Providence Journal
May 20, 2008
Memo To Defense Establishment: Win The War We're In
By Edward Achorn
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- With a new administration taking over next year, we will not have Robert Gates much longer as secretary of defense. That, at least, is a shame, because he seems to be a smart man who understands the threats America faces, and is not afraid to challenge the military establishment about it.
For instance, he has noticed that a vast part of the Pentagon budget has nothing to do with fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that our troops end up suffering for it - that tiny sliver of less than 1 percent of the population who are heroically defending the rest of us. Money gets poured into complex weapons systems while the men and women on the ground lack necessities. And he doesn't like it.
Mr. Gates, 64, spoke last week to a small group of journalists and eggheads gathered here to look at the future of the U.S. military.
"I have noticed too much of a tendency towards what might be called 'Next-War-Itis' - the propensity of much of the defense establishment to be in favor of what might be needed in a future conflict," he told us, firing a shot directly across the bow of Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Military planning is a big and complex topic that Americans are forced to confront amid all our other challenges. How do we rebuild our National Guard and Reserve units, overstressed in Iraq and Afghanistan, without breaking the budget? How much of the country's wealth do we sink into the military (the Heritage Foundation, one of the sponsors of the conference, wants a reliable 4 percent of gross domestic product every year provided to defense)? How do we meet both conventional threats and insurgencies, and what should the balance be? What about strengthening our diplomatic corps so that the military does not so quickly become the "default option" in a crisis?
In three days of meetings at the Broadmoor hotel - including a nuclear-war game in which my team, representing Israel, managed to avoid getting blown up - we could only skim the surface.
We also visited an "Iraqi village" at Fort Carson nearby - a complex of 30 buildings, including a simulated mosque, cluttered with bombed-out vehicles, hidden threats and secret stashes of weapons, used to train our people before they head out to Iraq. When soldiers return from a tour, they help update the village with the latest enemy tactics. A battery of cameras captures what the trainees did right, and wrong, for later review. As part of the training, our soldiers get shot at with aluminum projectiles filled with paint - not lethal, but sure to raise a painful welt. It doesn't look like much fun.
Mr. Gates thinks about our troops, and in his buttoned-down, low-key style, communicates moral outrage about the bureaucratic inertia that has harmed them.
He cited "scenes of squalor" in barracks at Fort Bragg, N.C., that recently greeted paratroopers returning from Afghanistan. "These were experienced, battle-tested soldiers who may be considering whether they want to make a career of the Army - troops we can ill afford to lose," he said.
He spoke of deplorable conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington, that were allowed to fester because the facility is slated to be closed.
He talked about MRAPs, the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles now used in Iraq. Pentagon honchos were reluctant to spend $20 billion producing vehicles (at $1 million apiece) they thought would have limited use beyond this war. Mr. Gates forced the issue, arguing that such vehicles might indeed be needed in future conflicts; but even if they weren't, troops deserved to have the protection now.
"There have been 150-plus attacks so far on MRAPs and all but six soldiers have survived. The casualty rate is one-third that of a Humvee, less than half that of an Abrams tank. These vehicles are saving lives," he said.
In spite of the hard slog in Iraq, those serving and their families have shown "extraordinary resilience," he said. "Morale is high, as is recruiting and retention - particularly among units either in or just returning from Iraq and Afghanistan."
In a world of limited resources and multiple threats, the Pentagon must spend money more wisely, focusing on "the most likely and lethal scenarios for our military," Mr. Gates contended. Clearly, America needs to upgrade its aircraft and naval fleet. But he argued that new weapons systems must be useful in the kind of wars the United States is likely to confront.
"It is hard to conceive of any country confronting the United States directly in conventional terms," he said. The last quarter of a century shows that military conflicts are more likely to involve smaller, irregular forces - insurgents, terrorists and guerrillas, some backed by nations.
"It is true that we would be hard-pressed to launch a major conventional ground operation elsewhere in the world at this time - but where would we sensibly do that?" Mr. Gates said, adding that the U.S. has the "ample and untapped" power to defeat "any - repeat any - adversary who committed an act of aggression" in the Persian Gulf, the Korean Peninsula or the Straits of Taiwan.
The challenge now is Iraq, since failure there would destabilize the Mideast and greatly embolden our terrorist enemies. "That is the war we are in. That is the war we must win," he said.
Edward Achorn is The Journal's deputy editorial-pages editor.


