What Would a Real "War President" Do?

Wartime presidents raise armies, funds, and resources. They ask for volunteers, and look to ordinary citizens to contribute and do without on the home front. As we’ll see, President Bush has done none of these things.

Call for National Service. George W. Bush’s wartime failings start with his silence on national service. He’s called no one to arms. In fact, he quickly revealed the cynicism of his call for volunteerism by cutting the budget of AmeriCorps, the country’s only national service organization.

But first some background. Until the first Gulf War in 1991, all major American conflicts since the Civil War saw conscription to raise the armies needed for victory. The United States has not resorted to the draft since the Vietnam War. Throughout the Cold War, the volunteer military put in place by Richard Nixon in 1973 maintained force levels of roughly 2.1 million members across all services. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however, President George H.W. Bush oversaw reductions to roughly 1.4 million troops, with the army reduced to 10 active divisions from its previous footing of 16. Just prior to the 9/11 attacks in 2001, these force levels were facing further reductions by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as part the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) process.

Following the attacks, the administration quickly denied that a draft would be needed for the war on terror. Secretary Rumsfeld in particular stated that the military had sufficient forces available to fight two major regional conflicts, which until 9/11had been the policy of the U.S. Though the administration doctrine of preemption announced in its September 20, 2002 National Security Strategy  document would only add to the responsibilities of the American military, Rumsfeld stood by this line even after the invasion of Iraq. There would be no expansion of the armed forces, either through extended recruiting or conscription.

The result? As James Fallows details in the March 2004 issue of The Atlantic Monthly (“The Hollow Army”), the army has been stretched to the breaking point. Units, including the venerable 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions, have had units moved from Afghanistan to Iraq, and now face months to replenish men and material to regain full fighting strength. (This is sadly ironic, given candidate Bush’s false charges against the Clinton military that two whole divisions would have to report “not ready for duty, sir.”) The call up of reservists has reached unprecedented levels, with troops being told to expect at least one one-year deployment every four to five years. The Army is struggling to rotate its 130,000 troops in Iraq, units whose missions will be of indeterminate duration. One more major crisis, such as a confrontation with North Korea over its nuclear program, and the U.S. army would be strained beyond its limits.

So, the burden of defending America falls solely on our undersized volunteer military and their families. What about the home front? What does President Bush want us to do to chip in?

“Volunteer”, apparently. In his 2002 State of the Union address, the President called on “every American to commit at least two years (4,000 hours over the rest of your lifetime) to the service of your neighbors and your nation.” As the Washington Monthly noted, he went to ask for an expansion of AmeriCorps to 200,000 members under the auspices of his proposed “USA Freedom Corps.”

And what became of this clarion call from President Bush? Nothing. As Benjamin Wallace-Wells noted in the same piece (“Mourning Has Broken”):

"But those legs soon were cut out from under it. The president did send up a national service bill, and leaders of both parties had made evident their inclination to support it. But thanks to the antagonism of some House Republicans and indifference in the White House, the measure never made it to the floor of Congress. Worse, the existing AmeriCorps program has gone unauthorized in each budget since September 11, and now, in a round of cuts proposed in August by the president for 2004, faces extinction."

(For a thorough post-mortem on President Bush and national service, read “Whatever Happened to National Service?” by Richard Just.)

Pay for the War. Raising revenue is another one of the requirements for a war-fighting president. At the start of World War II, Franklin Roosevelt asked an American citizenry still grappling with the Great Depression to pay for global conflict against Germany and Japan that would be fought across two oceans. Tax rates were dramatically increased: the highest marginal rate reached 91% by 1945.

The contrast with the behavior of war president George W. Bush could not be more stark. Far from increasing taxes to raise the revenue needed to prosecute the war against terror, Bush proceeded without hesitation to implement his $1.6 trillion tax plan from the 2000 campaign. His cuts initiated major upward income redistribution to the wealthiest Americans, with the top 1% taking over 40% of all the benefits. In 2001, the tax plan, with the strong support of Alan Greenspan, was positioned as returning the nation’s surplus to the people. Over the next two years, the administration instead described it a recession fighting tool (despite the fact that most of the cuts were backloaded). The result was a massive budget deficit, estimated at $521 billion for FY05, with red ink as far as the eye can see.

Wartime deficits are not unusual. Cutting taxes during war is almost unheard of. But for this president, the unheard of is standard operating procedure. Again, this is not surprising: Bush’s small government, free market orthodoxy calls for tax cuts as its centerpiece. But his unparalleled political cowardice, his inability to ask Americans to ask for shared sacrifice, guarantees that this misguided policy will continue, especially with a similarly venal GOP Congress likely to enact his call for permanent tax cuts as called for in the 2004 State of the Union.

Unfortunately, President Bush’s cowardice goes well beyond his failure to raise the revenue to pay for the war on terror. Even more disturbing is his refusal to level with the American people about its true costs. In December 2002, the president fired Lawrence Lindsey, his chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, for presciently telling Congress that the cost of the Iraq war could reach between $100 billion and $200 billion. Congress later had no alternative but to approve the administration’s $87 billion supplemental appropriation to pay for Afghanistan and Iraq. In February 2003, U.S. Army General Eric Shinseki was rebuked by Paul Wolfowitz for claiming in Congressional testimony that the U.S. occupation of Iraq could require “hundreds of thousands” of American troops. Bush’s duplicity continues with the proposed FY 2005 budget, as the costs of the Iraqi occupation are not even included in the requested $400 billion defense department authorization.

Ask Americans to Endure Economic Privation and Foster Conservation. Real wartime leaders not only ask Americans to pay for the war, they ask them to make the sacrifices and do without in their daily lives. During the Second World War, Americans faced rationing of foodstuffs and gasoline. They were asked to limit their travel. Citizens were asked to dig deep to purchase war bonds. Just as important for national unity and morale, Americans were asked to save and recycle key war material including tires, cooking oils and fats, just to name a few.

The results of this total mobilization of the American home front were unparalleled: the Axis powers were overwhelmed by American armies that were the best equipped and supplied in history. And the American people, the “Greatest Generation”, experienced a unity at home that has been unmatched before or after.

Fast forward to 2001. Admittedly, the principal similarity to FDR’s America is that the nation was united in responding to a sneak attack that killed thousands on American territory. There was no need to mobilize millions of troops, hoard scarce materials, or convert civilian industry to military use. And yet, President Bush could ask nothing more of Americans than that they go about their business and go shopping.

Look now at George W. Bush’s America during the war on terror. Clearly, a critical American domestic and foreign policy goal must now be energy independence. The United States must be free from OPEC economic extortion. In particular, America cannot be beholden to the Saudis, and must have the flexibility to reposition the U.S. forces that are such a visible irritant to Islamic sensibilities.

President Bush, of course, ignored this golden opportunity to ask Americans to conserve and tighten their belts to achieve this strategic national goal. His energy plan, conceived by Vice President Cheney in secret only served to reward producers, asked for no conservation measures, and provided for minimal investment in alternative fuel sources. His administration even refused to back increasing fuel efficiency targets (a stand only now showing some signs of movement in the face of public pressure).

Accept American Casualties. If there was ever a time since VJ Day when the American people were prepared to accept large numbers of U.S. military casualties to defeat a dangerous enemy, the aftermath of 9/11 was it. The Bush administration, however, launched the October 2001 assault on Afghanistan on the cheap. U.S. force levels in country did not exceed 10,000 troops, clearly insufficient for such a large, mountainous country. Bush and Rumsfeld chose instead to have dubious proxies fight for us, with the Northern Alliance and a host of self-serving tribal warlords taking on the Taliban.

Two and half years later, the results are disconcerting, to say the least. While the Taliban was quickly toppled, Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar remain at large. Large numbers of Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters escaped capture and confrontation, and continue to threaten American troops and the Karzai government from their bases in the murky border along the Pakistani frontier. The lack of American or NATO troops on the ground means that security cannot be provided outside Kabul; regional and tribal warlords remain in control. As a result, reconstruction is slowed, stability elusive, and long-term success far from certain.

1. When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Go Shopping
2. What Would a Real "War President" Do?
3. Democratic War Leadership in 2004