Trying to Lose The War We're In

by Tom Donnelly

On Monday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave another in the remarkable series of speeches of recent months, laying out the course he believes the U.S. armed forces must follow to prepare themselves for the conflicts of the 21st century. Addressing the National Defense University, he again complained of “Next-War-itis,” and “the defense bureaucracy’s priorities and lack of urgency opposed to a wartime footing and a wartime mentality.” In marked contrast to Donald Rumsfeld, the man he replaced at the Pentagon, Gates described the war on terror not as a high-tech global manhunt but as “in grim reality, a prolonged, world-wide irregular campaign.”

Even as Gates was telling unpleasant truths to people in uniform--for it is they who will most bear the brunt of the Long War--congressional Democrats revealed how deeply they remain a state of denial. Rep. John Murtha, the chairman of the House appropriations defense subcommittee, announced his opposition to the Bush administration’s plan (and the supposed position of presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama) to increase the size of the active-duty Army and Marine Corps. Taking a page out of the Rummy pre-9/11 playbook, Murtha told Congressional Quarterly's Josh Rogin that the Pentagon “is going to have to cut personnel in order to pay for procurement.”

To be sure, the Defense Department faces critical budget problems. Procurement needs are genuine: Most current major U.S. weapons systems are products of the Reagan build-up. But, as Gates puts it, you have to win the war you’re in. The Bush troop plan is, if anything, a belated half-measure, a snail-paced increase that would bring the combined size of the Army and Marine Corps to about 750,000 in 2013, just 10 percent more than it was in 2005. Sen. John McCain has called for a larger, longer-term surge that would bring total land-force strength to 900,000.

The theme of Gates’s NDU speech was a warning about the limits of wonder weapons. While lauding “advances in precision, sensor, information and satellite technology,” he admonished the military to “never neglect the psychological, cultural, political and human dimensions of warfare, which is inevitably tragic, inefficient and uncertain.” He concluded his talk with words from one of the greatest American practitioners of irregular warfare, Gen. “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, whose experience taught him “no matter how a war starts, it ends in mud. It has to be slugged out--there are no trick solutions or cheap shortcuts.” It is ironic that Gates, the soft-spoken former intelligence officer, better understands the need for boots on the ground than Murtha, the gruff former Marine.

But Murtha led the way when Democrats turned hard against the Iraq war in 2006; without his imprimatur, surely, Speaker Nancy Pelosi might have moderated her anti-war, San Francisco instincts. Apparently the Democratic strategy is now to limit the prospects for future mischief--that is, the prospects for successfully waging the Long War--by withholding the manpower that is needed. They’re doubling down on defeat

by Tom Donnelly