WP, pg1: Shift from Traditional War Seen at Pentagon (plan to Rumsfeld)

Shift From Traditional War Seen at Pentagon

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 3, 2004; Page A01


Top Pentagon officials are considering a new, long-term strategy that shifts spending and resources away from large-scale warfare to build more agile, specialized forces for fighting guerrilla wars, confronting terrorism and handling less conventional threats, officials said yesterday.

The proposal, presented two weeks ago to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others, could carry major implications for defense spending, eventually moving some funds away from ships, tanks and planes and toward troops, elite Special Operations forces and intelligence gathering. The shift has been building for some time, but the plan circulating at the Pentagon would accelerate the changes, analysts said.

The plan's working assumption is that the United States faces almost no serious conventional threats from traditional, state-based militaries. Thus, it says, the United States should accept more risk in that area to pay more attention to other threats: terrorism, the type of low-tech guerrilla fighting confronting troops in Iraq, and the possibility of dramatic technological advances by adversaries. Some of those priorities depend more heavily on troop strength than high-tech weaponry and could increase the pressure on the Pentagon to build the size of the Army and the Marine Corps....

***

(The documents cited the need for preparation for use of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, insurgency and civil war.)

One example of the new thinking urged in the plan was what it called the "stretch goal" of being able to invade a country, keep 200,000 troops there for five years, and be able to organize, train and equip a local military force of 100,000 troops in just six months....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57491-2004Sep2.html

:eyes:

Do they ever learn from their mistakes? Is there ever any accountability?

"funds away from ships, tanks and planes and toward troops"

The Military Industrial Complex would never allow this to happen....

:crazy:

Ask any honest Pentagon employee about what Rumsfeld tried to do with Army Special Forces in the first half of 2001. That's right--he tried to cut it in half.

That move was just as unforgivable then as it appears now. In early 2001, virtually the entirety of Army combat experience was spread thin in general. But one subset of the Army--Special Forces, Delta, and the Rangers--had been quietly busy throughout the 1990s, and were the worldwide experts on antiterrorism and antiguerrilla warfare. Precisely what they were doing is still largely classified, but the silence that decade experienced on the international terrorism front is deafening. President Clinton kept them busy, that we know for sure.

Rumsfeld supposedly wanted to cash in half of the Special Forces for another lumbering mechanized unit, one which takes months rather than days or weeks to deploy and which is good for fighting in, oh, say, Iraq rather than in the jungle or the mountains of Afghanistan, where the terrorists actually are.

In one sense, we are lucky that 9/11 happened when it did, because it's impossible to disband a unit in the field.

And since I'm good and riled up this morning, I'll say something else, too.

John Kerry's promise to double the Special Forces is a promise that comes straight from something virtually nobody in the Bush Administration has: actual special operations combat experience. That guy Kerry plucked out of the water in Nam? He was Special Forces, working hand-in-hand with the littoral Navy. As a Swift Boat commander, Kerry has firsthand experience of how effective special operations are conducted in the field, and that is exactly why he has appreciation for their value while the Bush Administration demonstrably does not.

This is just one reason why Kerry's Vietnam record of actual combat experience is vitally relevant today. Kerry's experience guarantees that he knows what tools we have and how to use them.

One need only look to the past three years to see exactly what happens when someone who doesn't know is put in charge.

"Phoenix"-like operations simultaneously.

Financial Times, April 29, 2003

Michael E. O'Hanlon, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies

Will Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defence who has just led a war to remake Iraq, now turn his sights closer to home and remake the US military?

According to the buzz in Washington, the answer is Yes. Supposedly thwarted by Washington politics and the military bureaucracy two years ago, when he conducted his quadrennial defence review, Mr Rumsfeld is now so powerful and his concept of future warfare is so well validated that he will overcome domestic opposition and at last prepare America's armed forces for 21st-century warfare. Proponents of this view pour on the accolades for Mr Rumsfeld: he is the most influential cabinet secretary since Kissinger, the strongest defence secretary since McNamara, the most creative battle strategist since MacArthur, the most refreshingly blunt politician since Churchill. They also suggest that the doctrine of overwhelming force espoused by Colin Powell, secretary of state, will soon be replaced by a new Rumsfeld doctrine emphasising high technology, special operations units and sheer brainpower to defeat future foes.

<...>

Those who would articulate a new Rumsfeld doctrine propose several clear guidelines. Nation-building and peacekeeping are out. Possible pre-emptive attacks against Syria, Iran and North Korea are in. Long-term hegemonic competition with China is likely. Future warfare will be characterised more by space, missile, naval and air power operations than by the ground armies of old.

More:
http://www.brook.edu/views/op-ed/ohanlon/20030429.htm

Did they just notice the cold war had ended? Were they finally brought up to speed on the methods terrorists have been using since the early 1970s?

:cry:

while they continue implementing missile defense.

Kerry has been saying for quite some time that this is not a conventional war and should be treated more as criminal activity with more emphasis on intelligence and police action and less on troops and tanks. They are now admitting Kerry has been correct all along after ridiculing him so much for it at first.

Yeah, that's the ticket. Plenty of fat for all the Fat Cats.

http://www.militarycorruption.com/stryker.htm

mind our own business here at home, and spend money on rebuilding
our economy, schools, health care system, infrastructure, and silly
things like that. Within that context, I think the special forces
kind of idea is an excellent way to go.