Rummy's Mercenary Force

by Mary

Posted by Mary
Donald Rumsfeld has been making the rounds these days talking about his vision for the military. One thing that is becoming increasingly clear is that he wants to have the freedom to deploy his military where ever and whenever he deems fit. A number of the news articles about Rumsfeld have been about how he is not backing down on the fact that he thinks that the US has sufficient troops in Iraq and the problem is not the number of troops. Rather, it's that the military needs to be more "flexible" and "effective". In fact, in an interview on NPR Tuesday morning, he said that there were only approximately 130,000 troops in Iraq and yet the US had "in excess of a million in the armed services of the United States" so the US had more than enough people in the military. According to him there is no problem with our current spending for defense, it is solely a attitude problem. Never mind the billions (and billions) going to building new weapons, it is just the troop "in-strength" that is important and that is what he has been thinking about lately.

The National Guard are being heavily called upon in the Iraqi mess. They are being relied upon in ways that this country has not known since the Korean war. Rumsfeld's solution is to move roles that the National Guard is filling and to privatize them, thus gaining more flexibility. According to Rumsfeld there are 300,000 people doing things that don't necessarily need a military person to do it, and he thinks that 10,000 to 30,000 could be outsourced to "gain greater in-strength". As noted before, the private sector is not quite as reliable as the soldiers who don't have a choice about showing up for the job when they disagree with the boss. Furthermore, it is NOT cheaper having a non-soldier fill the role.

However, Rumsfeld is trying to find ways to deal with complaints like this:

"What [Reserves] did not sign up for was to be overused by a Department of Defense that has spread itself too thin with too few people and too many conflicts. A reserve component soldier does not sign up to be deployed for longer than his active-duty brother, who joined the military to make his livelihood."

And he is also looking to find ways to make is less necessary to get others to agree when he decides there is reason to deploy the military.

Under Rumsfeld's model, "What you would have is a self-contained expeditionary force," notes John Goheen, spokesman for the National Guard Association, a private advocacy group in Washington. "You wouldn't have to gain as much public support. You wouldn't have to take from communities, since the troops are already active, so it would be pretty easy to go to war."

By removing the National Guard from the equation, by having an all volunteer force who should have known that they were considered fodder for the military machine, and by being able to command a mercenary army that will do what he says for money, Rumsfeld thinks he will create the military of the future, capable of being used whenever and where ever needed.

It is worrying that Rumsfeld seems to believe that military force solves almost all problems. As others have pointed out, you need to think about what you will do after you've used that military:

"Rumsfeld is willing to unhinge part of the Total Force Policy, and it's a big mistake in my mind," says Doubler. "The Department of Defense wants speed to get there and get the job done fast. But there's a downside to speed: What are we going to do after we get there, after we get to Baghdad?"

It is obvious from the NPR interview that Rumsfeld was a full supporter for operation Iraqi Freedom and believes that our actions there are fully justified. However, in my mind he still has not yet provided an adequate reason for our troops to be there for the foreseeable future.

Allowing him to build a military that could be deployed on a dime's notice without any discussion by our country would mean that we would have ceded one of the most critical duties of citizens in a democracy. He should not be allowed to execute on his vision without a rigorous and thorough discussion.