The services (and I'm thinking specifically of the Army here) cannot long continue an operations cycle that leaves 80% or more of active duty forces deployed overseas, and/or relies mainly on Reserve and Guard units for critical war-fighting functions.

Re-enlistment rates are already falling. The force structure can't continue as is.

I agree that there's an optempo problem, but that's a different issue. More troops might solve it. But, since we've got a 4th Generation military and the main optempo stresses are coming from low-level peace ops, handing those tasks over to other countries is the more logical solution. That would require building better relations, obviously. We could even foot much of the bill, as troops from the 3rd World are markedly cheaper.

1) a deteriorating military
2) which melted into the population
3) which we heavily bribed

I'm not sure we can use Iraq as a stereotype representing... say... Iran or N. Korea.

I'm not saying we don't have a kick ass military and that you're not right. It would just seem that using Iraq as an exemplar is perhaps not appropriate for future threats.

Iraq--and Afghanistan before it--still showed a geometric improvement in our force compared even to, say, Grenada in 1983. Typically, in conventional ops, even relatively ragtag forces have been harder to defeat and imposed more casualties.

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