Does the USA need a bigger or smaller military?

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Poll question: Does the USA need a bigger or smaller military?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0612260048dec26,1,2034863.story?coll=chi-opinionfront-hed

Do we need a bigger Army?

<snip>So it comes as no surprise to hear President Bush say the time has come to expand the armed forces. In an interview last week with The Washington Post, he said that in the long global war on terror, "we're going to need a military that's capable of being able to sustain our efforts and help us achieve peace."

That expansion, however, would not help in Iraq anytime soon. Boosting the Army from the current force of 507,000 to 540,000, as some at the Pentagon propose, would take about five years.

Nor would it be easy. Already, the Army has had to struggle to recruit and retain sufficient numbers of soldiers. It's currently paying out nine times more in retention bonuses than it did in 2003, and this year, it had to increase its recruiting budget by $300 million. Even so, the Army has had to lower standards to meet its enlistment goals. And no one shows the appetite for resumption of the draft.

While it would be nice to have a bigger force right now, it's not clear that will be needed a few years down the road. Future contingencies are hard to predict--which is one reason we now lack the right force for the current war. Once we are done in Iraq, Americans may be leery of large-scale unconventional wars like this one, which are unusually manpower-intensive. In that case, a bigger Army may be a needless extravagance.