Military Officer - August 2007 - (Page 42)

washingtonscene COLA Watch ■ The Consumer Price Index (CPI) registered its sixth straight monthly increase in May — 0.8 percent above April’s value. As this issue went to press, the CPI stood 2.3 percent above its starting point at the beginning of the fiscal year in October 2006. Visit www.moaa .org/colawatch for more information. Fear the Peace Dividend A bigger force is needed in any scenario. T he war is a long way from over, but servicemembers already are hearing some talk about whether some of the critical manpower increases — at long last in the works — will really be needed if the Iraq war ends. The Senate Armed Services Committee’s June report accompanying the FY 2008 Defense Authorization Bill contained the following worrisome paragraph: “The committee remains concerned that the planned growth in ground forces will come too late to impact the war in Iraq, and ﬁve years from now, when the planned growth is scheduled to be complete, the requirements for a larger force may not remain.” [emphasis added] “Requirements for a larger force may not remain”? Ironically, that sentence parrots the rationalization Pentagon leaders articulated for the ﬁrst six years of this decade in resisting any troop increases — the same rationalization that put our military forces behind such a massive eight ball in meeting today’s real-world requirements. If there’s one lesson America’s leaders ought to have learned from the overstretched situation the force is in today, it’s that we darn well better build a bigger force and be better prepared for unforeseen contingencies than we have been in the past decade. “Requirements for a larger force may not remain”? Does anyone in Washington, D.C., know what’s going to happen in Iran in the next ﬁve or 10 years? In Korea? In China? Can we be so sure that no other contingencies will pop up that we haven’t even thought about? Who ever dreamed back in 2001 that we’d have hundreds of thousands of servicemembers in Iraq and Afghanistan for the foreseeable future? The worst possible thing for the country to do is to start dreaming about some massive “peace dividend” that is to be derived from scaling back on muchneeded and long-overdue force level increases when the current war ends. That kind of thinking at the end of the ﬁrst Gulf War is what set the country up for the current military manpower shortfall. And we were starting in a much more favorable situation then — when we had a much larger force that hadn’t already been worn to the edge of exhaustion, and when we had a full complement of equipment that hadn’t already been worn out from six years of continuous warfare. If we are going to ensure that the U.S. is going to be ready for future contingencies, any peace dividend will need to be invested in repairing, replacing, and expanding our seriously depleted military manpower and hardware resources. This is our future national security we’re talking about, not some corporate overhaul where the company executives can try to sell off subsidiaries and siphon the retirement fund. Haven’t we already learned — unfortunately the hard way — that the world is an unpredictably dangerous place, and it will prove exponentially more hazardous and expensive for our country if we don’t start planning — and funding — for the worstcase scenario rather than the rosiest one? Fear the peace dividend. MO — Contributors are Col. Steve Strobridge, USAF-Ret., director; Col. Mike Hayden, USAFRet.; Col. Bob Norton, USA-Ret.; Cmdr. René Campos, USN-Ret.; Cmdr. John Class, USN-Ret.; Col. Ana Smythe, USMC-Ret.; Col. Phil Odom, USAFRet.; Cass Vreeland; and Bret Shea, MOAA’s Government Relations Department. 42 MILITARY OFFICER AUGUST 2007 http://www.moaa.org/colawatch http://www.moaa.org/colawatch

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Military Officer - August 2007 Contents From the Editor From the President Your Views MOAA Directory Rapid Fire Washington Scene Financial Forum Ask the Doctor Chapter Activities Cover Story: No Longer in Reserve A Different Path Weird Science Charge? Pages of History Faces of MOAA Member Books Information Exchange Advertising Index MOAA Calendar MOAA Scholarship Donors Sounding Taps MOAA Member Services Encore

Military Officer - August 2007

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