It is a sorry day when a sergeant stationed in Iraq feels compelled to lay down his weapon and pick up a pen to refute the ongoing deceptions and lies disseminated by America's most influential newspaper, The New York Crimes Times. Sick.
Sergeant Christopher Whitaker, Camp Striker, Iraq wrote me (unsolicited) the following email but it is plain we share the same sentiments, particularly concerning Secretary Rumsfeld;
Recently, my father sent me an editorial from the 17 November New York Times, called “The Army We Need.” As a service member currently serving in Iraq, I found it to be little more than typical leftist pablum, restating of the obvious and, most glaringly, gloating over Secretary Rumsfeld’s “incompetence.” I felt it was enough of an insult that I had to reply. I have enclosed my submission in an attachment. I apologize for the length, but if you want to really crush your enemies, you have to be thorough.
It's not long enough, Sergeant. Bless you and keep you safe. Here is his point by point;
Refutation of New York Times Editorial “The Army We Need” 19 November 2006
In their editorial entitled The Army We Need, the New York Times editorial staff displays their ignorance of both the nature and history of the United States military both previous to and during the current Administration. In their zeal to portray the outgoing Secretary of Defense, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld, as the architect of the military’s supposed collapse, they neglect a number of facts. These facts show that, contrary to the Times’ editors’ opinions, it is the hangover from the Clinton administration’s Defense inadequacies that has led to the majority of the military’s training and equipment deficiencies.
It was during President Clinton’s presidency that the significant drawdown of the defense budget began. From 1992 to 1996, the defense budget was reduced from $339 billion to $277 billion. This slashing of the defense budget was the primary source of the “Peace Dividend” that the Clinton Administration touted as its “budget surplus.” In effect, the Clinton Administration was mortgaging the military’s future to achieve a false “savings.” It is important to understand the nature of military spending in order to truly understand why this draw down was so destructive to the military the United States found itself with prior to the events of September 11, 2001.
The need for military spending is determined not just by how many soldiers or tanks or airmen or aircraft the military purchases. All these wonderful systems and people require maintenance, training, modernization and replacement. The current generation of systems the military is using was originally purchased during the Reagan military build up of the Cold War. While many of these systems were designed to be updated, there is a limit to how much updating that can be done on a system more than 20 years old. At some point it becomes more expensive to repair and upgrade the weapons system than it does to procure a new, updated system. Given the glacial speed and unpredictable nature of the procurement process, it behooves the military to continually acquire new and improved systems. The greatest shortfall forced on the military by the Clinton era drawdown was the loss of research and development dollars that lead to the development of new systems. In addition, the loss of those dollars meant that fewer defense dollars were available for the upgrade of current systems and even the procurement of spare parts. Procurement of newer systems was also delayed, as systems tend to be acquired over several years, partly due to costs, but also because complicated systems, like F-22’s, or M-1A3 tanks cannot be bought in bulk as they take a fair amount of lead time to build and the contractor doesn’t exactly keep a bunch of stock sitting around. The funding shortfall is estimated to be upwards of $50 billion. That much money could go a long way towards providing much needed parts, equipment and training. In addition, much of the spending during the era went towards contingency operations and other readiness shortfalls; it did not pay for the deferred modernization that was has been so desperately.
The article claims that Secretary Rumsfeld refused to adapt, yet adaptation for a new type of conflict and style of engagement is exactly what the former Secretary was trying to achieve. The military had previously been configured for set-piece force-on-force battles with primarily heavy units in areas where maneuver was possible. However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact there are few, if any, opponents that can even come close to matching the battlefield firepower of the US military. This means that the current force structure is dramatically unsuited to fighting the light, rapid conflicts of the new era. In addition, transitioning the force to a leaner, meaner, and more easily deployable one was the Secretary’s primary aim. It is not the Secretary of Defense that was slow and resistant to change, but the bureaucratic inertia of the United States military. The purpose of this transition was to create a force that used the US’s singular advantages: speed, and the ability to apply overwhelming firepower with pinpoint accuracy, without the need for massive and unwieldy blocks of tanks and armored vehicles. The utter annihilation of the Republican Guard during the second Iraq War is evidence of the gradual evolution towards that end. Overwhelming force does not necessarily require massive numbers of troops and vehicles, which are unwieldy at best, but the author seems to have little awareness of military capability in this regard.
The author also states that Secretary Rumsfeld was opposed to the “...Clintonian notion of using the United States military to secure and rebuild broken states.” Apparently the author is not aware of the purpose of a military. It is not a kind of gigantic Peace Corps that is sent in to fix broken states. The purpose of the military is to defend the nation’s interests and it does that by obliterating the enemy’s ability to threaten those interests. The military is not equipped, trained, or interested in the kind of feel-good, half-hearted nation building of which the author is apparently enamored. In addition, it is apparent that this kind of thing simply does not work, as evidenced by the failure in Bosnia/Herzegovina. Admittedly, much of the failure was one of tactical and strategic failure by politicians, but it is also evidence that the military is ill-suited to the kind of mission the Clinton Administration had in mind. To make things simple, the military is very good at breaking things, but is not trained or designed to put them back together. The author refers to the “…need to renew the morale and confidence of America’s serving men and women…” As a current service member, currently serving in Iraq, I am not sure of what “morale problem” the author is referring to. The primary morale problem for most service-men and women is the continual uncertainty that the mission will end without completion. In addition, the ridiculously restrictive Rules of Engagement that US forces have to work under wear away at a force that is trained to be aggressive and to take initiative to find, fix, and destroy the enemy. As far as “…restoring the appeal of career military service for the brightest young officers…,” I wonder to what the author is referring. After all, it is those on his side of the argument, along with fools such as Senator Kerry and Representative Murtha that have consistently denigrated the military profession and attempted to make it an undesirable career for America’s best and brightest. Fortunately, their efforts have failed miserably. The current force, at both the officer and enlisted levels, is the best educated and most capable military force in the history of the profession of arms. I would readily compare the level of education, intelligence and character of current commissioned officers to the rest of the “best and brightest” to which the author refers.
It is true that the rapid rotations back to Iraq for a number of units, the 10th Mountain Division (my own unit) especially, has been a strain both on the unit as a whole and on the individuals. The reasons, however, have little to do with Secretary Rumsfeld’s machinations, but instead with the previous administration’s failure. As I have said previously, the Army has for a long time been designed to fight the Soviet threat, with set-piece force-on-force battles involving the crashing together of massive armored formations. However, the conflict in Iraq is exactly the opposite of this paradigm; it is a “light fight,” which demands speed, maneuver, and flexibility, all things that infantry units do well, but for which armored units are neither trained nor particularly capable. Operations in Iraq are COIN (Counter Insurgency) operations, with small groups of soldiers seeking out their insurgent counterparts. Heavy armor is not helpful in this regard as it is designed for a completely different form of combat, the crushing embrace of the tank battle, where weight and firepower, rather than rapid response and maneuver are more important. However, in the COIN operation, speed, response time, flexibility, creativity and the ability to move accurate firepower to where it is needed are much more important than sheer weight of metal, thus the introduction of the Stryker AFV, and the M1114 Up-armored, turreted Humvee. Unfortunately, change comes slowly to such a massive and bureaucratic organization like the Army. The entire thrust of Secretary Rumsfeld’s reforms was not to eliminate completely the armored forces, after all there will be conflicts where their strengths will be needed, but instead to make the Army’s forces more mobile, more easily and rapidly deployable. It is a logistical nightmare to move a heavy armored brigade, much less a division, anywhere and the dearth of transportation assets, which have been allowed to decay over the last 20 years, makes it even more difficult. This means that everything but the soldiers and their personal gear must go by sea, and makes deployment take weeks instead of mere days. The introduction of “leaner, meaner” forces, coupled with the increasingly “joint” capabilities of the services, would dramatically increase the ability of the military to project power. Joint operations, most recently exemplified by our campaign in Afghanistan increase exponentially the military’s ability to apply overwhelming firepower directly where it is needed with pinpoint accuracy. This enables the military to deploy fewer troops to achieve objectives that would before have required far larger forces and a much greater physical and logistical footprint. In addition, the ability to deploy smaller units would generate a significant cost savings. Of course, this requires a significant shift in emphasis away from overpriced and unnecessary weapons systems (the cancelled Crusader project) back towards a massive rebuilding of the military’s neglected organic transportation and logistical capabilities. The changes that the Secretary has advocated, and for which he has faced much stubborn resistance and unfair criticism, take time to bring to fruition. It is not simply a matter of saying, “Make it so,” but also requires tremendous disruption of units’ readiness while they change over to the new equipment, tactics, and force structure. The Secretary’s changes are not merely at the company and battalion level, but involve a fundamental change in the command structure. The Army has always done things from the Division and Corps level and has done things in division or corps strength. As a division is a very large unit, naturally it moves rather ponderously. The new paradigm involves the use of Brigade-sized elements that are modular in nature, much quicker to act and react, and substantially easier and quicker to deploy. With the joint-service nature of operations, where Army and Marine units are supported directly by Air Force and Navy air assets, smaller units with TOE’s tailored expressly for their particular mission are able to apply unheard of firepower to a target, while maintaining their flexibility and responsiveness. While there are valid disagreements over these reforms, the bottom line is that the military must shift its paradigms in response to changing geopolitical and economic realities in order to remain both capable and relevant. While honest individuals can differ on the right way to achieve these ends, the Secretary’s method certain makes sense to this soldier.
How fascinating that the author now decides that the ground-pounders should be allowed to recruit up to greater strength. Is this not what the Bush administration has been trying to do for the last five years, over the objections of his opponents and the New York Times? Has not the Times consistently bemoaned the recruitment failure, even as the services consistently report meeting or exceeding recruiting goals? The author seems not to understand that it is not simply a process of going out and shanghaiing 100,000 more people and stuffing them in uniforms. These individuals must be carefully screened, selected and trained properly before they can be a useful member of the service. This is not your minimum-wage job at the local fast-food joint. Recruiting and training a member of the armed services is a long, drawn out procedure that takes months, not merely days, to achieve. Some specialties require up to a year to fully train the service member. I find it strange that the author completely ignores the fact that this process has already been started by the current administration, and it is his party that has been obstructing attempts to achieve this end. Yet now it becomes essential, where previously he would have considered it unnecessary.
I would also ask what the author means by “…two new divisions for peacekeeping and stabilization missions…” No military in its right mind is going to dedicate up to 50,000 people for an essentially non-military mission that can be handled by other supposed “allied” militaries or contractors and security services, freeing up valuable combat troops for real combat missions, which is what the US Army, and the Marine Corps, is for. Why is the Army, because that’s who would end up footing the bill, going to spend colossal amounts of money on units that are completely antithetical to its primary mission? Of course, since the author plainly does not understand the military mission, it is no surprise that he makes this kind of asinine suggestion.
What exactly does the author mean by “…reordering priorities within the defense budget…?” While there has been a hefty increase in defense spending, it is barely back to pre-Clinton-era levels, and there is much “debt,” which I have discussed earlier, that still remains to be caught up. There is a tremendous amount of modernization, procurement, and R&D debt that was neglected during the rape of the defense budget during the Clinton administration in favor of the fictional “peace dividend.” There can be honest debate about the practicalities of F-22’s versus F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, or this weapon system versus that one, and such debates were the hallmark of Secretary Rumsfeld’s tenure. However, what the author fails to understand is that the “War on Terror,” really the war on Islamic extremism, is not going to be the last conflict in which the United States< is going to find itself involved. Not only must we adapt to the current conflict, but we must be prepared for future conflicts. Unfortunately, cutting-edge technologies are expensive, but in order for the United States military to remain the premier military power in the world, which will be necessary as Europe appeases itself into oblivion, those dollars must be spent. The current supremacy of the United States military is not an accident of fate, it is the result of deliberate investment in high-quality, high-technology, well-integrated systems that square and cube the effectiveness of our fighting men and women. Without these systems, and the capabilities they offer, we will fall rapidly behind developing countries like China and India who, while we are not in conflict at the moment, could become adversaries down the road.
There is another unfortunate fact that the author neglects. While he is correct that there is a tremendous and unnecessary quantity of Congressional and budgetary pork that is poured into the defense industry, the fact remains that these are very specialized industries with limited demand for their products. If the money does not continue to pour in to sustain these industries, they will atrophy and disappear as the extremely specialized engineers, researchers, and assembly-line workers leave for other employment as theirs dries up. A classic case is the sale of US-built M-1 Abrams tanks to close allies. There was much protest when this first came out, but the explanation was simple: the US military does not produce enough demand to keep the expensive production lines in business. These are such specialized production processes, that if they are kept active they will cease to exist, as they are much too expensive to keep around if they are not being used. Mothballing is also an impossibility as, again, it is prohibitively expensive to keep such single-use equipment around, not to mention the specialist personnel that are needed to design and build the systems. While optimizing the use of defense dollars is an essential and very desirable end, going back to the Clinton era of dumping R&D dollars, or “prioritizing” the defense budget the way the author would have it, is neither wise, nor reasonable.
The rest of the article is such typical self-evident leftist nonsense that it is not worth spending time to point out the obvious logical inconsistencies. It is obvious that the author’s understanding of military reality is limited at best and his understanding of the systems the military uses even more so. Perhaps he should spend a little time with persons from the military, getting a more complete and valid understanding of its workings before offering a prescription based on bias and ignorance that would be even more damaging to the military than his beloved President Clinton ever could.
Thank you Sergeant. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Click below for the editorial Sargeant Whitaker is refuting;
I don't think Westerners should waste hundreds of billions of dollars on exporting democracy to an Islamic country where it can never flourish, while Muslims are destroying democrcay in the West, no. As the examples of Iraq and "Palestine" are showing us, democracy has to be about more than just one man, one vote.
Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner strongly disagrees with a plea for a ban on parties seeking to launch Islamic law in the Netherlands. "For me it is clear: if two-thirds of the Dutch population should want to introduce the sharia tomorrow, then the possibility should exist."
This dilemma can be solved by stating the following: Our goal is not democracy in itself, meaning elections and one man one vote, but freedom of conscience and speech, respect for property rights and minorities, the right to bear arms and self-defense, equality before the law and the rule of law - and by that I mean secular law – in addition to such principles as formal constraints on the power of the rulers and the consent of the people. Free elections may be a means of achieving this end, but it is not the end in itself. We shouldn't confuse the tools with the primary goal.
Two central concepts in sharia are the notions of "blasphemy" and "apostasy," both incurring the death penalty. These laws are incompatible with the ancient Western ideas of freedom of conscience and of speech. Thus, sharia is anathema to the goals of democracy. Sharia is also hostile to equality before the law...
#47 find
"Don't tread on our abortion-on-demand and same-sex marriage platforms, and we don't give a flip what you do to your people. It's all about us".
As I have repeatedly screamed for anyone to hear - Radical Feminism WAS NEVER ABOUT WOMEN ! It is about establishing GENDER-BASED SOCIALISM!
Not at all about protecting or supporting women in their real lives. I was a member of NOW during the beginnings of the feminist movement. It is just another front for all manners of communism, socialism and all sorts of evil. It disguises itself in high-minded rhetoric but it is the same old crapola. Believe me.
I don't know where you got your quoted text from, but it is dead on, as was your comment.
Our Founding Fathers were under no illusions about democracy. They knew that it would lead to ruin. That's why they created a constitutional republic, NOT a "democracy."
In a pure democracy, nothing prevents the majority from confiscating the property of the minority. Nothing keeps the majority from denying the rights of the minority. Hell, there is absolutely nothing to prevent the majority from exterminating the minority.
The Founders knew that like the back of their hands. They wanted nothing to do with "democracy".
Pure democracy will lead inevitably to socialism.
It just drives me stark raving crazy when I hear American politicians from both parties prattle on about "democracy" as if it were the be-all and end-all of everything.
There used to be qualifications for voting. At first one had to own land in order to vote. There have also been literacy tests and poll taxes. These helped to winnow out people who would vote frivolously.
But, alas, in American history, these methods were often abused to prevent black people from voting. That was wrong. But the solutions were entirely wrong-headed.
The property-owning requirement: That discriminated against black people because black people weren't allowed to own property. Solution: Allow black people to own property. NOT throw out the property-owning requirement for voters.
Literacy tests: That discriminated against black people because it used to be illegal to educate black people. Solution: Get rid of those laws and allow the education of black people. NOT throw out literacy requirements for voters.
Poll taxes: There was nothing wrong with them. They were small fees to be paid when voting. They helped discourage people voting for frivolous reasons. As long as they were applied equally to everybody, there was no reason to get rid of them.
I don't want everybody voting. I don't want somebody with an 80 IQ cancelling out my vote. I don't want someone who thinks they have a right to the fruits of my labor voting for politicians who will confiscate my earnings to redistribute to them.
Pure democracy will lead inevitably to socialism.
For those who ask, "where are the feminists," author and feminist Phyllis Chessler speaks on this subject quite a bit. She is a fascinating woman and has a website at [Link: www.phyllis-chesler.com...]
The American feminists are too busy securing free daycare for the kids they decided not to kill. See, subsidized daycare for the spoiled American career woman is the big human rights issue of our day. What the "brown women" CHOOSE to do in their own societies is none of our business, you see.