(Via Milinet)
EDITORIAL • August 10, 2000
Earth to Gen. Shelton
    Â
     Gen. Henry H. Shelton, the broad-shouldered, jut-jawed
chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, stands well over six feet tall and cuts
an imposing
figure. Having spent the last three years carrying so much
political water
for the commander in chief who once told an ROTC recruiting
officer how much
he "loathed the military," Gen. Shelton has needed the
impressive girth his
military training has provided.
     Without the benefit of an official announcement, it
now appears that
Gen. Shelton's water-carrying duties have been expanded to
include performing
those chores for Vice President Al Gore. It's worth noting that,
as a
Harvard-educated political scion, Mr. Gore once wrote a letter
to his
anti-war daddy citing the U.S. Army as "the best example" of an
American
institution exhibiting "an inveterate antipathy for communism
— or paranoia .
. . a national madness." This, the young Mr. Gore wrote,
resulted "in its
creating [or] energetically supporting fascist, totalitarian
regimes in the
name of fighting totalitarianism."
     Last week, Gen. Shelton interjected himself into a
political battle that
has claimed the soldiers he is supposed to lead as its principal
victims. In
his acceptance speech in Philadelphia last week, Republican
presidential
nominee George W. Bush (drawing upon an undisputed report last
November in
which two active Army divisions classified themselves as
unprepared to carry
out their wartime missions) asserted, "Our military is low on
parts, pay and
morale. If called to duty by the commander in chief, two entire
divisions of
the Army would have to report, 'Not ready for duty, sir.' "
     Within hours, the Army issued a statement declaring
"all 10 of its
divisions are combat ready and able to answer the nation's
call." More than
3,000 miles away in Los Angeles, Gen. Shelton acknowledged that
spending and
resources had been cut 40 percent while worldwide commitments
— mostly
peacekeeping operations — during the past decade have
increased 300 percent.
Nevertheless, he insisted the Army "jumped right on top of [the
readiness
crisis]" and brought the divisions back into combat shape.
Pentagon spokesman
Kenneth Bacon, who has spent his time illegally leaking the
confidential
personnel file of Linda Tripp rather than updating the nation on
the status
of the readiness crisis, also made himself available to the
media to rebut
Mr. Bush's charges.
     Sen. John McCain, a member of the Armed Services
Committee who knows
something about the state of the military's readiness and who
has butted
heads with Gen. Shelton over this very issue, offered an insight
different
from the Army's politically convenient declarations. "In all due
respect to
General Shelton," who has been the most politicized Joint Chiefs
chairman in
decades, "I talked to captains, I talked to first lieutenants, I
talked to
chief petty officers," Mr. McCain told NBC's "Meet the Press"
Sunday. "They
say they're overextended. They say that they're having
difficulty keeping
qualified men and women in the military. And recently we saw a
study where
the captains in the Army are leaving in the largest numbers."
     The Army claims it has solved its readiness problems
by deploying
National Guard units for Balkan peacekeeping duties and
returning the Army
divisions to their normal duties. In fact, the Army plans to
radically change
how U.S. military forces are deemed to be ready for combat.
Indeed, in a
front-page story on the very day Gen. Shelton interjected
himself into the
political dispute over national defense, the New York Times
reported that the
Army plans to drastically increase its reliance on the National
Guard to
fulfill its most important mission — maintaining the
capability of fighting
two major regional conflicts simultaneously. The Pentagon
expects to assign
four of the National Guard's eight divisions to participate in
the Persian
Gulf and Korea, the two "major theater wars" that are at the
heart of U.S.
military doctrine. Inside the Pentagon, the Times reported,
"There remains
lingering doubt about the ability of the Guard divisions to be
ready for
combat, especially in a major regional war" — to say nothing
of two major
regional wars being fought simultaneously.
     Beyond the horrors that such cockamamie strategies
portend, there is the
more immediate concern about Gen. Shelton's general
disingenuousness over the
defense budget. He continues to pretend that the six-year, $112
billion in
supposed defense spending increases approved by the commander in
chief
somehow translates into an immediate increase in the defense
budget. In fact,
according to page 109 in the Historical Tables for the 2001
budget, the
inflation-adjusted spending for national defense will remain
below the level
in fiscal 2000 for the next three fiscal years. Measured as a
percentage of
total economic output, national defense spending will be a
meager 2.8 percent
in 2003, the lowest level since 1940 (see page 103 in the
Historical Tables).
That was the year before Pearl Harbor.
Updated at 7:00 a.m.
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