June 15, 2004 - In 1991 President George H.W. Bush took us to war when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia. That was necessary lest the western world’s supply of vital energy fall into the hands of an undemocratic regime. It was in America’s vital interest that Kuwaiti and Arabian oil remain in the hands of two absolute monarchs willing to do business with the United States. The war ended in three months when Saddam was pushed out of Kuwait, his army decimated, and his pernicious influence in the Persian Gulf was contained by the sanctions imposed on him in defeat.

A decade later President George W. Bush took us to war in response to the September 11th attack against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, symbolic targets exemplifying America’s financial and military strength dominating the post Cold War world. The object of that war was to apprehend Osama Bin Laden to justice and to destroy his Al Qaida terrorist network. When the Taliban Regime refused to render the criminals up the Taliban was pushed out and Osama went on the run. With the mission partially accomplished, the Taliban and Al Qaida having taken to the hills, the President turned his attention to the unfinished business of Ba`athist Iraq.

10,000 American troops are still engaged in unending combat in Afghanistan. Another 140,000 US and British soldiers are still engaged in unending combat in Iraq. More than 1,000 have made the final sacrifice in those two unfinished engagements and there is no end in sight. Virtually the entire of the available combat ready forces of the United States are pinned down in those two unfinished engagements. In order to maintain US force structure we have to withdraw troops from out commitment to Korea and send them to the Iraqi theater. On June 30th the conflict in Iraq is scheduled to be iraqified with UN recognition of an Iraqi interim government yet the US military commitment there and in Afghanistan will not be reduced.

Now an unvanquished Al Qaida has opened a third front in Saudi Arabia targeting the western expatriate workers who operate the Saudi oil industry in an increasingly effective terrorist campaign of attacks and abductions. The objective is to cripple the Saudi economy, bring down the Saudi monarchy, and ultimately to deny access to the United States and Western Europe. All the United States can do in response is to warn its citizens to get out of Saudi Arabia. There are no troops left to send to protect American and European interests in the Arabia peninsula and prop up the Saudi regime.

George W. Bush took us to war but he has lacked the will to mobilize the nation to share in the sacrifice necessary to fight it effectively. While car bombs and ambush pin down our military strength in the two active theaters of Mr. Bush’s war and the financial sacrifice of paying for it is pushed off on future generations, Al Qaida is going after its real objective – Saudi Arabia and its oil fields. The prospect of a Bin Laden regime taking control of Saudi oil is beyond frightening. Yet there is no prospect that the United States can in the short term either wean itself from Saudi oil or marshal the forces needed to provide security in yet another hostile land and time is running out.

Meeting the threat requires a dramatic expansion of our military manpower and materiel. It will require an investment of dollars in men and machines that we cannot meet with borrowed money. That expansion can only come from a reinstituted draft and the investment can only come from increasing the nation’s tax revenue. In just three years the War on Terror that we were plunged into has grown and expanded to the point that nothing short of national mobilization will suffice. We can’t afford to wait.