No Defense?

...This contempt for the military chiefs is very popular among defense intellectuals, who believe that the best way to reform the military is to starve it...

...The more distasteful rationale given by Fleischer and Some suggest that those money-hungry Joint Chiefs can’t be trusted and may be cooking the books...

...Only near the end of the Clinton administration, when the defense budget crisis began to emerge full blown, did they dare raise their heads and start complaining about the irresponsible way Clinton was weakening the force...

...Trust us, they say: After the tax cut is passed, we'll fight the good fight for the defense budget...

...Even to restructure the force requires money...

...But this should not have prevented—it still should not prevent—the Bush administration from sending up an emergency defense appropriations supplemental for this year, adding the $10 billion or so that the Joint Chiefs of Staff say they need to hold the forces together in the near term...

...The defense Some suggest that budget debacle of the past two weeks began when White House spokesman Ari Fleischer proudly announced there would be no new money for the military this year—leaving us almost as shocked as secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, who was kept in the dark about the decision right up to the last minute...

...Getting the necessary money to the military will require President Bush to spend some political capital...

...There is, after all, no escaping the reality that American interests in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere require us to be able to project force to deter and defeat aggression...

...Marshall, who has been thinking about American strategy seriously for more than four decades, doesn't need months of extensive study to come to the obvious conclusions, and we understand that Rumsfeld wants the review completed in a matter of weeks...

...The administration's explanations for its decision to stiff the military have ranged from the silly to the offensive...

...He's got a lot right now...

...And the administration could have moved quickly enough—it still could—to put some money in the Fiscal Year 2002 budget, due at the end of this month, to begin addressing other important needs, including research and development for missile defense...

...Then he should submit an amendment to the FY 2002 budget with a significant defense increase as soon as possible—certainly within a couple of months...

...This past week Bush administration officials have been scrambling to reassure everyone that they are serious about defense...

...Then Bush can follow up with the "significant increases" Warner and his colleagues correctly call for in the FY 2003 budget...

...There's no excuse for not spending it on his first obligation as president, to provide adequately and safely for the common defense...

...And, yes, they would want to carry out a thorough strategic review to help them make difficult decisions on major new weapons programs...

...In the ridiculous category is the notion that Bush could not ask for more defense money until Rumsfeld completed a top-to-bottom review of American national security strategy...

...Now that the chiefs have summoned the courage to speak out, some in the Bush White House ridicule their requests...

...To keep the force strong enough to deter aggression for the next decade, before the effects of any transformation are felt, requires money...

...In any case, we are skeptical that any review is likely to provide new answers to old, nagging questions...

...Rumsfeld has named Andy Marshall to conduct the administration's strategic review...

...We don't believe the chiefs are lying about their need for more resources...

...We don't share this view...

...We're puzzled, too...

...We don't share this view.were planned, Bush's team no doubt expected a big welcome from the men and women of the armed forces and their families, who had voted overwhelmingly to make Bush our new commander in chief...

...There is still time to undo some of the damage, and late reports suggest the administration may be moving to do this...

...The press also hasn't bothered to ask what Bush's very knowledgeable team of advisers were doing the past eighteen months...

...Robert Kagan and William Kristol...

...But even if a Rumsfeld review magically discovered a different set of facts, the current crisis in military readiness would still be there and would still require immediate infusions of money...

...But it's not going to get easier after the administration has won its tax cut and is heading into mid-term elections...

...To take advantage of the so-called revolution in military affairs requires money...

...We don't want to "throw money" at the military, Fleischer says, suggesting that those money-hungry Joint Chiefs can't be trusted and may somehow be cooking the books to justify a budget increase...

...But beneath the surface there will be an air of polite puzzlement, and even distress, as the military wonders how a candidate who had promised that "help is on the way" can have turned into a president willing to stick with Bill Clinton's defense budget...

...When the events those money-hungry Joint Chiefs can't be trusted and may be cooking the books...

...Perhaps raising the defense budget is not easy when you're trying to pass a tax cut...

...That force could be called on to act at any time and it must be ready...

...military after eight years of neglect by the Clinton administration...

...After all, on the stump, Bush had promised to increase the R&D budget by $20 billion, beginning not next year but with this year's budget...

...This explanation has been swallowed whole by the Washington press corps, which hasn't bothered to ask why, if this was the reason, no one bothered to tell the secretary of defense...

...Bush will undoubtedly get a warm reception from soldiers happy the Clinton era is over...

...If anything, they have been too timid for the past eight years...

...In the meantime President Bush should follow the "two-track" course recommended by senators Warner and McCain...

...Rumsfeld and his Pentagon team were, in fact, hard at work drafting a supplemental and preparing for the FY 2002 budget until the word came down from the White House: No new defense money this year...

...Sure, they couldn't solve the whole defense budget problem with one massive increase...

...With Dick Cheney in the White House, Colin Powell at the State Department, Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, and a powerful team of defense experts advising Bush for more than two years, it is inconceivable that the new administration really needed a long time to get up to speed on the dire situation facing the U.S...

...And there is also no escaping the fact that, as Dick Cheney said repeatedly on the stump, our military is less and less capable of doing so...

...In speech after speech on the campaign trail, Bush and Cheney had sounded the alarm about declining military strength, planes that could not fly, army divisions operating well below acceptable levels of readiness, severe shortages of spare parts, low troop morale, and a defense budget lower as a percentage of GNP than at any time since before Pearl Harbor...

...other officials, also lapped up by Pentagon reporters, is that the military needs a spanking from its new civilian bosses...

...First, he should immediately send forward an emergency defense supplemental to secure the money the Pentagon needs right now...

...We don’t share this view...

...That's a good choice...

...So it was not unreasonable to expect that when the Bush team took over, they would move immediately to start repairing the damage...

...As John Warner, John McCain, and other senators pointed out in a letter to the president last week, whatever plans the Bush team may have for the future, it is essential that we "fix the force that is currently in place...

...Maybe so...