Debate over war funding is scandalously superficial

Debate over war funding
is scandalously superficial

Republicans in Congress and White House spokesmen have a point when they say that the latest effort by Democrats in the House to tie further funding for the Iraq War to a troop pull-out plan is political theater. While the latest conditional appropriation bill passed the House, it did so by less than a veto-proof margin — and President Bush will veto it, just as he did earlier this year when a similar bill crossed his desk.

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also had a point when she said: “The fact is, we can no longer sustain the military deployment in Iraq. Staying there in the manner that we are there is no longer an option.”

Operations in Iraq, where casualties are decreasing, and in Afghanistan, where violence is escalating, are depleting America’s fighting forces. And the administration, while it demands that Congress appropriate money for the war effort or be accused of failing to support the troops, refuses to explain how the nation can continue on its present course.

The men, women and materiel of the U.S. armed forces are being depleted. Most recruitment targets are being met only by increasing bonuses or decreasing standards. Equipment is being worn out faster than it is being replaced.

Escalating costs

Congress has approved more than $600 billion, with a additional $200 billion working its way through the appropriation process. All of it added to the national debt. The eventual cost of the war can’t be accurately calculated, but over five years, 10 years and 20 years will grow by a factor of two to four times what has been appropriated.

How the nation will bear those costs, how it will replace equipment and armaments and how it will restructure the armed forces to meet the continuing threats to U.S. security in the Middle East and elsewhere are questions the administration has shamefully dodged.

Here’s one revealing snapshot of the collateral damage being sustained by our armed forces, reported last week by Joe Galloway, a columnist for McClatchy Newspapers who cut his teeth as a war correspondent in Vietnam. Galloway says that historically the Army has retained slightly more than 70 percent of the graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point after the officers complete their obligatory five years.

By 2005, the retention rate for the graduating class of 2000 dropped to 65 percent. Just 54 percent of the 2001 class re-upped in 2006. And only 42 percent of the class of 2002 remained on active duty when their obligation expired this year.

The Army is losing its investment in an officer class at an alarming rate. And those percentages are also reflected in plummeting retention rates among graduates of ROTC programs as well as in attrition rates among noncommissioned officers in the Reserve ranks.

Pushing back

The administration can play hardball with Congress in getting its budget demands met. Just yesterday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that if Congress doesn’t pass the appropriation, he will direct the Army and Marine Corps to begin developing plans to lay off employees and terminate contracts early next year.

Neither Pelosi nor Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is prepared to stand firm against the political backlash that would result from news coverage of such cutbacks.

But while they give the president the war funding he is demanding — as they inevitably will — they should begin demanding testimony from the Defense Department about the present and future state of readiness of our armed forces.

And it wouldn’t hurt if the presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle put some of the campaign silliness behind them and starting talking seriously about the military they expect to inherit from this administration. They should be talking about what it will take to replace what has been lost over the last five years in Iraq and Afghanistan. Recognizing, of course, that nothing can replace the lives and limbs that have been lost.