In a recent Associated Press article, Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said he feared the Pentagon was taxing reserve soldiers to the breaking point by extending tours of duty and implementing retention programs such as stop loss to maintain continuity in military units.

The United States currently has approximately 600,000 troops on active duty, a number that has been expanded from the normal time level of 482,400 soldiers to counter the “current global war on terror,” said Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker in a Defense Department briefing Monday. These extra troops have been procured from a number of places, including mobilizing members of the Army Reserve and National Guard and calling upon soldiers from the Individual Ready Reserve.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said that if elected president he would like to see an increase of 40,000 troops on active duty to relieve over-taxed military personnel. Schoomaker’s rebuttal to that was to point out that a magical increase in recruitment of 30,000 active duty soldiers would cost about $3.6 billion a year, an amount that would be siphoned out of current military programs.

This back and forth argument about troop retention and recruitment is pointless. Money is not the underlying problem in this situation: The government has never been at an absolute loss to find money to support its programs and personnel. The issue at hand is that there is a decreasing number of American citizens who are willing to give up their homes and families for an unspecified length of time to fight for a cause that is increasingly becoming muddled and unclear.

While the vast majority of the American people support the War on Terror, many have begun to question whether the enormous investment of materials and personnel in Iraq were the wisest priorities, especially considering the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Iran’s operational ties to the Sept. 11 hijackers. To use stop loss to shore up efforts many consider to be of questionable priority thus threatens future efforts toward recruitment and retation.

Soldiers in active duty in the armed forces make the commitment to serve their country and it’s only fair that the Defense Department, in return, maintain its own commitment to troops and their families to be upfront about the causes for U.S. intervention in foreign theaters.

Using stop loss to break promises about tour lengths does not boost confidence in administration decisions about how soldiers should be deployed. Short of instituting a draft, the government may find itself hard-pressed to find a ready pool of volunteers in the future.