Posted on 07/18/2006 5:44:44 AM PDT by Quilla
The Army’s Chief of Staff, General Peter Schoomaker, has recently done something extraordinary within the realm of Beltway politics – he told the truth about our Army’s readiness. His message before the House Committee on the Armed Services was simple and disturbing:
Five years after 9-11 and the US Army, the service that bears the largest burden in this conflict, is still struggling to build a force capable of conducting a long -term global war within established budget constraints.
This grim assessment may be hard for some to accept, but we need to know the unvarnished truth if we are to be victorious in this long struggle. Gen. Schoomaker’s statement has not been widely publicized since it represents a major departure from the canned and formulaic readiness data spouted by his predecessors, and accepted as gospel by the media and certain spendthrift lawmakers.
I wrote about DC political and bureaucratic shenanigans in funding our military, barely a week before Gen. Schoomaker’s testimony, and was pleased that he reinforced some of the same major points I made.
The 90s drawdown – worse than we thought
Serving high-ranking public officials and flag officers rarely, if ever, bring up short-sighted policies of past administrations. In my view, the mere mention by Schoomaker of troop strength and funding reductions during the Clinton administration demonstrates that he was handed an Army in much worse shape than we had imagined.
Gen. Schoomaker notes that 500,000 Soldiers were given their pink slips during the drawdown of the 90s. Active duty strength was reduced by roughly 285,000, and just as important, an additional 215,000 Soldiers were dropped from the Reserve Component rolls. Therefore, on September 11, 2001, not only did undermanned active duty units have an even greater need for reserve Soldiers as trained fillers, but the reserve units also had a vastly reduced manpower pool to satisfy the need for replacements in preparation for deployment.
Army equipment and weapons systems were no better off during the years of neglect. As Schoomaker notes,
“Historically, the Army has been under resourced – and it is a fact that the decade preceding the attacks of September 11, 2001 was no exception. Army investment accounts were underfunded by approximately $100 billion …”
The previous Army leadership must however, share the blame for this mess by failing to prioritize scarce budget dollars. In the 90s, we spent billions of dollars on ill-advised, pie-in-the-sky military transformation programs in order to satisfy the vision of quick and neat wars with no or low casualties fought from 30,000 feet using laser designators. Also, combat troops spent less time on the tank gunnery range and maneuver training centers and more time as armed meals-on-wheels providers. Meanwhile, uniformed and civilian leaders who promoted this nonsense were allowing the best warfighting equipment in the world to fall into disuse as it sat in motorpools for months on end.
Help was not on the way
George Bush the candidate was likely sincere in his 2000 campaign promise that he would reverse the effects of a too-severe drawdown. Yet, once in office, it seems as if he and Rumsfeld had no desire to tackle the DC political and military establishment head-on. After 9-11, they experienced a game played by the Pentagon during the 90s that was cynically carried forward to the eve of OIF. That is, sandbag the Congress and the President about the inordinate number of troops required for an operation, or make a jargon-filled Pentagonese excuse and hope the whole thing gets called off before the boss finds out they can’t reasonably deliver on their promises. GW may have been sucker-punched with this bureaucratic technique, but an experienced player like Rumsfeld should have known better.
Operation Iraqi Freedom went ahead as planned, and the number of troops was sufficient for toppling Saddam’s regime, but ever since, the Army has been struggling to get out of a huge hole in the middle of a prolonged fight against Hussein’s Baathist irregulars. Rebuilding our troop strength up to stated pre-war levels has been a massive spending exercise with only a miniscule increase in numbers of Soldiers.
The equipment side of the equation has not received much help either. Gen. Schoomaker lays it out:
There were about $56 billion in equipment shortages at the opening of the ground campaign in Iraq [emphasis mine] in the spring of 2003. In contrast, at the height of the Second World War, Defense expenditures exceeded 38 percent of our Gross Domestic Product. Today, they amount to about 3.8 percent and are projected to shrink. In this extraordinarily dangerous time for the Nation, we can – and must – reverse this trend.
How does it happen that over two years after 9-11, after the successful campaign in Afghanistan and the buildup for OIF, that the Army was still $56 billion short of required equipment? As I noted in my earlier piece, the main culprit for this appalling situation is the flawed funding mechanism that makes use of discrete budget authorizations tied to specific military operations.
Since Congress thinks it must maintain both defense and non-defense related pork programs rather than make the tough budget decisions, only units scheduled for deployment are given spending authority to get their equipment fully repaired, and to order required sets, kits, and outfits. Even then, some units may receive this authorization so late in the game that they may have to embark without necessary gear. This is not a good way to prepare for battle. Gen. Schoomaker notes that policies of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) contribute to this budgetary sleight of hand in addition to Congressional reluctance to commit to victory.
Also, the bean counters at the Department of the Army continue to use meaningless or wildly unrealistic planning factors for calculating wartime costs. Gen. Schoomaker sets the record straight about battlefield operations:
In Operation Iraqi Freedom, for example, crews are driving tanks in excess of 4,000 miles per year – five times more than programmed annual usage rates of 800 miles.
To the layman, this huge error may be chalked up to an estimate based on historical data from the previous years of OIF that didn’t play out due to unforeseen events, but it isn’t. This 800 mile planning factor was used in the late 80s in a peacetime training environment! To use this figure for budget programming in war over 20 years later is either a case of gross negligence or incompetence, or both.
We are falling behind
The SecDef took the bold move of recalling Gen. Schoomaker out of retirement to lead the US Army in a momentous time in our history. As evidenced by his candor and courage in his Congressional statement, the General did not disappoint. He realizes that our country is in a war of national survival, and as the Army’s top leader, he is willing to drop all political niceties in order to field a fully capable Army.
His sobering assessment comes at a critical time. We are in the third year of a massive reconstruction effort in Iraq that is too slowly coming to fruition mainly due to a one-year Sitzkrieg that allowed remnants of Saddam’s Baathist army to escape and regroup. Diplomatic options are going nowhere concerning Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs; perhaps we are not yet capable of conducting any meaningful military action. I sincerely hope this is not the case. And now, both the western and eastern anchors of our strategic maneuver in the Central Region have come under attack.
Under the President’s watch, the so-called pro-defense Republican executive branch and the Republican controlled Congress have lost a lot of credibility by not confronting Clinton holdovers in the defense establishment and the intelligence community. The Army is now paying the price for not dealing with our internal enemies and for continuing to kowtow to both defense and non-defense special interests.
When will our leaders get serious about this war?
Douglas Hanson is the national security correspondent of The American Thinker.
I was a draftee. In 1965 I was a feckless youth of nineteen, drafted right out of college. (Yes, out of college despite the general belief that there was an “automatic” deferment for college students.)
After training, I was sent to Germany, where I found myself guarding an ammo depot. I volunteered to go to Vietnam, arriving in November 1967.
I guess one might think I was unlucky to have been drafted right out of the classroom.
It was the best thing that ever happened to me.
So, as you can probably guess, I’m for a draft of ALL young people right after high school. Whether they go into the military, into health services, build hiking trails, help the elderly or handicapped, pick up trash along the highway, guard the borders or whatever, they all should serve our nation. That, my friends, is way to build a sense of discipline, ownership and maturity in each succeeding generation of Americans.
Thanks. Will pass along the thanks to my sons.
Bill Clinton's Reduction in Forces (RIF) Act of 1993.
The US spends more on defense than the rest of the world combined. Since it is considered discretionary spending, we will be hard pressed to maintain even current levels as the entitlement programs (mandatory spending) become a bigger burden on our budget. The entitlement programs are on automatic pilot tied to formulas and economic conditions. Like Europe, we will have to start making some hard decisions on guns and butter.
The so-called peace dividend and military reductions started in the Bush 41 administration. After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the politicians started eviscerting DOD, which was one of the few agencies in government that actually suffered a reduction.
I remember. But a House and Senate majority of Democrats (before 1994) weren't exactly posturing to stop this insanity either. They were spinning like lap dogs!
Both parties were guilty of looking at DOD as a golden goose to supply them with money to spend on pet programs and balance the budget. It is hard to blame just Clinton when Congress was controlled by the Reps from 1995-2001. If we are going to claim credit for things like welfare reform, then we must also bear some of the responsibility for the reduction of defense spending.
Broken Army Murtha was the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee when this all went down.
On a personal note I'd like WJ Clinton for the generous pay raise in 1996. Boosted take home by $38 bucks a month. Only problem was that the housing allowance was reduced by $40.
I had fun explaining that to my E-5's living on the California economy....And they wondered why 1998 was one of the worst military retention years on record!
To a certain extent you are correct...But the CIC puts the majority of the meat into the budget. He is repsonsible for the preparing it and ensuring the services rack and stack the requirements properly.
Reagan and Bush 41 never had a problem extracting readiness from the Dems.
I served under 5 CiC's and will never vote Rat.
To discuss the figures, let’s point out that we are also not talking about cuts in wages, but a widening gap against perceived civilian increased cost of employment (which is not necessarily the same as earnings). What the ECI actually compares against are actually federal employees and it was introduced under the Reagan administration.
The Administration proposes a percentage increase for basic pay in the budget it submits to the Congress, and the Congress enacts an increase--sometimes different from that proposed by the Administration--in the annual defense authorization act. Since 1998, the Department of Defense has adjusted the subsistence and housing allowances annually in accordance with measures of the changes in food and housing prices; previously, the Congress adjusted those allowances as well.
So once again we find that the people at the top of the military & DoD set the priorities for spending (as you clearly point out), the grunts get what they are given (as usual), and Congress has done nothing (same old same old). The same people who have been running the Congress (GoP) also voted to back the invasion of Iraq without checking that the administration and DoD had actually prepared for after the ‘Mission Accomplished’ party. (Did anyone else hear the sound of balls being dropped over the sound of bombs and party poppers?)
Re: "In contrast, at the height of the Second World War, Defense expenditures exceeded 38 percent of our Gross Domestic Product."
Of course, at that time the US was fighting a naval war in two theatres, massively updating and developing the Manhatten Project, but As far as I know, al-Qaeda doesn’t have a navy and the US already has the bomb, so what exactly would you spend the other 34% of GDP on???
As a matter of fact, the total US government spending was never more that 15.2% of GDP in the 90s (in 1991, actually, in the in the middle of a recession), and the dangers of spending such a huge amount of national income are creating a welfare culture amongst industries that become dependent on the state for work, since private investment would dry up under the burden of onerous tax burden to fund this sort of spending.
The last great empire to think it could maintain its power and influence through military spending and throwing its weight around on the world stage was the British Empire, and, ladies & gentlemen, the sun has set on that.
Ok. So what percentage would you use and how would you project power and influence?
I would emphasise the word INFLUENCE over power. The US influences world affairs either way, by virtue of its economy. When America sneezes the world catches cold. Simply use that leverage to maximise the benefits to the American people. This is best done by diplomacy, commerce; making people talk & trade to resolve their differences.
Projecting your power easy and the US military is recognised worldwide as the only superpower. A strong military is the best DEFENCE, but moving into offensive mode just allows your enemy to assess your capabilities and weaknesses. So using your power actually weakens it. It is best to ‘talk quietly and carry a big stick’. Wave the stick around and you suggest that some just needs a bigger stick to beat you with.
Put the military to work rebuilding countries and their infrastructure, instead of demolishing them and you win friends & influence people. Look at the inroads China is making around the world without firing a shot, as America’s influence declines while it is tied up in a war in Iraq.
Influencing nations is always more effective and cheaper than threatening and delivering retribution. Look at the results in Libya - it’s a result of economic interest (despite what Dick & Don might claim). You cannot rile a man to fight on a full stomach but hungry people have nothing to loose.
In a country as wealthy as the US 5% of GDP as military spending is more than sufficient, if it is spent wisely. By wisely, I mean efficiently I mean efficiently and by ending the pork-barrel no-contest contracts. Certainly, the military needs more funding, but why does it rely on civilian contractors to deliver everything? Those costs are inflated by profits (at tax-payers expense), that do not arm, clothe or protect the troops.
For a workable example of how to influence and project power, how about this: instead of wasting millions of Dollars destroying poppy fields in Afghanistan, and upsetting the locals to the point that they welcome back the Taliban, why not buy up the crop?
It would:
- be cheaper for the US
- provide local farmers with an income that is not dependant on local warlords (who run the drugs trade).
- undermine the warlords, who would not be able to fund their private armies
- strengthen the hand of the central government in Afghanistan (US allies)
- demonstrate that democracy can improve the lot of the average Afghan
- undermine support for the resurgent Taliban
- reduce the supply of heroin
- drive up illegal narcotics prices
- deterring some people from taking the stuff
- make the country safer for our troops.
Take it a step further: Turn the opium into licensed products, like morphine, to sell to other Third World nations where our own drugs companies don’t want to sell pain killers at affordable rates. It would provide Afghanistan with a legitimate income source and our forces could concentrate on rebuilding a prosperous ally rather than fighting a war we cannot win in the long term.
A policy that stabilises an ally, wins over developing nations and interests more nations in joining our party rather than the other guy’s. Friends looking for partners are better than enemies looking for revenge.
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When was Bubba's last day on the job? Nearly six years ago?
I saw the same thing-during the buyout I said the only one that would stay were NCOs
NCO=No Chance Outside
I watched a lot of very good people run. If I had been eligible, I would have too. Many of the idiots that were left behind are now in the SNCO and officer ranks-making policy.
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Breaking news: Newbie renders herself forever irrelevant by arguing that Bush took us to war to avenge daddy.
Why don't elaborate what you mean. I wouldn't want to misconstrue your questions.
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