-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- ARTICLE 04 – Pearl Harbor Legacy Has Critical Significance Today ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- By Paul Connors This Friday, Dec. 7, 2001 is the 60th Anniversary of the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor, and the single event that propelled the United States into World War II. On that day, more than 2,400 American service members and civilians died on the island of Oahu. As we moved further away from the end of World War II, it seemed that only those who fought and lived through the event and the war itself, remembered the dramatic significance of that fateful day. That benign neglect continued for years and two generations, who were the children and grandchildren of the “greatest generation,” never learned what their fathers and grandfathers did to make their world a safer place in which to live. Vietnam eroded the confidence of America and her armed forces. Admirals and generals became politicians, more intent on career advancement than the good of the nation and the welfare of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and coast guardsmen entrusted to their care and leadership. And one by one, the World War II generation began to die off. As they left us, we lost many of our heroes and the values in which they believed. As the inheritors of the Declaration of Independence and The United States Constitution, we seem to have forgotten that freedom is not free. The United States is, after all, a superpower and with that status come certain obligations. With obligations come commitments and if you can't or won't keep them, there is a very real effect in the world. The American people, distrustful of their government as a result of Vietnam and Watergate, have been conditioned by a leftist-dominated news media to accept the notion that much of what is wrong in the world today is a direct result of our bullying and interventions around the globe. Now, a generation after America's last troops left Saigon and after eight years of active neglect by the Clinton administration, we are asking our armed forces to do more with less. The young Marines on the ground in Afghanistan are equipped with an M-16 rifle designed more than a generation ago and only slightly upgraded since. Their helo pilots are flying Vietnam era Super Cobras that should have been retired a long time ago. Military commanders who tried to raise the “red flag” over the defense resource crisis years ago were routinely ignored right up until Sept. 11. Americans as a people have an exceptionally short corporate memory; as soon as a conflict ends, we dismantle our armed forces and send the soldiers home. We keep on trying to beat those swords into plowshares and the world keeps showing us that we need our arsenals and the soldiers to use the weapons stored within. Respected military leaders like Col. David Hackworth are now sought out for their opinions on where we have gone wrong in the past and what we need to do to correct a situation that now seems intolerable and unthinkable. Yet, the most amazing is that liberals have rediscovered patriotism and the need for a strong and capable military. But not so long ago, it was these same liberals, highly interested in cashing in on the peace dividend at the end of the Cold War and Desert Storm, who conveniently forgot and actively ignored the lessons of history. On Sept.11, 2001, almost 60 years after our first “Pearl Harbor,” we suffered another. The sad irony is this: nearly twice as many Americans died the second time as did the first. And for the second disaster, there really is no excuse. Our technology is vastly superior to anything the U.S. Army and Navy could field in 1941. Our intelligence resources are almost limitless, but the CIA missed so many signals that we almost forfeited the game. The multitudinous and overlapping federal agencies, jealous of their turf did not share information and terrorists ran around in our backyard while planning out their heinous crimes. As the United States wages this war against terrorism, it does so with a defense establishment 40 percent smaller than that which conducted Operation Desert Storm. It is a force that is spread too thin and one that is tasked to do too much with far too little. The net result is that every time this country needs to engage in even a small-scale military action, National Guard and reserve units need to be mobilized. The similarities have become uncannily similar. In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt federalized the entire National Guard for one year. Before they could be released back to state control, the United States was engaged in World War II. Sixty years later, more than 50,000 Guardsmen and reservists have been called back to active duty to support Operation Enduring Freedom and to provide for homeland defense. The American people, once again threatened by an enemy from outside our national borders, have found a new degree of respect for their armed forces. But as this conflict drags on, will these same fickle people continue to support a national policy that at best, only promises the continued threat of terrorist attacks? Will the leftists, represented by Hillary, Chuck Schumer, Patrick Leahy, Tom Daschle and other appeasers call for negotiations in the vain hope that we can prevent further atrocities? We are engaged in a war and one that has at its far end, very dire consequences for the United States. This is no time to lose heart or argue that the president has usurped powers not granted to him by the Constitution. Americans need to remember the last time we were unprepared for what lay ahead. It was 60 years ago and when that fateful Sunday came to a close, over 2,400 Americans were dead and more than half of the U.S. Pacific Fleet lay on the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Do we really want to relive that? Paul Connors is DefenseWatch Air Force Editor. He can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- ARTICLE 05 – Fight for Jointness Critical to U.S. Military’s Future ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- By Matthew Dodd The war in Afghanistan has shifted media and public attention away from an ongoing Pentagon effort to promote true inter-service cooperation – “jointness” – as a means of increasing U.S. military power. But given the projected costs of prosecuting the war against terrorism and the additional costs that will be needed to modernize the aging force, our success (or failure) in attaining true jointness will have a major impact on the nation’s ability to recast the U.S. armed services to meet current and future threats. The 2001 Secretary of Defense (SecDef) Transformation Study report (written by six retired general/flag officers and four senior military analysts) defines transformation as a process of change that involves developing new operational concepts that deal with changes in the way military forces are organized, trained, and equipped; changes in the doctrine, tactics, techniques, and procedures that determine how they are employed; changes in the way they are led; and changes in the way they interact with one another to produce effects in battles and campaigns. According to the transformation study report, “The synergy that true jointness brings is the most powerful transformation concept….” In other words, the report identifies that the synergy of true jointness is a conceived thought or notion, not something that currently exists in reality. How can the synergy of jointness be a new, transforming concept? If we are not doing true jointness today, what have we been doing for the last half-century? What does the report imply about how organizations charged with promoting inter-service jointness have not been able to get jointness right? Let's start with the office of the secretary of defense (OSD). The Secretary of Defense (SecDef) expects the military to be able to do what is needed when needed. The SecDef and OSD are primarily focused on policy and the “what” and “when” of military force. By necessity, they are not too concerned with the “how” of military employment. To most of the military in the Pentagon, OSD is considered out of touch, too far removed from the realities on the ground, and too heavily influenced by the politics of policy-makers to have much credibility in jointness discussions. The unclear and confusing language in the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) and their subsequent taskings illustrates the military’s frustrations with OSD. Only time will tell if SecDef’s appointment of retired Vice Adm. Arthur K. Cebrowski to direct his recently created office of force transformation will improve OSD’s credibility within the uniformed community. The Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Staff (JS) serve as the bridge between the uniformed military leadership and the higher civilian levels of government. Many lament that the Joint Staff is a misnomer; they view it as a staff dedicated to seeking the easier compromise or consensus rather than the often more difficult, truly joint answer. The JS is a victim of process and practice. Its members come from the four military services, and the main stakeholders are the services, the Joint Staff itself and OSD. Each stakeholder is encouraged (explicitly or implicitly) to bring organization-specific concerns and best interests to all issues. The JS referees the services' input and, when practicable, courteously accepts OSD input. The services' main strengths against and advantages over the Joint Staff are time, status quo, and tradition. The Chairman does not have true directive authority over the services, although his authority was significantly strengthened by the 1985 Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act. The common perception is that most JS products are at best a compromise – not the best possible solution, but the least unacceptable one – to the majority of stakeholders. For the Joint Staff, jointness often equals breaking issues down to the lowest common denominator among their stakeholders. The four military services constitute an inherently fragile, yet powerful coalition inside the Pentagon. Although they are usually (stereotypical) competitors, they are united in their opposition to jointness. They perceive jointness as a threat to their specific money, manpower, resources, acquisitions, and autonomy. With core competency training and routine, scheduled rotational deployments, the paradigm is that jointness is at best the deconfliction and coordination of service component activities. Unlike the previous Pentagon organizations, the regional and functional Commanders-in-Chief (CINCs) reside outside the Pentagon and have their own unique perspectives on jointness. The CINCs use their service components in the mission role that they are most prepared to be used (service-centric approaches). The CINCs' staffs are more joint-oriented than the JS, but they are almost exclusively focused on their geographical area of responsibility (AOR) with emphasis on regional stability and engagement using current and short-term future forces and capabilities. To the CINCs, jointness means the immediate use of existing service component capabilities in the best or quickest way to accomplish theater goals and objectives One CINC's joint mission force concept that is getting a lot of attention is little more than officially institutionalizing the usual service-centric approach to jointness with a theater-based focus. They have standard operating procedures (SOPs), mission requirements-based training standards applied to rotational component forces, standardized command and control architectures to and from each service component, and assigned components headquarters responsibility for forming the core JTF staff (with a deployable CINC staff augmentation cell) for certain likely theater-based missions. The newest CINC (re-chartered in 1999), U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM), has a unique mission and vision that separates it from all the other CINCs and DoD organizations involved with jointness. According to its mission statement, the command is the chief advocate for jointness, and it maximizes the military's current and future capabilities through developing and experimenting with joint concepts, recommending joint requirements, and promoting joint interoperability. Thus, the USJFCOM vision is to lead the transformation of the U.S. Armed Forces through true integration of combat and support capabilities. Any close analysis of current USJFCOM activities confirms that USJFCOM recognizes the ad hoc nature of current joint operations and is eager to experiment with synergistic joint concepts in pursuit of its unique mission. The USJFCOM paradigm starts out as “joint” (where the Joint Staff is reaching but never grasps, and where the individual services fear to tread) and long-term (beyond the short-term visions of OSD and the CINCs) in order to produce truly joint solutions. Clearly, transforming to true jointness requires truly effective leadership at all levels, but especially at the highest levels. The SecDef report specifically noted, “The future joint force will take special attention from the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not only to get the necessary resources but also to create an environment conducive to transforming .… The Secretary and Chairman will need to provide oversight for the joint integration that brings force components together to achieve full synergy.” Fortunately, the new Director of Force Transformation, who is described as SecDef’s advocate, focal point, and catalyst for transformation, also recognizes the status quo leadership failure in not accepting and practicing true jointness: Adm. Cebrowski recently noted, “A good leader crafts the future for his people and then shows them their place in it. To the extent leadership continues to focus on past practices, methods and systems, they fail to perform that most vital leadership function,” Jointness is much more than simply having all services present and carrying out their own service-oriented operations in response to the latest crisis-du-jour. Jointness is a long-term mindset that seamlessly fuses each service's specific and complementary strengths into a holistic package of military power greater than the sum of its parts. The findings and recommendations of the transformation study report and the leadership of the new Director of Force Transformation give us the best chance of breaking down traditional bureaucratic inertia and transforming our military to true jointness for the very first time. Today’s global security environment demands nothing less. Lt. Col. Dodd is the pen name of an active-duty Marine Corps officer stationed at the Pentagon. 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