Posted on 03/05/2003 11:01:16 AM PST by bmastiff
2. A-76 UPDATE -- CENTER FOR MILITARY HISTORY TARGETED -- IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED! Some weeks ago, we reported on the A-76 effort to contract out archeological research within the National Park Service ("NPS and Interior Agency Professionals Subjected to A-76 Outsourcing Assessments;" NCH WASHINGTON UPDATE, Vol. 9 #4; 30 January 2003). Now we have information on a history office being targeted for outsourcing -- the Department of the Army's Center for Military History (CMH).
The Department of Army has 154,910 positions held by civilian employees and some 58,727 held by soldiers who hold what are considered "non-core" positions. Because these positions are all not considered "inherently governmental" they are eligible for public-private competition. According to an Army spokesperson, in theory, outsourcing "would free up military manpower for core functions and the global war on terrorism" and thereby use manpower as efficiently as possible "before making it necessary to request additional tax-payer resources."
In January 2003, impacted Army operations chiefs were asked to submit requests to be exempted from what is being called the "Third Wave" of privatization. In a sweeping decision issued 21 February, Dr. John Anderson of the Army's Manpower and Reserve Affairs denied the Center of Military History's request for an exemption from the contracting scheme. According to Anderson who has a doctorate in philosophy and law, "Military history is not a core competency, not required by statute nor inherently governmental, and there is no basis for military performance of the function. Therefore the function can be divested, transferred to another agency, or competed as a matter of managerial decision."
Anderson even goes so far as to suggest that this function might be transferred to the Smithsonian Institution. Should this be adopted as the appropriate course of action, military history could be zeroed out entirely and the CMH as well as field military history detachments would not even have an opportunity to compete -- the function would be simply eliminated.
Sources inside the CMH report that the Army's history operation has 10 days to prepare a response to the decision (coming due 2 March) to "vet issues from a policy standpoint." Insiders see little hope that Anderson will reverse the recommendations of his hand-picked staff (the Non-Core Competency Working Group) on this issue. Ultimately, the decision memo will be passed to the Executive Oversight Committee of the Non-Core Competency Working Group for endorsement before being forwarded to the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs -- Reginald Brown -- who is expected to weigh in with the Oversight Committee recommendation. Secretary of the Army Thomas White has delegated the ultimate authority for this decision to Brown.
NCH ACTION ITEM! Because of the near autonomous nature of the Army and because the military hierarchy is rarely responsive to public or media pressure, supporters of Army history programs have but only one alternative -- political pressure. Individuals and organizations wishing to express their views on this matter are urged to immediately contact members of Congress. Communicate not by letter but via e-mail or fax (for a listing of members of Congress office addresses via zip code, tap into: http://www.house.gov/writerep/ and ;. We recommend the message be simple and clear -- the Center for Military History, indeed the entire Department of the Army military history program should be exempted from A-76 "outsourcing" consideration. After communicating with your Congressional representative ask for a written response from the member to your concerns.
Right now, of particular importance are communications with key members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees (for the Senate membership listing tap into:; for the House listing, tap into: ;. If you are a constituent of Senator John Warner (R-VA) who chairs the Senate Committee on Armed Services, or Carl Levin (D-MI) the Ranking member of this committee, or of committee members Edward Kennedy (D-MA), or Robert C Byrd (D-WV) please make contact today! On the House side, if you are a constituent of Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA) who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, or members Joel Hefley (R-CO), Tom Cole (R-OK), or John Spratt (D-SC) please contact them today. The future of federal government military history programs may well rest in your hands.
(Excerpt) Read more at hnn.us ...
Subj: US Army History Center which refutes Bellesiles needs to be saved
1) In 2000, historian Michael Bellesiles published "Arming America" to great acclaim by academic historians and by gun control groups. "Arming America" was called the "NRA's worse nightmare" because it argued that (a) the Revolutionary War citizens had few guns and (b) the citizen militias were incompetent and couldn't fight anyway. What was not mentioned in the mainstream press was that "Arming America" was the spearhead of a strong campaign by some prominent historians to overturn the Second Amendment in a precedent-setting Supreme Court case, US vs Emerson. (See http://historynewsnetwork.org/articles/article.html?id=741 and updates at http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-oieahc&month=0301&week=e&msg=5%2b8SY5LwwM8pBlTCpRhMcA&user=&pw= )
In 2000, Arming America was initially greeted with great acclaim by reviewers in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and by gun control advocacy groups. Some prominent historians allied with Michael Bellesiles in gun control advocacy in the US vs Emerson campaign praised Arming America highly --without noting their ideological alliance with Bellesiles. Arming America received History’s two highest awards -- the Binkley-Stephenson and the Bancroft prize.
However, review of Arming America by scholars outside of academia’s history departments triggered a rising tide of criticism, articles in several national newspapers, and an investigation by Mr Bellesiles’ Emory University. After Emory’s Committee of outside experts reached a negative judgment on his research methods, Mr Bellesiles resigned from at tenured professorship at Emory University, Columbia University rescinded the Bancroft Prize award to Mr Bellesiles, and Knopf decided to cease publication of Arming America. See http://hnn.us/articles/691.html
2) Among the best refutations of Bellesiles was a reference --"American Military History" done by the US Army's Center of Military History (CMH). Throughout 2002, I cited this reference repeatedly when discussing Arming America in the historians' H-OIEAHC forum and in the Arming America discussion sponsored by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
3) Now, however, the CMH is slated for destruction -- as a recent History News Network article notes, some Pentagon bureaucrats are considering contracting out the CMH mission to liberal academia: see http://hnn.us/comments/8923.html#center , para 2.
This is a very bad idea for several reasons. First I will explain why --then I will explain what you need to do.
4) One, many academic historians have a strong liberal bias --as shown by the uncritical acceptance of Arming America and by the fact that the major criticism of Arming America largely came from outside the history departments of academia. Even historians who are not necessarily liberal largely remained silent -- probably to avoid offending the powerful historians involved in the US vs Emerson campaign.
Two, many academic historians appear to have an institutional and individual aversion to military matters. Historians' familarity with the military appears to have greatly declined since the end of the draft. In my opinion, Bellesiles' "Arming America" -- and it's receipt of academic History's two highest honors -- indicates that many academic historians today lack the basic understanding of military operations needed to interpret historical sources.
Three, Arming America suggests that academic historians do not understand the influence that politics, diplomacy, geography, and economics exert on military operations. Arming America greatly lacks the broad perspective of CMH's American Military History and of the monographs produced at the Army's Command and General Staff College. Bellesiles failed to recognize how the militia victories at Bennington, Saratoga, King's Mountain, and Cowpens convinced the French and Spanish to provide Congress with desperately needed aid. Bellesiles failed to recognize that King George was borrowing money from Dutch bankers to finance his war -- and that the bankers cut off his credit when the southern militia showed that he could never subdue several hundred thousand armed men in a trackless wilderness. At least, King George could not do so and make any kind of a profit in commerce.
5) Proof of the above observations can be seen by comparing Bellesiles' assessments of militia performance in battles with those of CMH's "American Military History".
a)Bellesiles re Revolutionary War militia: “Many leaders believed their own prewar rhetoric that the militia could win the war; others found that notion laughable….The militia, Jefferson’s repository of courage and virtue, had not come through in times of ultimate crisis; the Continental army, the professional soldiers, had.” (Arming America, p. 193, 207)
Center for Military History: “The militia, the men who fought battles and then went home, also exhibited this spirit on many occasions. The militiamen have been generally maligned as useless by one school of thought, and glorified by another as the true victors in the war. In any balanced view it must be recognized that their contributions were great, though they would have counted for little without a Continental Army to give the American cause that continued sustenance that only a permanent force in being could give it. It was the ubiquity of the militia that made British victories over the Continentals in the field so meaningless. And the success with which the militia did operate derived from the firm political control the patriots had established over the countryside long before the British were in any position to challenge it—the situation that made the British task so difficult in the first place “ (http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/AMH/AMH-04.htm , bottom of page)
b) Bellesiles re militia in War of 1812: “In battle after battle the militia had performed terribly , if at all. The only view that most regular troops had of the militia in the midst of battle was of their backs as these “citizen-soldiers” fled in terror. “ (p. 259 )
Center for Military History: “The militia performed as well as the Regular Army. The defeats and humiliations of the Regular forces during the first years of the war matched those of the militia, just as in a later period the Kentucky volunteers at the Thames and the Maryland militia before Baltimore proved that the state citizen soldier could perform well. “ (http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/AMH/AMH-06.htm , bottom of page )
c) For detailed examples, e.g., re battles of Cowpens and New Orleans, see my following H-OIEAHC articles:
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-oieahc&month=0204&week=b&msg=ZaiNCJUF5zlXeniXAg0xzA&user=&pw=
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-oieahc&month=0204&week=b&msg=hcb2A8JxkmLiHjUXhfDIsg&user=&pw=
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-oieahc&month=0205&week=c&msg=csZZTSqxFnvjjPNWoan9nA&user=&pw=
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-oieahc&month=0206&week=c&msg=l1zZ8lNGOUj3GQG41w32Fw&user=&pw=
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-oieahc&month=0207&week=c&msg=PkrdkLRPluSObiMgdhAKPw&user=&pw=
6) In short, the Pentagon's closure of the Army's Center for Military History would be ill-advised because academic historians cannot serve the Army as well as CMH -- they have neither the inclination nor the ability to do so. The Army would be foolish to surrender it’s history to academia.
7) But the measure of CMH's value is not just what it provides the Army -- it is what CMH provides the American people as the Army's institutional memory. History is our only means for determining the long term consequences of governmental policies and laws. History is used by politicians when crafting measures to deal with current events (e.g., Homeland Security and September 11). It is used by professors of Constitutional Law in understanding the intricate checks and balances of the Constitution. It is used by students examining what it means to be an American citizen.
As an independent center of historical research, the Army’s Center for Military History(CMH)’s objective history is a badly needed counterweight to liberal propaganda from academia and the anti-gun Joyce Foundation. Propaganda like Arming America. The case files of two recent precedent-setting Second Amendment rulings -- US vs Emerson (Fifth Circuit Court of Federal Appeals) and Silveira vs Lochyer (Ninth Circuit Court ) are laded with Bellesiles’ now-questionable historical context for the Second Amendment , as described in my H-OIEAHC post cited in para 1 above. The work of the Army’s CMH is one of the authoritative rebuttals to Bellesiles’ false and misleading depictions of the early militias.
The CMH should be supported not because it takes a position in the ongoing Second Amendment debate (it does not) but because it’s objectivity, honesty, and committed professionalism are badly needed today.
The CMH should be supported because the cost savings of privatization are minor, vaguely defined and questionable. The Army would incur significant costs in privatization just in educating academicans on the nature of military operations,etc.
In closing, note that I know no one at the CMH nor have I spoken with anyone there. I support CMH because I am a grateful user of their products.
8) Here is what needs to be done (quickly):
Please Email your Congressman and Senators, expressing opposition to this action and specifically asking that the Army’s Center for Military History (CMH) be exempted from A-76 “ outsourcing” consideration. If you are pressed for time, you are welcome to enclose a copy of this letter by way of explanation.
Carbon-copy your email to the following:
a) members of the House Armed Services Committee b) members of the Senate Armed Services Committee c) Dr John Armstrong, assistant deputy assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs (don’t snicker).
The HNN article cited above indicates that Dr Armstrong made CMH subject to privatization. This article indicates that Dr Armstrong is the genius behind the wave of privatization throughout the Army--that he directed the study justifying it during the Clinton Administration: http://207.27.3.29/features/0599/0599s1.htm
d) Reginald Brown, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs (who supposedly will make the final decision)
e) The Center for Military History
f) Please also carbon copy President Bush and Lynne Cheney (wife of the Vice-President) --both of whom have voiced a strong desire to support history.
If you are pressed for time, simply note your opposition and enclosed a copy of this letter by way of explanation.
Emails for the above parties are as follows:
Your Congressman: http://www.house.gov/writerep/
Your Senators: http://www.senate.gov/
Senate Armed Services Committee: http://armed-services.senate.gov/members.htm (At least carbon copy Chairman John Warner at http://www.senate.gov/~warner/contact/contactme.htm if pressed for time
House Armed Services Committee: http://armedservices.house.gov/about/members.html (Chairman Duncan Hunter at http://www.house.gov/hunter/email.htm )
Dr John Armstrong at John.Anderson@hqda.army.mil
Reginald Brown, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, via james.wakefield@hdqa.army.mil
US Army Center for Military History at cmhonline@hqda.army.mil
President Bush at president@whitehouse.gov
Lynne Cheney via her husband at vice.president@whitehouse.gov
Sure, during the next war, let's stumble around and try whatever feels right.
To make sure that my book remains relevant and competent to the core, I have cleverly failed to actually put anything down in writing, so that my book offers the wisdom of the ages to the ever - moving - foward younger, "open minded" generations, that they shall be fulfilled by the lessons, without losing any self-esteem through feeling guilty by having any contact with something "old."
That’s plagiarism, John (lifted straight from the underground book, ‘Military Strategies for Use By Leftists in Search of a Legacy,’ by Clinton/Perry/Cohen et al).
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