By: Michael Milad

The United States military thinks they are too small to handle all the responsibilities they have to assume. They believe that these responsibilities are real and very important and they do not foresee them diminishing. They also believe that the US should not become less engaged in the world. The responsibilities of which they speak include national security, global peace and stability, and the defense and promotion of freedom in the post-9/11 world. The US administration however is resisting increasing the ground forces to the size that the military believes is needed to meet the current missions and challenges. They believe there is abundant evidence that the demand of the ongoing missions in the Middle, east, along with the defense and alliance commitments in the world are exhausting the current US ground forces. Though they understand the dangers of federal deficits and the fiscal difficulty of increasing troops they believe that the defense of the US is the first priory. They believe that the nation as being as one of the richest nations they can afford a large military. In fact, the US is spending a smaller percentage of the GDP on the military that at any time during the Cold War, and while they are saying that they do not need their army the size of that in the Cold War it would help create the military needed to fight the war on terror and fulfill the other responsible of the armed forces. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution places the power and duty to raise and support the military forces in the US in the hands of Congress.