Not long ago, Rich Lowry and William Kristol wrote a Washington Post op-ed urging “a substantial surge in overall troop levels in Iraq, with the additional forces focused on securing Baghdad.” Lawrence Korb and Peter Ogden, both with the liberal outfit Center for American Progress, took exception. In a piece called “why we can’t send more troops,” they argued that doing so would place undue strain on an already over-stretched military, and thus “threaten to break our nation’s all-volunteer Army and undermine our national security.”
Lowry replies to Korb and Ogden here. Lowry’s main argument is that “straining” is what a nation asks its military to do when it is engaged in a war worth fighting. But he also shows that Korb and Ogden rely on misleading statistics and internally inconsistent argumentation. But this is to be expected from the reliably disingenuous Korb.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.