cut the growth of the U.S. military. I expect this trend to continue .... if not accelerate .... under a President Obama administration.