Donald Rumsfeld's fondest dream as Defense Secretary is a "leaner" Army. Now he's got what he wanted.
The prospects are for an even leaner Army as President Bush's attack on Iraq continues losing support (nearly 60 percent of the public say it's not worth casualties and costs) and American parents in droves advise sons and daughters not to sign up and end up fighting an unpopular war with no end in sight.
Enlistments in the Army have fallen off precipitously -- missing the quota by 42 percent for May's original goal of 8,050 enlistees.
Short of fresh troops to relieve units deployed twice or three times into Iraqi, the Army is abandoning standards of its all-volunteer force.
It wants to lure enlistees with a doubled signup bonus of $40,000. Maximum age for new officers is being raised from 35 years old to 42. Criminal offenses will no longer be a bar to enlistment. Educational standards will be relaxed. Army personnel usually discharged for misconduct and inferior performance will be allowed to remain.
Big signup bonuses, big pay and lax standards mean an Army of mercenaries -- hired guns, not valiant citizen soldiers with a sense of duty, to do the country's fighting.
If that desperation strategy fails, Congress and President Bush will have to renege on their words and revive the military draft for new troops to fight rather than withdraw from Iraq and thereby offend the collective egos of cocky men who claimed "Mission Accomplished" prematurely.
Rumsfeld created this mess, presumably with President Bush's okay.
Had he listened to professional generals and sent more troops into Iraq at the outset, had he properly equipped them with body armor and armored vehicles and not rushed into battle, and had he not made phony claims that complete victory was assured while casualty reports showed otherwise, then GI deaths due to incompetent planning probably wouldn't have occurred on a large scale, public support wouldn't be plummeting, enlistments wouldn't have plunged and the United States wouldn't be facing the possibility of another prolonged, Vietnam-type war involving deaths of American youth just entering high schools and who'll be ripe for soldier duty in just four years.
Like the stubborn Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who admitted decades after the fact he was wrong about victory in Vietnam, will Rumsfeld as a doddering old man someday find courage to confess blunders in Iraq?
That wouldn't be much consolation for families with only grave markers to remind them of just how dreadful the Bush administration's blunders were.
