By DAVE HAMRICK
Editor-at-large

There's no doubt that George Bush's choice of military readiness as a campaign issue is a substantive one.

But whether it will help him is another question altogether.

Let's take a very brief trip through recent history.

Starting point: the end of the Vietnam era. The nation was disillusioned, the budget was exhausted and the military was disheartened.

We had sent our troops into battle with one arm tied behind their backs, and although history books don't record it that way, we had lost a war.

For the next decade, our military was so neglected that, when we tried to mount a rescue mission in Iran, we couldn't even get our helicopters off the ground.

Ronald Reagan was elected and he set about restoring our mlitary's strength, and its pride. It cost a ton of money. Restoring something that's been neglected always costs far more than maintaining it.

But restore it we did. Then we sent our troops into battle in the deserts of Kuwait and won probably the most one-sided victory in the history of warfare, with the possible exception of Carthage.

Next we elected Bill Clinton, who promptly set about dismantling our newly restored military.

You want proof? Well, it's hard to come by, but not impossible. It's hard to come by for a couple of reasons.

First, in terms of strategy, the folks in the military don't want to give out too much information on how many people and how much equipment we have at various locations. Saddam watches CNN too, you know.

Second, the folks in the military work for the commander in chief, and releasing information or saying things publicly that make the commander in chief look bad is not considered the best career move.

But the budget is there for all to see.

Not that the military is a sacred cow. The budget during the Reagan years was necessarily inflated because of the need for restoration. It follows that once restoration was complete, the budget would drop, and it did during the Bush Administration.

Then the Clinton Administration knocked it down by about 30 percent more. In 1993 we had about 780,000 people in uniform. In 2000 we have about 480,000.

Along with personnel, Clinton cut similar numbers of planes, ships, tanks, weapons... procurement of new equipment and research/development were slashed while more money was put into spare parts to keep the now-aging equipment operating.

The explanation for this was that the modern military is changing, slimming down for brief engagements in hot spots around the world rather than bulking up for the big war with the superpower that most people don't believe will ever happen.

The philosophy is not totally unsound, except it doesn't take into account a commander in chief who triples the number of hot spots he thinks it necessary to send troops to. Clinton has engaged our troops in 48 missions as of 1999, costing about $30 billion.

What happens when you increase the number of missions and decrease the size of the force is that people have to spend more and more time on foreign soil and morale drops. Then you have fewer people still.

And that's exactly what has happened. Our armed forces during the late `90s have failed to make their recruitment goals for the first time since the awful `70s. This year, 2000, recruitment goals have been met.

How, you ask? Could it be they've lowered the standards? I think it a safe bet to assume exactly that.

What's worse is that highly experienced people in the middle officer ranks are quitting, which tells me a lot. If you're a captain or a major, that tells me you made a decision a long time ago to make the military your career. So why would you quit?

Consider the words of Capt. Justin P. D. Wilcox, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Vienna, Va., in USA Today Sept. 5, after the captain decided to call it quits.

“My decision to leave the Army stems from my refusal to live the `readiness lie' portrayed by the nation's top leaders. In the age of `do more with less,' the most frequent topic of discussion for today's Army junior officer is the decision to leave the military...

“For two years I participated in the unit-readiness report for my battalion as the project officer for the report and the head of battalion maintenance. During the past year, maintenance or personnel issues prevented achievement of top readiness ratings. Excellence is no longer the standard. The pursuit of mediocrity has become the norm. When will a general officer finally lay his stars on the table and stand up to the current administration for his soldiers? ...

“I realized that in the future I could be responsible for the deaths of too many men who could have been saved by proper training. I was not prepared to sacrifice good men, knowing that their deaths could have been avoided. I could not in good conscience continue to live the lie of our current readiness.”

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