One of the many military reforms of the 1990s was the Quadrennial Review. Once every four years the Pentagon has to come right out and say what it is preparing to do, and how it plans to do it. The president and Congress can modify these plans, but once all the arguing dies down, everyone knows what the troops will be ready to do over the next four years.

Since the mid-1990s, the military has been ready, on paper, to fight two wars (Korea and Persian Gulf, most likely) at once and win. This is a fantasy, of course, but one that must be maintained. The entire defense budget is held together by the many "requirements" for the two-war doctrine. Meanwhile, everyone is scrambling to reorganize for the wars that are happening right now. That is: peacekeeping and policing.

The forces, training and leadership needed for the "two wars" and the peacekeeping are very different. So, the question is; can the armed forces be in two places at once? Can the weapons and training needed for wars be used for peacekeeping? Ask the Pentagon about this and you get a well-crafted mutter. That's another way of saying, "no, but we'd rather not dwell on it."

It gets pretty ugly.

Peacekeeping operations are expensive. About a third of our forces currently are tied up in various police missions. Much of the money for peacekeeping comes out of the training budget. But with all this peacekeeping, there's not much time to train anyway. The troops hate this sort of thing. All their training is directed towards breaking things and killing people.

The troops are taught to shoot first and to keep shooting until the enemy succumbs. Peacekeeping is a cross between permanent guard duty and taking abuse from ungrateful foreigners. In peacetime, guard duty is often given out as a punishment. But an even more severe punishment is sending combat troops to do riot control. Having rocks thrown at you while you stand there with an unloaded weapon does a real number on morale.

It hasn't taken long for the bad actors to realize that they can throw rocks and bottles at our troops without getting fired on. In response to this abuse, the Pentagon is passing out "non-lethal weapons" (rubber bullets, tear gas, sticky foam, dazzler lights and the like) so that our lads have a sporting chance. But the soldiers did not enlist to play games with foul tempered foreigners, but to kill them, take the fight out of them and go home. Endless peacekeeping duty feels like punishment, which it often is. As a result, the volunteer armed forces are short of people. It's actually worse than that, for to keep numbers from falling through the basement, recruiting, training and discipline standards have been lowered.

But it gets worse.

American peacekeepers in the Balkans are, in effect, under house arrest. They can only go outside their compound when on duty, usually guard duty or patrolling (which is basically guard duty where you get to move around a bit more). From time to time they have to confront rioters, where people throw things at them; or conduct a raid to find illegal weapons, which often ends up like a mini-riot. Back in their well-appointed barracks (no expense was spared to build permanent housing for what was supposed to be a temporary assignment), you can't get a drink and celibacy, while not mandatory, is certainly encouraged.

The Air Force situation is only slightly different. Pilots like the fact that they are getting a lot of flying time, but most of it is flying in circles. Air patrols over the Balkans and Iraq get old fast. The pilots and their ground crews don't live under restrictions quite as bad as the GIs but you do spend a lot of time away from home. Too much time, according to the many Air Force personnel departing the service.

The Navy and the Marines are largely doing what they would do in wartime, steaming around far-off hostile shores. But you don't take your family with you on these six-month deployments, and you don't get much shore leave either. Sailors with technical skills are finding out that they can quit the Navy, get higher pay, go home each night and even afford to buy their own boat if they still yearn for a little salt water from time to time. But not six months at a time off the coast of China, Arabia or the Balkans.

So if you run into a recent vet, don't add insult to injury by asking why he didn't stay in the service. It's bad enough having to go through all the nonsense; it's harder still to admit it.

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