How is it that a country with a population of 303 million and a GDP of $14 trillion can't field an army of 150,000 troops - not many more than Germany, a country of 70 million, surrendered at Stalingrad but continued to fight on for another two and half years. In World War II, the US had a population of 145 million, an economy 1/4 the size in real dollars, and put 12 million men in uniform.

The fact is that, while our spending may be higher than cold war averages in real dollars, in terms of GDP we're still around 5% with Iraq and Afghanistan included. That compares to 9% for Vietnam and 13% for Korea, and 40% for World War II.

The US should declare a draft, raise taxes, and boost military spending to 7% per year. We should have work toward a professional army of 1 million soldiers and 250,000 Marines. This could be accomplished in 3 years if the political will was there to do it.

This is what the Bush foreign policy demands. If not, then scale back massively and abandon the dream of a unipolar world.