It is, however, grossly misleading. Yes, the military is stressed by the high opstempo — as it was during the 1990s when Clinton was sending them to parts unknown on missions having little if anything to do with U.S. national security.

Isn't this grossly misleading? The military is stressed to a much higher degree today than at any time during the 1990s. Even though we had deployments of Guard and Reserves during the 1990s for operations in Kosovo, we did not have nearly as large of a number deployed, and we certainly were not extending tours of duty like we are today.

I think I'm going to write a two page diatribe about how James Joyner is grossly misleading in attacking Clinton.

Then Clinton's wonkish desire to show off his intimate familiarity with matters of which he is ignorant, while a typical character flaw of his, doesn't seem terribly important (though it IS exactly the kind of thing I'm happy to see a blog post correction for, b/c blogs are wonderful for the Not Terribly Important).

Okay, but is Clinton's point -- that we don't have Army, Marine, NG, or Reserve forces to meet any emergency threat -- correct?

It is fairly correct. The troops that are currently at home are basically occupied with retraining, resting, and rebuilding. In an ultra-extreme scenario, such as a land invasion of CONUS, they would certainly be available. However, they are not combat ready for deployment to a new theater in any sort of reasonable time frame.

Perhaps even more important is the logistics issue: there is a severe lack of usable materiel for the ground forces. Everything is getting chewed up in Iraq.

Luckily, most of the potential threats (even serious ones like an invasion of Taiwan) could and would be countered by Air Force and Navy power. However, it seems foolish to lack a standing emergency reserve of ground forces, especially more than 4 years into an occupation. This failure to expand the ground forces is criminal negligence.

as it was during the 1990s when Clinton was sending them to parts unknown on missions having little if anything to do with U.S. national security.

This is a sadly amusing rehash of Gingrich et al.'s talking points from the mid-90's, but it seems fairly ridiculous now. You're comparing the relatively quite peaceful, small, and short term deployments of the military during the Clinton administration to the overlong, dangerous, and repeated deployments of the Iraq war?

Good grief.

Because I don't know, and the answer to that seems more significant than any detail about Naval infantry (didn't those used to be called "Marines"?) or whatever.