By Jed Babbin on 2.13.02 @ 12:03AM
When Donald Rumsfeld began planning the transformation of the military, he excluded the Pentagon's top generals and admirals from the project. Opposition grew, and drafts of political obits were being circulated. Then he became Secretary of War.
When he was nominated, the Media Mentionables all tut-tutted
about how this guy was as old as the Cold War, and could he handle
the stress of the job? His agenda was clear and vague at the same
time: transform the American military into a force for the 21st
century. But nobody (except him and the President) knew what that
meant. When Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld began planning the
transformation of the military, he excluded the Pentagon's top
generals and admirals from the project. Opposition grew, and drafts
of political obits were being circulated. Then he became Secretary
of War.
When the movie is made about this war, I hope it's made by
Ahnuld or Clint, and not Oliver Stone. Here's the first half of the
script. America the complacent takes an 8-year vacation from
responsibility, during which we pass up not one but three chances
to get bin Laden. And then comes 9-11. Soon after, American special
ops troops are inserted and make contact with the Northern
Alliance. In a few days, urgent calls come in, pleading for
airdrops of more satellite telephones, and oats, saddles, and
saddle blankets. The airdrops are made under cover of darkness.
Farther south, the Pakistanis won't let U.S. forces be seen using
their land to attack a neighbor. So the Marines establish a
beachhead near Karachi every night, move mountains of munitions and
supplies off ships and planes, and send them into Afghanistan. When
the dawn rises each morning, no mark of their presence remains save
footprints and tire tracks.
On the day of the big attack, earth-shattering air strikes using
precision-guided munitions turn the Taliban fort at Mazar-e-Sharif
into a little corner of hell. Before the smoke clears, anti-Taliban
forces, including U.S. special forces, charge the fort on
horseback. Okay, James Bond already played that scene. But this is
exactly what happened, oats, saddles, and all. Presiding over all
this is Donald Rumsfeld.
Our European allies, who now whine that Rumsfeld and Bush aren't
consulting with them before making decisions, don't realize that
we'd welcome their help. But their forces are so depleted, they
couldn't do much even if they tried. Which most of them haven't. If
you want to join the fight, you can have a say in what is decided.
If you just want to sit on the sideline and criticize, please just
shut up. Better yet, study carefully how the Big Dog -- Don
Rumsfeld -- is planning to rebuild and modernize the American
military, and do the same for yourselves.
Big Dog came in planning to go slowly, and make up for the
Clintonoids' disregard of defense with some smart management and a
little added money. Now, things are moving quickly. He's faced with
a war that is straining our people and our weapons to their limits.
Every weapon -- a ship, an aircraft, or a rifle -- only has so many
days of life in them, and it wears out quickly. For example,
thousands of wartime hours are shortening the peacetime expected
life of F-16s flying combat air patrols over New York, Washington,
and the Olympics. Despite all this strain, Mr. Rumsfeld rightly
recognizes that this is precisely the time to transform the
military.
In the 2003 budget, Mr. Rumsfeld makes some tough tradeoffs. Old
systems like F-14 Tomcat and DD-963 destroyers will be retired
sooner than planned. Others, such as four Ohio-class missile subs,
will be converted. The subs will lose their ICBMs and become
special forces delivery vehicles. Much of the nuclear arsenal will
be cut. The Navy's DD-21 "land attack" destroyer and eighteen Army
programs will be terminated.
Our Cold War strategies were based on the strengths of the
enemy, and our forces were designed to defeat the other guy's best
effort. That's "symmetric" warfare. Given our strengths, terrorists
and others won't attack in the way we can fight them most easily.
They will attack "asymmetrically," as they did on 9-11. Mr.
Rumsfeld's transformation seeks to rebuild our armed forces on the
basis of how an enemy might attack us, rather than how many tanks
and troops it would take to defeat a particular army in a set-piece
battle. Now we will look more at our vulnerabilities, trying to
figure out how an enemy might attack us.
New forces will be built to suit that new understanding. The
remaining nuclear force will be one part. Ballistic missile defense
and a range of other innovative, and unstated, defenses will be
another. There will be defense systems we will never hear about,
like cyber-war defenses. Next, advanced conventional capabilities
designed around the new kinds of wars we expect to fight. The
budget provides for significant growth of Special Operations
forces, and purchase of a whole pile of manned and unmanned
aircraft, for both reconnaissance and attack. We'll be launching
"smart satellites," and other space-based systems, which -- sooner
or later -- will include our own hunter-killer satellites. All of
this will be in a framework of moving information from sensor to
shooter almost instantaneously. The new buzzword -- "jointness" --
means that our new forces will be designed from the ground up to
capitalize on the strengths of each other.
Rumsfeld's plan fits the Bush Doctrine: from now on, we won't
wait for the other guy to throw the first punch. We won't wait for
another 9-11. When we see a threat coming, we'll shoot first, and
talk later. Thanks to Big Dog, we'll be able to hit what we aim at.
Anywhere, anytime, baby.
Jed Babbin was a deputy undersecretary of defense in
the first Bush administration, and now occasionally appears as a
talking warhead on the Fox News Channel.
topics:
Trade, Military, Pakistan
