An American Soldier Fisks the NY Times

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 10^th 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;

NYT  November 19, 2006

The Army We Need

One welcome dividend of Donald Rumsfeld’s departure from the Pentagon is that the United States will now have a chance to rebuild the Army he spent most of his tenure running down.

>Mr. Rumsfeld didn’t like the lessons the Army drew from Vietnam — that politicians should not send American troops to fight a war of choice unless they went in with overwhelming force, a clearly defined purpose and strong domestic backing. He didn’t like the Clintonian notion of using the United Statesmilitary to secure and rebuild broken states.

And when circumstances in Afghanistan,Iraq called for just the things Mr. Rumsfeld didn’t like, he refused to adapt, letting the Army, and American interests, pay the price for his arrogance.

So one of the first challenges for the next defense secretary and the next Congress is to repair, rebuild and reshape the nation’s ground forces. They need to renew the morale and confidence of America’s serving men and women and restore the appeal of career military service for the brightest young officers..

That will require building a force large enough to end more than three years of unsustainably rapid rotations of units back into battle, misuse of the National Guard, overuse of the Reserves and conscription of veterans back into active service.

Congress also needs to work harder at rebuilding the links between the battlefront and the home front that a healthy democracy needs. That does not require reinstating the draft — a bad idea for military as well as political reasons. It requires a Congress willing to resume its proper constitutional role in debating and deciding essential questions of war and peace. If Congress continues to shirk that role, expanding the ground forces would invite some future administration to commit American forces recklessly to dubious wars of choice.

But keeping the Army in its present straitjacket would bring bigger and more immediate problems. Even assuming an early exit from Iraq, the Army’s overall authorized strength needs to be increased some 75,000 to 100,000 troops more than Mr. Rumsfeld had in mind for the next few years.

A force totaling 575,000 would permit the creation of two new divisions for peacekeeping and stabilization missions, a doubling of special operations forces and the addition of 10,000 to the military police to train and supplement local police forces. The Marine Corps, currently 175,000, needs to be expanded to at least 180,000 and shifted from long-term occupation duties toward its real vocation as a tactical assault force ready for rapid deployment.

That big an increase cannot be achieved overnight. It will take many months, and many billions of dollars, to recruit, train and equip these men and women. Every 10,000 added will cost roughly $1.5 billion in annual upkeep, plus tens of billions in one-time recruitment and equipment expenses.

But all the needed money can be found by reordering priorities within the defense budget. Thanks to six years of hefty budget increases, there is no shortage of defense dollars. They just need to go where the actual wars are. Contrary to pre-9/11 predictions, the early 21st century did not turn out to be an era of futuristic stealthy combat in the skies and high seas. Instead, American forces have been slogging it out in a succession of unconventional ground wars and nation-building operations.

If the new Pentagon leaders and the new Congress are prepared to take on the military contracting lobbies, they could take as much as $60 billion now going to Air Force fighters, Navy destroyers and Army systems designed for the conventional battlefield and shift it to training and equipping more soldiers for unconventional warfare. America cannot afford to dribble away money on corporate subsidies disguised as military necessities.

Congress also needs to hold the executive branch accountable for the use of American troops abroad. Administration officials must be pressed to explain intelligence claims and offer plausible strategies. Pentagon leaders should be instructed to stop using National Guard units for overseas combat instead of homeland security. And uniformed commanders should be pushed for candid assessments about conditions on the ground and the realistic choices available to policy makers.

Rebuilding the Army and Marine Corps is an overdue necessity. But it is only the first step toward repairing the damage done to America’s military capacities and credibility over the past six years.

Comments

[greenmamba]

Everything serious I've read on this matter plus my small experience with military training and supplying the military, says the sargeant is absolutely spot on. Over and over.

( ... and my, for someone too dumb to get a real job, doesn't he write well and have a broad range of knowledge. Stuff it up yer jumpers Messrs Kerry & Rangel.)

Thank you for your service Sergeant Christopher Whitaker.

[tazzerman2000]

Hear hear! I second everything greenmamba says. Sergeant Whitaker is a prime example of the best and the brighest this country has to offer. I for one thank my lucky stars that I have Sergeant Whitaker to protect me and mine. Thank you for your service and sacrifice sir. I salute you.

[DoctorDentons]

YES !!!!

[InspiredHome]

I'd like to see more letters like this one flood the country.

[john jay]

sgt. whitaker: thank you for your service. thank you for a most eloquent, logical and persuasive article.

greenmamba (now that is a handle!!), tazzerman2000, doctordentons: what you said. so say i. (me too!!!)

nice to know that this country still produces the likes of the good sergeant, and the likes of his comrades in arms.

john jay

[songdongnigh]

Thank you Sergeant.

Your coherent, cohesive, rational and informed letter demonstrates the true caliber of our military personnel of all ranks. You belie the inane and ignorant statements coming from some of our more despicable politicians concerning the abilities of our military personnel.

Again, Thanx Much

GBU

[USBeast]

Bring that boy home and make HIM Secretary of Defence!

Almighty Father, bless him and keep him safe until he can come home and run for office.

Is he from Massachusetts?

[Mac]

___ We owe Don Rumsfeld a debt of thanks. His was a monumental task and he embraced it with enthusiasm, intelligence and considerable success. His speeches were cogent and illuminating. (I truly wish Bush had his knack for public speaking.) The 23 day conquest of Iraq will be studied for decades by military planners. His loss will be felt.

___ But, I don't think we should see Rummy's replacement by Bush as a form of surrender. Think Aikido and of chess gambits. Bush is tenacious and a lot more subtle than even his supporters suppose. I think the liberals are enjoying the first stanzas of "Please don't throw me into the briar patch!" We should not emulate the "sunshine soldiers" in underestimating his resolve. Like Don Rumsfeld, Bush gets it. But we don't see the whole chess board, and I understand why many conservatives are getting worried. Ignore the tap dancing, keep your eye on the real deal. In asymmetric warfare, maneuvers, both politicaL and military, have little to do with straight lines.

___ And, of course, The New York Slimes don't even understand straight lines when the see them. (I understand that the NYT is in deep financial trouble - time wounds all heels. Gotta love it!)

___ We not only owe huge thanks to our fellow vets who walk-the-walk in the valley of the shadow of death, but to those, like Sgt. Whitaker, who can also talk-the-talk in our national dialog. Thank you, Sergeant. We are doubly in your debt!

___ Finally, my thanks to Pamela Geller Oshry who provides this forum. You go girl!

[pacwaters]

Forgive me if I jump around a bit and am my comments are a little disconnected but both the New York Times articel and the sarge's reply would require a chapter for each paragraph. I do a have a minor quibble with the good sergeant. The military may, obviously, be used for whatever purpose the CNC requires, within the limits of the constitution and the law. Whether it is wise to use the military for peacekeeping is another question.

As to the sale of weapons systems to close allies I still have very little trust of the Egyptians or Saudi's. They may have a need for a temporary alignment with the US but the Saudis funded the schools that, if not guilty of sponsoring islamic terrorism, are guilty of being the petri dish in which it was incubated. The survival of Musharif's regime is debatable so I question the wisdom of selling them F-16s.

Certainly Rumsfeld presided over a substantial change in force structure but it was Shinseki who pushed for the Stryker. It was Shinseki who envisioned a full 6 Stryker Brigades. It was Shinsheki who led the restructuring of the Army. I would venture to guess that many of those self same critics of the Stryker, including this writer, are now the most vociferous of its supporters.

Rumsfeld's vision was essentially that of all aviators. Ivo Daalder, of the Brookings Institution, said, "My impression is that Rumsfeld is looking to fight wars without armies,"a Washington, D.C., think tank. "His philosophy is that you can now fight wars without blood, that you can do it from on high, that you can destroy targets -- without actually having to get mud on their boots.

Not having served in Iraq, or since 1970 for that matter, I have no first hand knowledge of the efficacy of heavy armor in that situation, but most of the military blogs that I read have nothing but lauditory comments about it. That does not imply that it is the vehicle for all occasions but apparently it has proven its value even in urban situations.

It is laughable though for the NYT to ask for us to" restore the appeal of career military service for the brightest young officers." when they have been in the forefront of pillorying the military.

Bottomline, though I have some quibbles with the sarge's reply in was insightful and parried the inanity of the NYT's article well.

[Richard Davis]

Sargeant Whitaker - outstanding letter! Great Fisking of the NY Crimes! BZ!

You write better and have much more wisdom than the elitist NY Slimes reporter.

Hopefully one day you can replace that sorry ass reporter. (I mean that!) - I heard one of Pamela's guests on her most recent radio show, talk about how he thinks the NY Times can be stopped - and TAKEN OUT OF THE LEFTARDS HANDS - it involved a buyout... he used a term I don't recall right now..

Anyway, my favorite part - your explaination of how Clinton cut the military to shreds and used the money saved to create the false surplus that he based his reputation upon. The phoney surplus, built by degrading the nation's military, is his trademark, his shining achievement.

The liberals cry that our children and grandchildren will have to repay Bush's deficit.

How ironic, that our newest generation of soldiers have to pay for Clinton's surplus.

Thank you Sergeant Whitaker, for your writing sKills, and your jihadits Kills.

And thanks to all our Troops around the world. You are always welcomed, supported and appreciated here at the USS ATLAS (BAB 1).