Although there was elation when the long-delayed 94th Military Policy Company returned to the United States last week, the unit’s longer than expected stay in Iraq highlights the deficiencies in current military planning. The case of the 94th, a National Guard unit that has been deployed overseas for two and a half of the last four years, shows that the Pentagon must rethink efforts to downsize the military into a leaner, more efficient force.

The 94th, based in New Hampshire, was scheduled to leave the Middle East on Easter, but got last-minute orders to stay put. Their situation, although extreme, is not unique.

In recent months the Army has taken extraordinary steps to find enough soldiers to send to Iraq. It has called up 5,600 members of the Individual Ready Reserves, inactive veterans who still have a service obligation, and issued a stop-loss order preventing soldiers from leaving the military when their term of service is up if their unit is deployed or about to be. Thousands of troops have been shifted from South Korea and Germany to security and rebuilding work in Iraq. Now, the Pentagon is, for the first time, considering waiving a 24-month limit on active service for National Guard troops.

Gen. Peter Schoomaker, Army chief of staff, recently told reporters that the Iraq deployment was “stretching the Army.” To date, the Army is close to its goals for recruiting and retaining soldiers, Gen. Schoomaker said a recent press briefing at the Pentagon. However, the Army National Guard is exceeding its retention target by only 1 percent and recruitment has only reached 88 percent of the target.

Faced with the prospect of being sent overseas for more than two years then not being allowed to leave the military once your service obligation was fulfilled, it is not surprising that people are not clamoring to join the National Guard. A 68-year-old Alabama psychiatrist, a member of the Ready Reserve, has been summoned out of military retirement and may soon be headed to Iraq for a year. He was called up by the Army to fill a shortage of mental health experts needed to help soldiers cope with combat.

Such scenarios should become anomalies if the Senate’s version of the defense authorization bill moves forward after the congressional recess. The bill would increase active duty troop strength by 20,000 soldiers. Just as important as increasing troop strength is ensuring that military personnel have the skills needed for operations in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. In an era when the United States can topple a government in a matter of days, but rebuilding and peacekeeping takes years, infantry is in far less demand than those with expertise in construction and policing, skills possessed by many National Guard units.

The on-going violence in Iraq challenged a lot of U.S. military assumptions. It is now time to revisit those assumptions and to resize the military to meet reality.