Response to Kansas disaster raises question that must be answered after dust settles

The Republican administration in Washington and a Democratic governor in Kansas expressed differences of opinion this week on whether deployment of National Guard troops to the war in Iraq have affected or will affect the ability of the state to respond to natural disasters.
In the immediate wake of the virtual obliteration of the Kansas town of Greensburg, all sides have agreed that their shared first priority is to help those in need.
The twister, the strongest tornado in the United States in nearly a decade, killed nine people in Greensburg and destroyed about 95 percent of the town's homes and businesses. About 1,400 people are homeless.
Kathleen Sebelius is the governor of Kansas. She's a transplanted Ohioan -- her father is former Gov. John J. Gilligan -- and she is a rarity in her state, a highly successful Democrat.
So perhaps it is no surprise that when she commented a few days after the tornado that the state's National Guard has left much of its equipment in Iraq and is down to 40 percent of being fully equipped, a partisan firestorm would erupt. White House spokesman Tony Snow's initial reaction had a belittling quality, lecturing the twice-elected governor that if she feels she needs something from the federal government, she has to ask for it.
Snow later toned down the rhetoric. For her part, Sebelius didn't raise the issue Wednesday when President Bush met her during a visit to the area. "Today was about Greensburg," she said.
And, she added, "at this point, the federal response has been very timely and very generous."
Lingering fears
But the issue of National Guard manpower and equipment is not a new one for Sebelius. She has sharply criticized the federal government's reliance on state National Guards for service in Iraq and Afghanistan, saying it leaves states vulnerable in the face of disasters.
She asked President Bush about the shortages when he visited Topeka last year, and said she was assured that the president had additional equipment in his budget. Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Tod Bunting, the state's adjutant general, says the Kansas National Guard is equipped to about 40 percent of its necessary levels, down from the 60 percent it had at the start of the war. "It just leaves you pretty tight," he said. "We're fine for now."
Sebelius is only one of a group of governors -- Democrats and Republicans -- that has been asking the federal government to repair or replace millions of dollars worth of National Guard equipment sent to Iraq.
David Quam, director of federal relations for the National Governors Association, says governors see re-equipping the National Guard as & quot;vital. & quot;
A report by the Government Accountability Office issued in 2005 in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster along the Gulf Coast said the extensive use of Guard equipment overseas has & quot;significantly reduced the amount of equipment available to state governors for domestic needs. & quot;
Today may be about Greensburg, but tomorrow will be about some other town hit by a tornado, hurricane or flood.
Congress should join the governors in demanding answers from the administration on how it intends to rebuild the reserves and the regular Army, not only in equipment, but in manpower.
The war was supposed to make America safer from its enemies, but there is reason to fear that the U.S. military is being stretched too thin.
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once responded to a question in Iraq by saying that a country goes to war with the army it has, not necessarily the army it would like to have. It is fair to ask the administration what kind of army it thinks it has now, and whether it would be able to adequately respond to any of a number of possible national defense challenges.