Precipitous Cutbacks Take A Toll

As American forces prepare to send a few bombs whistling toward Saddam Hussein’s chimney, let us consider a few fun facts:

The United States military is 40 percent smaller than it was during the Gulf War.

The armed services are losing key personnel at a shocking rate. The Air Force has reduced the number of tactical wings by nearly half - from 35 to 20 - since 1991. It has not reduced its global commitments, however. As a result, pilots are working grueling hours - and many airmen are hanging up their wings. The Air Force lost 498 pilots in 1996, nearly 700 last year and it predicts a shortage of 350 later this year.

The Army has troops in more than 60 countries even though it has surrendered nearly 40 percent of its numbers since 1991.

The Army’s organizational chart calls for no fewer than 520,000 troops. The administration budget pays for only 480,000. As Uncle Sam’s commitment falls off, so does the enthusiasm of troops. The Army has just suffered through its worst recruiting year in two decades - both in number and quality.

The Navy is suffering from a wrenching change in military culture, with officers spending more time fretting about sexual harassment than external enemies. We keep ships out longer than before, with predictable results: loss of morale, higher rates of divorce and a quiet stampede of sailors doing their best to get out of the service and into civilian clothing again.

The Clinton administration has dispatched troops on more missions than any other in history. The Army conducted 10 “operational events” between 1960 and 1991. It has embarked on 26 since. The Marines have set out for 62 “contingency operations” since 1989. We have set up open-ended peacekeeping missions in Haiti and Bosnia, have made regular sport of threatening Saddam Hussein and have conducted a couple of somewhat inglorious joint operations in Africa.

But we have not put our money where our troops are. Military spending will consume barely 3 percent of the gross domestic product this year. Before Bill Clinton took office, the postwar low for expenditures was 5 percent, by Jimmy Carter in 1979 - the year the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, Iranian students seized our embassy in Tehran, Sandinistas consolidated power in Nicaragua and communist insurgents continued to consolidate power in such places as Angola, Mozambique and Yemen.

In a time of reduced military means, the United States needs to pick its fights carefully. That raises the question of Saddam Hussein.

Clearly, Saddam wants to be a menace when he grows up, and he may well possess the means to construct weapons of mass destruction.

But one gets the impression, listening to the brassy rhetoric coming from the departments of State and, to a lesser extent, Defense, that we have taken on the mustachioed despot because he’s easy pickings. We can bomb a few strategic sites with relative impunity, goad him to give some intemperate and colorful speeches, and applaud ourselves for demanding good behavior on the part of at least one head of state.

This is not a bad strategy for bolstering national self-esteem and job-approval numbers. Nevertheless, one still wonders: Why? Why Saddam?

He’s not even the most dangerous foe in the region. The most recent State Department report on global terrorism lists Iran, not Iraq, as the “premier state sponsor of terrorism.” The Islamic Republic continues to finance and train such groups as Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Kurdish Workers Party.

Iran has a far more active missile development program than Iraq, and experts suspect the regime in Tehran to deploy by year’s end new Shihab-3 missiles that could hit Iraq, Saudi Arabia or Israel. That rocket would presage multistage missiles, expected within the next five years or so, that could hit targets between London and Vladivostok.

Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies notes in a recent paper that Iran is in the midst of a stunning arms buildup that includes new munitions, mortars, machine guns, antitank weapons, antiaircraft guns, surfaceto-air missiles, helicopters, fighter planes, destroyers and submarines, cruise missiles, multiple rocket launchers, ballistic missiles, biological agents and chemical weapons.

Nevertheless, we’re now talking of nuzzling closer to the mullahs.

If we attack Iraq, what’s the point? If we don’t kill Saddam, we strengthen him. If we do take him out, we must occupy the place until a rough sense of order settles upon the land - and we must do so as defense budgets shrink even further.

The United States stands alone in this fight. Nobody else will send troops. If it behaves rashly, the Clinton administration, which has whittled the military to its skimpiest levels in decades, may discover the awful truth behind a bittersweet slogan now heard in Pentagon hallways and camp barracks: “Peace is hell.”

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