-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/01/opinion/01OHAN.html?ex=1010552400&en
=ad5654db2adbfac6&ei=5040&partner=MOREOVER
>>>Two issues with this article. (1) As pointed out in my "Blackhawk
Down" post, Somalia was in progress when Bill Jeff was new to the
presidency; plans even for Afghanland may have been in work since
last July but, even so, they took at least a month to get moving
AFTER 9-11-01. The instantaneous response concept is a myth. (2)
Bill Jeff also worked with a military that Bush(1)-Cheney envisioned
for the "won" Cold War. Budget forecasts (available at FAS.ORG) for
years following the Desert Storm/Shield charade were much in line
with what BJ worked with. Resulting from B(1)-Cheney was the
reorganisation of various segments of the military, PRIOR to BJ's
being even a twinkle in the eyes of the Democrats. I'm not sticking
up for BJ (still think he should have resigned in 1998 (Illuminatiaqs
notwithstanding)) but I believe "credit" should be given to the
perpetrators of the "hollow" military. A<>E<>R <<<
}}}>Begin
January 1, 2002
Winning With the Military Clinton Left Behind
By MICHAEL O'HANLON
ASHINGTON
Just over a year ago, George Bush and Dick Cheney were campaigning
hard on the theme that Bill Clinton and Al Gore had run down the
United States military. Picking up a traditional Republican refrain,
they claimed that defense cuts under President Clinton had gone too
far, that the armed forces had been overused badly, that readiness
was poor.
But now President Bush stands on the verge of winning a war with the
military that Bill Clinton bequeathed him. Just as in NATO's 1999 war
against Serbia, the United States military has led coalition forces
to a decisive
victory while suffering very few casualties in the process.
Some might wish to give the young Bush administration and its impressive secretary of
defense, Donald Rumsfeld, primary credit for the performance of American forces in
Afghanistan. The administration developed an effecti
ve war plan that defeated the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and it has a sound broader
strategy in the struggle against terrorism.
But it is still Bill Clinton's military that has actually been winning this war. The
Bush administration had barely started to make its mark on defense policy before
hostilities in Afghanistan began. Last spring, it provi
ded a $5 billion supplemental appropriation for the 2001 defense budget, but that
constituted less than 2 percent of defense spending for the year and had hardly begun
to be noticed before the war began.
The Bush administration also announced the results of a new strategic review on Sept.
30. But such a review cannot affect military operations that begin within days of its
release. Moreover, the review did not reverse any
of Bill Clinton's military force cuts, despite the claims of the Bush campaign last
year that those reductions had gone too far. In most respects, the review looked very
much like what one might have expected a Clinton o
r Gore administration to produce.
Some would prefer to credit Ronald Reagan or President Bush's father with the fine
military this country now possesses. They rescued the armed forces from a post-Vietnam
malaise and made the overwhelming victory in Desert
Storm possible. They were also much more popular among America's military personnel
than Bill Clinton ever was.
But Bill Clinton did not squander their legacy. The performance of American forces in
the Balkans in the late 1990's and in Afghanistan in 2001 has been outstanding. And
the military has wielded new weapons and new concep
ts in these recent campaigns that it did not possess during Desert Storm: several
types of guided weapons, unmanned aerial vehicles, near-real-time communications
systems.
There were some setbacks. The Clinton administration misused military power during its
first year in office in Somalia and then in Haiti; the results were needless American
deaths in the first instance and a poorly planne
d, aborted mission in the second. Morale was low, and recruitment and retention posed
problems. Cuts in defense spending to help balance the federal budget went too far in
some cases — until the Republican Congress steppe
d in and insisted on adding money for the Pentagon. And the Clinton administration and
the uniformed military struggled with how to sustain numerous small missions overseas
without overusing certain parts of the armed for
ces.
Despite these problems, which put a drag on military readiness, statistical measures
of combat preparedness — the condition of equipment, training standards met by pilots
and troops, aptitude scores and experience levels
of personnel — compared relatively favorably with those in the Reagan years. And by
the end of Mr. Clinton's second term, increases in pay and innovations in the force
structure helped to resolve some of the morale, recru
iting and retention problems that had been serious in the mid-90's.
Of course, the main credit for the quality of America's military must go to its own
personnel. But the victory in Afghanistan, coming on the heels of the successful
action against Serbia in 1999, shows that the Clinton ad
ministration maintained a strong and focused military able to carry out a post-cold
war mission.
Michael O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information
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