It was one bullet point, just two sentences in the Democrats' 31-page "New Direction for America" document released last June: In order to "Defeat terrorists and stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction, we will . . . . Double the size of our Special Forces" (emphasis added).
Sounds nifty, doesn't it, like a bumper sticker reading "Outlaw War Now!" And, indeed, top-notch warriors play an invaluable role in any war but are most useful in the sorts of actions that will probably dominate the military's missions for the next generation. But as I point out in my article in the March 5 Weekly Standard, there are two serious problems.
First, doubling can only be accomplished by a disastrous route – making special ops no longer special. Second, false solutions crowd out real ones. Our main military problem is that we’re fighting two wars with 600,000 fewer service personnel than we had in 1991, and that equipment ranging from Humvees to weapons is piling up in repair depots because military spending as a percentage of GDP is merely 3.8 percent while half a century ago, during peacetime, it was 9.9 percent.
I confirmed through Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office that the Democrats don’t really mean “Special Forces,” which properly refers to U.S. Army Special Forces or “the Green Berets.” Rather they mean Special Operations Forces (SOF), including Special Forces, Rangers and other units from the Army, the SEALs and others from the Navy, Force Recon from the Marines, and some Air Force units.