5/15/09

In a profile this morning of Secretary Gates titled, “A Single Minded Focus on Dual wars,” the Washington Post concludes that Gates’ budget is forcing “the [Defense] department to focus more of its energy on developing arms and equipment that can help troops on the ground as they battle insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq.” This is as it should be. Throughout Rumsfeld’s six year tenure it remained business as usual in the Pentagon, despite the urgent challenges posed by vicious insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Instead of shifting direction, Rumsfeld maintained the department’s focus on fighting the last war – namely the Cold War. While Rumsfeld was explaining to soldiers in 2004 why he could not provide more up-armored Humvees, his Pentagon was spending tens of billions – under the catch phrase “transformation” – on high-tech systems directed against an enemy that didn’t exist and which had nothing to do with the wars we were fighting.  When Gates came to office he was shocked at this neglect. In a tremendous departure from Rumsfeld, Gates’ first priority has been to ensure that the troops on the ground get all the equipment and resources they need to do their jobs.  Through his focus on the immediate challenges of the current wars, Gates hopes to rebalance the military, better positioning it to address both the conventional and irregular threats of the 21st century.  

Gates’ approach represents a rejection of the business as usual approach to current wars practiced by Donald Rumsfeld. According to the Post, Gates’ frustration with the status quo mentality at the Pentagon “came to a head in early 2008 when commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan were clamoring for more intelligence equipment, particularly Predator unmanned surveillance aircraft. The field commanders estimated that they needed more than 40 Predator combat air patrols in the two war zones, defense officials said... When Gates asked the Air Force to find more surveillance planes, senior officials replied that they could provide four more patrols. Some Air Force officials also questioned whether the wartime commanders needed so many surveillance planes.”  Since this incident and his decision to stay on with the Obama administration, Gates’ “top priority” has been to integrate the needs of the current wars into the 2010 defense budget.  This is a vast departure from the Rumsfeld Pentagon, which went to war ill-prepared and then failed to adapt, leaving the troops on the ground dangerously exposed. As the Boston Globe wrote in 2003, “American troops are dying in Iraq and suffering amputations and other massive injuries while they confront the Iraqi insurgency in Humvees not designed to withstand front-line combat... ‘We're kind of sitting ducks in the [soft-top] vehicles we have,’ said Lieutenant Colonel Vincent Montera.’ But the Army does not expect the full complement of a more heavily armored version, designed to withstand armor-piercing bullets and land mines, to arrive in Iraq until the summer of 2005. The Pentagon failed to move them into Iraq in significant numbers because war planners had seriously underestimated how violent the newly liberated nation would be.” As the LA Times wrote in 2004, “About the shortage of armor-protected vehicles in Iraq, Rumsfeld told the troops: "It's essentially a matter of physics. It isn't a matter of money. It isn't a matter on the part of the Army of desire. It's a matter of production and capability of doing it... As you know, you go to war with the army you have. They're not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time." [Boston Globe, 12/8/03. LA Times, 12/10/04]

Gates’ budget places renewed focus on the troops on the ground. As the Washington Post reports, “for decades, the Pentagon's focus has been on building expensive, high-tech weapons programs for conventional wars,” while largely ignoring unconventional challenges like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Under Secretary Rumsfeld the ground forces went without vital equipment, such as armored vehicles, unmanned-aerial vehicles, and proper body armor. Gates’ budget seeks to ensure that our troops have everything they need to effectively do their jobs. “The current budget, for example, sets aside $2 billion so the Air Force will be able to keep as many as 50 unmanned surveillance planes in the air by 2011. Gates also carved out $500 million to increase the number of helicopters in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have been in short supply since 2003.” Both programs are critical for giving our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan a tactical edge. As Gates himself has noted, "Listening to our troops and commanders, unvarnished and unscripted, has from the moment I took this job been the greatest single source of ideas on what the department needs to do." An anecdote from the Washington Post’s coverage of the Secretary’s budget displays the new commitment to supporting U.S. troops on the ground, “In a small building next to the tarmac, an officer briefed the defense secretary on the four deceased troops arriving that evening. They had been driving along a rutted road near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, when their Humvee hit a powerful roadside bomb. Gates flashed with anger, according to people with him that day. He had spent most of his tenure in the Pentagon pushing to replace Humvees in Afghanistan and Iraq with Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, built to withstand such blasts. ‘Find out why they hadn't gotten their goddamn MRAPs yet,’ he snapped at his staff.”  [Washington Post, 5/15/09. Secretary Gates, 5/13/09. Washington Post, 5/15/09]

New defense budget represents a strategic shift toward a more balanced approach that will finally bring the Pentagon into the 21st century, while addressing America’s current challenges.  Secretary Gates has outlined a bold new blueprint for defense strategy numerous times over the past year:  at the Army War College in April, the Air War College a year ago, and articles in Parameters, the journal of the Army War College, and Foreign Affairs.  At the Army War College, Gates said that an “underlying theme in the budget recommendations is the need to think about future conflicts in a different way, to recognize that the black-and-white distinction between conventional war and irregular war is an outdated model. In reality, the future is and will be more complex, where all conflict will range along a broad spectrum of operations and lethality, where even near-peer competitors will use irregular or asymmetric tactics, and non-state actors may have weapons of mass destruction or sophisticated missiles.” Gates continued, “In all, we have to be prepared for the wars we are most likely to fight, not just the wars we've traditionally been best suited to fight or threats we conjure up from potential adversaries who also have limited resources.  And as I've said before, even when considering challenges from nation states with modern militaries, the answer is not necessarily buying more technologically advanced versions of what we built on land, sea and in the air to stop the Soviets during the Cold War.” The next phase for fleshing out this strategic shift will be the updated Quadrennial Defense Review, due to be completed in 2010. As Larry Korb, a Reagan administration Assistant Secretary of Defense and now Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress said, the new budget “moves us in a direction where we should have moved several years ago.”  [Secretary Gates, 4/16/09. Secretary Gates, 4/21/08. Secretary Gates, Parameters, Summer 2008. Secretary Gates, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2009. Larry Korb, 5/12/09]

What We’re Reading

President Obama is said to have decided to keep a revised form of military tribunals for some detainees who cannot be tried in a civilian court.  Experts say that President Obama may have to classify the torture photos to keep them private.  The U.S. again warned Britain of repercussions if the High Court makes interrogation details public in the Binyam Mohamed case.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, said that the harsh interrogation program’s “main purpose” was to find a link between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA of deliberately misleading Congress about the harsh interrogation program.

Pope Benedict XVI finished his Middle East trip by calling for peace and urging that the Holocaust never be denied or forgotten.  Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the Pope to condemn Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet President Obama in Washington on Monday.

Pakistan temporarily eased the curfew in Swat to allow civilians to flee to refugee camps.  The Pentagon looks for ways to expand and accelerate training programs for the Pakistani military.

Mexican immigration to the United States has fallen dramatically since the financial crisis.

UK Justice Minister Shahid Malik resigned over his expenses in the continuing scandal.

Afghan villagers recount the chaos of last week’s U.S. airstrikes which were said to have killed over a hundred civilians.

North Korea demanded that South Korea unconditionally accept higher wages for Communist workers and other demands at the shared industrial park.

A suicide bomber in Chechnya killed three people.

South Africa reversed its refusal to grant a visa to the Dalai Lama.

The U.N. envoy arrived in Sri Lanka for possible cease-fire talks.

Commentary of the Day

The torture debate:

• Mark Thompson describes President Obama’s “delicate” national security balance.
• David Brooks and Gail Collins discuss the recent news in the debate.
• Charles Krauthammer gives an example of when torture works and criticizes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
• Warren Kozak uses Curtis LeMay’s 1945 bombing campaign against Japan as an example of “when basic survival trumps civil liberties.”

Philip Stevens praises Vice President Joe Biden’s recent speech on the Israeli-Arab conflict and looks ahead to the Netanyahu-Obama meeting next week.

Paul Krugman deplores China’s contributions to global warming.