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Coinciding with the arrival of Obama and his deputies in Washington, the Center for Defense Information is releasing America's Defense Meltdown -- Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress, a primer on what is wrong with our defense system written by men with long and honorable experience in the bowels of the military services and Pentagon bureaucracy. The book's editor, Winslow Wheeler, is familiar to readers of this site for his acrid and knowledgeable commentaries on the defense establishment. CounterPuncher Andrew Cockburn interviews him about the book and its message.
Andrew Cockburn: You say in your preface that "the vast majority, perhaps even all, of Congress, the general officer corps of the armed forces, top management of American defense manufacturers, prominent members of Washington's think tank community and nationally recognized 'defense journalists' will hate this book." Why is that?
Winslow Wheeler: The conventional wisdom amongst the elite in Washington is that they have done a pretty good job of taking care of our national defense, that things may be a little expensive but we have the best armed forces in the world, perhaps even in history, and we do the best for our troops by giving them the world's most sophisticated equipment which is, of course, the most effective. We have, so the elite asserts, demonstrated our ability by knocking off Saddam Hussein's forces twice and are in general a model to the rest of the world on how to build equipment and provide for forces. That's all crap. None of it is true. None of it stands up to scrutiny.
Let's tick through it. First of all, we now have the largest defense budget in inflation-adjusted dollars since the end of World War Two. That has bought the smallest military establishment we have had since the end of World War Two. We now have fewer navy combat ships and submarines, fewer combat aircraft and fewer army fighting units than we have had at any point since the end of World War Two. Our major items of equipment are on average older than at any time during this period. Key elements of our fighting forces are badly trained. In other words we're getting less for more. People point to the two wars against Saddam Hussein. His armed forces were pitifully incompetent and even against them in both the 1991 and 2003 gulf wars we demonstrated serious deficiencies while overestimating how good we were.
Cockburn: But is the U.S. likely to be facing anyone better in the near future?
Wheeler: Apparently we are right now. In Afghanistan things are going south, rapidly. In Iraq people seem to think the surge saved things, but far more important than the so-called surge in reducing American casualties has been the purchase of Sunni co-operation with hefty bribes and the ceasefire that was brokered not by us but by Iran to get Muqtada al-Sadr's forces to sit on the sidelines. Time after time we read in the press about how American air units have killed civilians, how American ground units have killed civilians. We have a huge technological edge against these opponents and yet they are able not just to survive against us but fight us all too effectively.
Cockburn: What brought the U.S. to this sorry state of affairs?
Wheeler: The fundamental reason, I believe, is that we are not interested in what works best in combat. Instead, our defense structure in Washington is interested in other things. In Congress they're interested in jobs and campaign contributions. In the Pentagon they're interested in various political and bureaucratic agendas. They're not paying attention to the lessons of combat history. A bloated, declining military structure is the result.
Cockburn: Surely you're not suggesting that our leaders in uniform, as opposed to those interfering civilians [sound of Wheeler laughing] aren't interested in producing the most combat-efficient force possible?
Wheeler: I was laughing because that's the bilgewater that they keep on pumping - and believing, I'm sure - on Capitol Hill. If you look at the record, a lot of our military leadership is very questionable. During the 2003 march to Baghdad the commanders had to pause simply out of panic at the minimal opposition they were facing, coupled with some poor weather and a supply problem. None of the commanders warned the public, or the president, about the problems that we encountered in Iraq.
People point to [former army chief of staff] General Eric Shinseki as the great hero who told us that we needed a larger invasion and occupation force and was ignored. That argument simply doesn't work. The idea that more Christian, white American soldiers occupying an alien country would have prevented an insurgency is ridiculous.
Cockburn: We might also pause to note that Shinseki gave his famous warning just three weeks before the invasion, having remained totally mute for the year of buildup when a public statement might actually have made a difference. Anyway, criticism of the Pentagon is normally considered liberal turf, but I believe you yourself served as a Republican staffer on the hill for many years and your contributors don't look like too dovish a crew. Can you tell us a little more about who put this book together?
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Andrew Cockburn is the author of several books, including, most recently, Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy.
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