Washington – As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld exited the stage, President Bush praised him for reshaping the U.S. military from a leaden Cold War-style enterprise to a more agile force better able to take on al-Qaeda terrorists.
Rumsfeld’s “transformation” campaign “will enhance the security of the American people for decades to come,” President Bush said in brief remarks last week as he forced Rumsfeld out the door.
But is that adulation deserved? Hugely expensive weapons are the heart and soul of Rumsfeld’s legacy after six years at the Pentagon.
These include new jet aircraft, warships, submarines and Army land warfare systems. The military will organize itself around those weapons for decades to come.
The weapons would be top-notch against the now-defunct Soviet Union but are of questionable value against shadowy terrorist organizations that lack easily targeted military bases or command centers.
“Those weapons don’t help us in the fight against al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda-like groups, and we don’t need them against traditional military adversaries because we already are so overwhelmingly superior,” said Charles Pena, a military expert with the nonpartisan Independent Institute.
On Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. had the most potent military force in the world with the best aircraft, tanks and soldiers. Yet they could do nothing to stop that day’s deadly terrorist attacks.
“Terrorists are individuals and cells. In most instances, they are not massed forces that you use military firepower against,” said Pena, author of the book “Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy for the War on Terrorism.”
The most infamous terrorist held at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – was captured not by American troops or weapons but in a law enforcement and intelligence operation in Pakistan. Mohammed was a principal architect of the Sept. 11 attacks.
“Under Rumsfeld, there are still too many weapons to deal with threats from a bygone era,” said Lawrence Korb, a military expert at the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan national security think tank in Washington.
“You really don’t need many of those weapons in the global war on terrorism,” said Korb, an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration.
Rumsfeld summarized his charge from President Bush in 2004.
“The president did specifically ask that we undertake the transformation of the (Defense) Department,” Rumsfeld said at the time.
“That is to say, see that we move from the 20th century into the 21st century, from the industrial age into the information age, (and) that we assure that we have the kind of capabilities that are lethal, that are agile, that are readily deployable.”
Indeed, Rumsfeld has taken some steps to slim down the military for anti-terrorist duties.
He canceled two Army weapons – the Crusader howitzer and the Comanche helicopter – because they were not adequate for the terrorism fight; he pressed the Army to reorganize itself around smaller brigades rather than huge divisions of soldiers and tanks so that units could be dispatched more rapidly.
And he has beefed up those military elements that have been effective against terrorist camps in Afghanistan. For example, he has increased the number of U.S. special forces and robot aircraft that can stealthily loiter and fire missiles at suspected terrorists.
But those changes are window dressing compared with the huge sums of money going toward the questionable weapons.
The country’s top intelligence official, John Negroponte, has called terrorism “the preeminent threat to our citizens.”
If so, Rumsfeld has bankrolled “painfully irrelevant weapons,” said Winslow Wheeler, a former national security specialist on the Senate Budget Committee’s Republican staff.
U.S. military spending will be more than $500 billion for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.
To put that in perspective, the U.S. defense budget is at least equal to, and by some estimates greater than, defense spending for the entire rest of the world.
