Western Tack For Sale

How many U.S. servicemen are there? How many in Iraq & Afghanistan? Where are the rest?

Don't we have over 1.5 million servicemen and women in our Armed Forces? Why are the Nat'l Guard in Iraq? Why are we recruiting Border Patrol agents to go to Iraq? Who's defending our Homeland? The Boy Scouts?

While we have around 1.5 million sevicemen in the military, we had at one time during the Cold War around 2.0 million. Most of those were in the Continential United States, Europe and in Asia.

Even though the Cold War is over, we still have commitments in Europe which we use as Logistics way points, Asia (Korea and Japan). We have increased commitments in the Balkins, Haiti and the Persian Gulf and Afganistan. And we still have military bases for staging and training in the Contental United States.

Even during WWII the ratio of support to combat soldiers was greater than 5 to 1. Our military is stretched way too thin for the current world situation. And the conflicts we are in are Tar Babies (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug97/remus/tar-baby.html - for those that don't know Brer Rabbit Stories).

One has to realize that most of this Administration's numbers are smoke and mirrors. We are attempting to maintain a commitment larger than Vietnam with just a volunteer military.
And we know today's young people's commitment to serve in the military that the don't understand or appreciate.

The only solution is a draft, and we also know the lack of courage that our politicians have when it comes to voting for something as unpopular as a draft.

Here's a link to a report on our military manpower crisis.

http://www.fas.org/man/crs/RS21754.pdf

It isn't going to be solved without either mandatory military service for all eligable or getting out of our position of Global Dominance.