[Mb-civic] A Leaner, Meaner Military - Newt Gingrich - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

A Leaner, Meaner Military

By Newt Gingrich
Saturday, March 4, 2006; A17

The Post's Feb. 13 editorial "Mr. Rumsfeld's Flawed Vision" managed to 
miss the major achievements of a remarkable Quadrennial Defense Review 
(QDR). This was the most thorough and systematically managed review in 
Pentagon history. The review board, co-chaired by Deputy Defense 
Secretary Gordon England and Adm. Edmund Giambastiani, spent half a year 
forcing changes in a complex bureaucratic system famous for its ability 
to hide and wait for the current civilian leadership to disappear so it 
can continue its old, comfortable ways. Only by sheer force of will has 
the senior leadership, under the direction of Defense Secretary Donald 
Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 
muscled through substantial and historic change in the Defense Department.

This effort to craft a change-oriented QDR has to be seen in the larger 
context of change throughout the Defense Department. The fact that Gen. 
Peter Schoomaker was brought out of retirement to impose Rumsfeld's 
vision on a reluctant Army is the best example of the determined, 
systematic change involved. Schoomaker has become the most single-minded 
Army modernizer since George Catlett Marshall. As Army chief of staff he 
ended the individual replacement system, dating to 1917, which everyone 
knew was destructive to unit cohesion but no one had had the will and 
determination to replace. Ending the practice of heedlessly moving 
individual soldiers in and out of units has produced the highest level 
of unit readiness in modern history.

The Army has shifted from 11 unwieldy World War II-type divisions to 77 
rapidly deployable brigades designed for modern war. This makes it more 
deployable, more usable and more effective. Army modernization is being 
extended by the creation of more Special Operations units and the Marine 
Corps is being turned into a more effective organization for what I call 
"the long war against the irreconcilable wing of Islam."

The Navy and Air Force have continued to shift toward unmanned vehicles, 
more effective power projection and more sophisticated capabilities to 
contain and deter China. The shift toward unmanned vehicles alone would 
have been considered dramatic a decade ago. The development of new 
submarine capability is a powerful tool as Chinese imports and seaborne 
trade increase.

In terms of reshaping the Pentagon, the largest and most comprehensive 
base closing in defense history was recently completed; it will yield 
billions in savings. Under Rumsfeld's leadership, the Pentagon has also 
reconfigured forces from Europe and Korea into more usable and effective 
form. Furthermore, these changes have been made while increasing the 
amount of training and cooperation undertaken with our allies.

At the Pentagon, the creation of the National Security Personnel System 
-- which is being challenged in the courts -- is historic and vitally 
necessary to the effective use of resources for national security. The 
fact that it has been opposed by every labor union in the Defense 
Department is one indication of how thorough and far-reaching it is.

There are a number of steps that have to be taken to modernize the 
nondefense aspects of national security. As Senate Armed Services 
Committee Chairman John Warner has noted, large segments of the civilian 
government are not doing their job and in some cases are not even 
showing up for their assignments. Rumsfeld is aware of these problems, 
but it is hard to imagine that he could challenge other departments in a 
public document such as the QDR.

The Post wrongly asserts that "Mr. Rumsfeld essentially proposes to 
reinforce and perpetuate the greatest single mistake of his tenure, 
which was failing to deploy enough soldiers to win the wars the United 
States has taken on." In fact, there is no evidence that more troops 
would have accomplished anything more than what was accomplished in 
Afghanistan. The mistake in Iraq was not keeping the Iraqi regular army 
intact to assume the responsibility of policing in June 2003. Additional 
troops were not sent to Iraq for the very reason that military leaders 
did not want to create an even bigger footprint leading to greater 
alienation and hostility on the part of the Iraqi people.

Finally, The Post seems upset that some new weapons systems have not 
been entirely eliminated. The F-22, for example, has been cut from 380 
aircraft to 180, reflecting the low likelihood of major air battles 
against a large and modern adversary. Yet there may come a morning when 
-- facing a challenge in Iran, North Korea or potentially with China in 
the Taiwan Straits -- the F-22 will prove its worth. The issue with 
next-generation aircraft is not, as The Post asserts, a question of air 
superiority but of survivability against antiaircraft missiles when 
Russia's and other countries are prepared to sell their best systems to 
a range of countries that oppose the United States. It is also true that 
the Navy continues to build aircraft carriers. But carriers have been 
modernized, and today's movable naval airfields are far more capable 
than they were a generation ago.

Someone at The Post has a fixation on "weapons systems killed" as proof 
of leadership ability in the Defense Department. That fixation reduces 
change in national security to a narrow and inaccurate calculation.

Rumsfeld's second tour of duty as defense secretary marks a period of 
dramatic change in which the United States has been simultaneously 
fighting a global war against Islamic extremists, conducting campaigns 
in Afghanistan and Iraq, making preparations to preempt North Korea and 
Iran if necessary, undertaking strategies to contain China over the next 
two decades, dramatically changing the structure and rhythm of the Army, 
and beginning a revolution in both special operations capabilities and 
unmanned vehicles. This is an extraordinary level of change, and the QDR 
is best seen as one more building block in this new architecture of 
21st-century American security.

The writer, a former speaker of the House, serves on the Defense Policy 
Board, to which he was appointed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/03/AR2006030301612.html?nav=hcmodule
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060304/de061790/attachment.htm