Henry A. "Hank" Crumpton's announcement last week that he will be leaving the State Department in 2007 gave Americans food for thought about a topic that so far has not evoked much discussion: retirements by top military officers.

But the topic in question deserves to be aggressively pondered in the wake of President George W. Bush's announcement that he plans to expand the nation's military to meet challenges tied to the war against terrorism and the operations currently under way in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While Bush and many members of Congress have reiterated their opposition to reinstituting the draft, the president's new intention will impact enlisted men and women currently in the military services, including the National Guard and Reserves.

Some will have — and some already have — had their tours of duty extended in the war zones. A similar impact also should extend to generals and other top commanders — overseas or stateside — who might be considering retirement.

As long as the military services are deemed in short supply of needed manpower — and considering the uncertainties and concerns surrounding the Iraq war — top-brass retirements should be considered out of the question at this time.

But there have continued to be retirements within the military's top ranks — in defiance of the needs that currently prevail.

Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, warned Congress the other day that the active-duty Army "will break" under the strain of today's war-zone rotations.

"The active Army is about broken," former Secretary of State Colin Powell told CBS' "Face the Nation."

Powell also is a retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The comments by the two men add to the evidence that it's a bad time to be allowing top officers to opt for retirement, and Bush should implement a freeze on such retirements immediately, permitting exceptions only on the basis of serious circumstances.

As for Crumpton and civilians like him, it should be a priority of the government to make available special incentives to retain their expertise. As chief of the State Department's counterterrorism office and a key strategist in the war in Afghanistan, Crumpton isn't the kind of person who should be retiring or looking for work outside the government.

His expertise regarding the important terrorism issues facing the nation makes his impending departure counterproductive to the nation's best interests.

He too should be discouraged from carrying through his plan to leave.

The military services' enlisted personnel — expecially "short-timers," in terms of the amount of time remaining in their enlistments, and those in the war zones scheduled for redeployment to the States in the not-too-distant future — no doubt are feeling considerable anxiety over what Bush's plans might mean for them. Their concern is understandable.

But those anxieties might be somewhat assuaged by the knowledge that their superiors were being bound by the same requirements to which they are made to adhere.

Until the time is deemed right for implementing a major, albeit not total, exit strategy in regard to Iraq, generals and other top military leaders should be delivered the message that they are "in it for the long haul," regardless of the retirement intentions that they might have been contemplating.