Giuliani wants another 10 brigades added to army

NY Times:

Rudolph W. Giuliani called on Saturday for a large-scale increase in the overall troop strength of the Army and the creation of a special force to specifically handle post-combat operations.

In a speech before the graduating class at the Citadel, Mr. Giuliani, who has stressed an aggressive and muscular foreign policy in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, said that he would like to see the Army grow to 582,000 troops from its current 512,000, an even larger increase than President Bush has advocated.

“I believe that America needs at least 10 new combat brigades above the additions that are already proposed by President Bush and are already in the budget,” he said.

While Mr. Giuliani did not say the troops were meant specifically to aid the effort in Iraq, the war has placed a heavy burden on the armed forces and, as the war stretches into its fifth year, the Army is increasingly stretched thin.

The two other leading candidates for the Republican nomination — Senator John McCain of Arizona and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts — have also called for an increase in the size of the Army, as has Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.

Mr. Giuliani did not directly condemn the handling of the war by President Bush, but his call for a new force to handle post-combat efforts implied that the approach in Iraq up until recently has been flawed.

Saturday’s commencement address was a preview of a much more detailed foreign policy speech that Mr. Giuliani will make in the near future, his aides said.

Mr. Giuliani called the 438 cadets, all of whom were still in high school when he was mayor of New York City and terrorists attacked the World Trade center in 2001, “the leaders of the 9/11 generation.”

As he has done in the past, he questioned the wisdom of Democratic leaders who want to pull out of Iraq, saying they “counsel defeat.”

“Never, ever wave the white flag of defeat in front of those who want to come here and kill you and take away your way of life,” he said. “Never.”

“The reality is that in this world today, there are terrorists, Islamic radical terrorists, who are planning as we sit here at this graduation, who are planning to come here and kill us,” he said.

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I am not sure about the need for a hybrid stabilization force for post combat operations. I think all troops are capable of this role. We should not fool ourselves into thinking that the war would be over now if we had adopted counterinsurgency operations on the day after the end of major combat operations. We would probably done something better, but a determined enemy cn stretch an insurgency for years. Most last at least 10 years. We definitely need a larger army. The Clinton cuts have really hurt our ability to respond to the enemies we face. The Marine Corps also needs additional troops.