Tag Archives: Dick Cheney

Remain, Rumsfeld

(Washington, D.C.): The London Economist Magazine last week emblazoned its front cover with the two-word headline “Resign, Rumsfeld.” In so doing, it succinctly captured the gambit embraced lately by many prominent Democrats, anti-war critics, Bushophobes and opinion elites: Seizing upon the pretext of the widely felt need to appease the Arab world in the wake of the Iraqi prison abuse scandal to take out the man who is, arguably, the Presidents most effective Cabinet Secretary: Donald Rumsfeld.

The millions of Americans who greatly admire Secretary Rumsfeld and who understand – at least intuitively – the inadvisability of this agenda must respond by making known our desire and national need: “Remain, Rumsfeld.”

What is at Stake

Losing “Rummy” at this juncture would have adverse consequences on three scores, in ascending order of importance:

1) The Practical: The loss of a visionary, decisive and highly capable leader at the Pentagon in the midst of a difficult phase of the war on terror would be gravely compounded by the effective inability to replace him any time soon. Senator John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee – which would have to consider and act upon any nomination for a successor to Donald Rumsfeld – has made clear that it would be unlikely he could get a new Pentagon chief and his team approved and in place before the election.

Even if the mechanics and political environment were more conducive to swift action, it is not clear that people could be found to serve, given uncertainty about whether they would still have jobs after Novembers elections. The alternative of having people who are currently in place – such as the extraordinarily able Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz – assume additional responsibilities on an open-ended, “acting” basis is also, as a practical matter, unworkable since they already have more-than-full-time jobs.

2) The Political: Were George W. Bush to cashier Donald Rumsfeld, it would, of course, be but the beginning of the losses the former would sustain politically. His partisan foes are, after all, gunning for the President, not merely his subordinates. Never mind that the resignation of the principal architect of the war on terror would be tied to the prison scandal, the effort to discredit Rumfelds work more generally – the centerpiece of the Bush war-presidency reelection strategy – would be greatly advanced.

Fortunately, the Bush team appears belatedly to have come to its senses on this point. After putting out the word that the President had reprimanded Rumsfeld over the lack of forewarning about the damning photos from Abu Ghraib (what one observer called “chumming the water” for attacks on the Secretary of Defense), the Administration began damage control. At first, it was a somewhat tepid presidential endorsement, largely offset by off-the-record statements suggesting National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice would be happy to see Rummy go.

Then on Saturday, Vice President Dick Cheney – who has known Don Rumsfeld better and worked more closely with him for three-plus decades than practically anyone – accurately described Rummy as “the best Secretary of Defense the United States has ever had.” And Dr. Rice publicly declared, “The President strongly supports Donald Rumsfeld and so do his colleagues and I strongly support him.”

3) The Strategic: By far the most important reason to keep Secretary Rumsfeld at the Pentagons helm is that his departure would unmistakably exacerbate the challenges we already face in the Battle of Iraq and the war on terror, more generally. Such an act of appeasement is unlikely to persuade those who hate us to stop doing so. It would, however, be seen by our enemies as further evidence that the United States is on the ropes. More to the point, it would likely embolden them to undertake redoubled, murderous action against us and Iraqis who want us to succeed.

Turbulence in the leadership of our militarys chain of command is not exactly good for its morale, either. While some grumbling about the civilian leadership has begun to appear in the press, anyone who thinks the troops fighting spirit will get better if – in addition to the relentless undermining of their mission and the value of their sacrifice by domestic critics of the war – they are deprived of the driving force in their chain of command.

The Bottom Line

The beautiful new World War II memorial features a quote by one of our Nations greatest commanders, Gen. George C. Marshall, that characterized his era: “We are determined that before the sun sets on this terrible struggle, our flag will be recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom on the one hand and of overwhelming force on the other.” This vision is a guide for our times as well, and no one personifies it better – or should be encouraged to continue advancing it more – than Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

The right questions

(Washington, D.C.): President Bush has reportedly decided, wisely, to accept the inevitable and endorse the creation of yet-another, blue-ribbon, bipartisan commission. Consequently, we will soon have a new group of worthies examining highly classified information about what we thought we knew about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and, if we were wrong, why.

Mr. Bush recognizes that, while those are interesting questions, this panel would be much more helpful if its mandate is a broader one than evident intelligence shortfalls and, perhaps, failings. According to press accounts, he wants the new commission to think about the sorts of intelligence Presidents, Congress and other policy-makers need to understand – and to act on – the various threats with which we must contend in this War on Terror. This would be a natural and appropriate extension of the initial inquiry.

Saddam’s Role in the War on Terror

The commission’s mandate should also require it to address one other, related and very important topic: Was Saddam Hussein’s Iraq involved in previous terrorist attacks against the United States?

After all, if Saddam not only repeatedly declared his desire for revenge against the United States following his humiliating defeat in Operation Desert Storm, but mounted operations aimed at exacting it, the wisdom – indeed the necessity – of President Bush’s decision to remove him from power would be manifest.

Therefore, these are among the right questions for an Iraq threat commission to explore:

  • Is there evidence that Iraqi nationals and/or operatives helped engage in murderous acts of terror against targets in this country?
  • If the answer is yes, could Saddam have reasonably been expected to continue doing so in the future, had he not been stopped?
  • And could such attacks have incorporated the use of even small quantities of Iraqi-supplied weapons of mass destruction, which David Kay acknowledges he probably had, as well as the assured capacity quickly to produce such quantities of WMD?

    • The Record

    These questions take on all the more importance insofar as preliminary answers are already available. Two intrepid women, Mideast expert Laurie Mylroie and former TV journalist Jayna Davis, have devoted much of their lives to documenting evidence of Iraqi complicity in two of the most deadly attacks in the Nation’s history.

    In her book, The War Against America: Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks – A Study in Revenge (Harper Collins, 2001), Dr. Mylroie laid out a case that was not made in the prosecution of the first World Trade Center bombers. She describes the hapless Islamist radicals who were tried for attempting in February 1993 to topple one of the twin towers into the other as mere pawns used by far more sophisticated operatives with ties to Iraq.

    One of the latter, Ramzi Youssef, was subsequently arrested in Pakistan, extradited and convicted for his role in the bombing. But as Dr. Mylroie wrote in a “National Interest” article in 1995, when she told prosecutors “that Iraq was probably behind the Trade Center bombing, they replied, ‘You may be right, but we don’t do state sponsorship. We prosecute individuals.’ Asked who does ‘do’ state sponsorship, they answered, ‘Washington.’ ‘Who in Washington?’ No one seemed to know.”

    Interestingly, Vice President Dick Cheney offered what appeared to be the first official acknowledgment of Dr. Mylroie’s thesis when he told National Public Radio on January 22, 2004: “We’ve discovered since [Iraq was liberated] documents indicating that a guy named Abdul Rahman Yasin, who was a part of the team that attacked the World Trade Center in ’93, when he arrived back in Iraq was put on the payroll and provided a house, safe harbor and sanctuary. That’s public information now.”

    The need to get to the bottom of apparent Iraqi complicity in attacks on the American homeland is even more apparent in a new book by Ms. Davis entitled The Third Terrorist: The Middle Eastern Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing, to be published next month by WND/Thomas Nelson Publishers.

    The author did path-breaking reporting for the NBC affiliate in Oklahoma City after the deadly destruction of the Murrah Federal Building in 1995. The fruits of that on-air work and the exhaustive research behind it were a wealth of eyewitness accounts, affidavits, interviews and other documentary – if circumstantial – evidence that lead inexorably to the conclusion that two convicted perpetrators, American militiamen Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, did not act alone. According to Ms. Davis and her sources, their principal co-conspirator, the once-sought John Doe Number 2, appears to have been a former Iraqi soldier who wears a tattoo from Saddam’s elite Republican Guard.

    The Bottom Line

    The extraordinary reluctance of government officials, which dates back to the Clinton administration, to give serious consideration to the evidence compiled by Dr. Mylroie and Ms. Davis argues for making a fresh look at this data an important responsibility for the independent commission on the Iraq threat. If this is done, the conclusion seems inescapable: Whether or not it can be established that Saddam Hussein was also involved in the 9/11 attacks, he was what President Bush has called him — a “grave and growing danger.” And the President was absolutely right to deny him the ability to translate his residual capacity for WMD-equipped attacks into future, far more lethal acts of revenge against the United States and its people.

    President Bush launches public drive on need to finish off Saddam Hussein

    President Bush met with congressional leaders September 4 about his intent to finish off the regime of Saddam Hussein, pledging that he will work with Congress and “our friends in the world” before moving ahead.

    British Prime Minister Tony Blair meets soon with Bush at Camp David, and the president will state his case before the United Nations next week, on September 12. “I am going to state clearly to the United Nations what I think,” he said.

    “I will first remind the United Nations that for 11 long years, Saddam Hussein has side-stepped, crawfished, wheedled out of any agreement he had made not to harbor — not to develop weapons of mass destruction, agreements he’s made to treat the people within his country with respect. And so I’m going to call upon the world to recognize that he is stiffing the world. And I will lay out and I will talk about ways to make sure that he fulfills his obligations.”

    While the White House has yet to issue a fact sheet outlining the president’s position, Vice President Dick Cheney did give two major policy speeches last week before veterans’ organizations, explaining the urgent “regime change” in Iraq. After speaking about health care at the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) convention, Cheney made the case for ousting Saddam Hussein as quickly as possible.

    Click here to take MSNBC’s poll: Attack on Iraq: Can Bush Make the Case?

    Shape Up or Ship Out

    (Washington, D.C.): In the U.S. military — an organization Colin Powell knows well — actively defying the Commander-in-Chief has a name. It is called “insubordination,” and an officer who engages in it can incur a court martial and involuntary separation from the armed forces, or worse.

    Of course, things are different at the State Department. In Foggy Bottom, undermining presidential policy not favored by the career bureaucracy is pretty much a full- time job.

    Cheney v. Powell

    Thus we have the spectacle of Secretary of State Powell taking to the airwaves publicly to disagree with the core strategic decision enunciated twice in a week by Mr. Bush’s top surrogate, Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Cheney declared forthrightly, “A return of inspectors [to Iraq] “would provide no assurance whatsoever of compliance with U.N. resolutions. On the contrary, there is a great danger that it would provide false comfort that Saddam was somehow ‘back in his box.'” We know, as does Mr. Powell, that the Cheney text was personally vetted, edited and approved by the President.

    Yet, Secretary Powell told the BBC last week that “The President has been clear that he believes weapons inspectors should return. Iraq has been in violation of many U.N. resolutions for most of the last 11 or so years. And so, as a first step, let’s see what the inspectors find.”

    Now, this is not a matter of some small tactical disagreement, let alone — as White House spokesman Ari Fleischer would have us believe — one of no disagreement at all. The question of whether the return of inspectors to Iraq must be a “first step” towards resolving the issue there or whether it would amount to a march into a diplomatic cul-de-sac from which there would be no exit for the President’s policy of regime change is a first-order strategic one. And it is, at root, a question of judgment.

    A Bill of Particulars

    Unfortunately, it is not the first time Colin Powell’s strategic judgment has been wanting. For example, in a series of previous, senior national security policy-making posts, he: favored investing in the preservation of Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Union; opposed the deployment of missile defenses; supported unverifiable and otherwise ill-advised arms control treaties; and strenuously resisted efforts that could have prevented, or at least greatly constrained Slobodan Milosevic’s bloodletting in the former Yugoslavia.

    Most relevant to the present strategic decision, he repeatedly and assiduously asserted in 1990 that economic sanctions were the appropriate policy response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. When President Bush’s father determined otherwise and took the Nation to war, Colin Powell was a prime-mover behind the decision to allow Saddam’s praetorian Republican Guard to escape the killing fields of the so-called “Highway of Death.” Many of their units were then allowed to avoid capture and forcible disarmament.

    Afterwards, as Saddam Hussein remained in power, Milosevic persisted in his predations, Islamist terrorists were periodically violently attacking American interests and citizens, and Russia and China were engaged in strategically ominous proliferation and other activities, then-Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Powell averred that he was “running out of enemies.” This serious misjudgment provided indispensable political cover for the military budget-cutting and programmatic decisions that significantly reduced the readiness and power-projection capabilities of the U.S. armed forces over the last ten years.

    Plenty of Company

    To be sure, Mr. Powell was not alone in adopting these stances. In each case, he had plenty of company, particularly among the foreign policy, political and media elite. The same is true today, not only concerning the idea that inspectors can meaningfully contribute to a resolution of the danger posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime, but that the United States can — nay, must — secure UN support one last time before taking steps to bring down that regime.

    The verdict is pretty much in on the previous Powell judgments. With the advantage of hindsight, they are now widely, if not universally, recognized as mistakes. For those who failed to perceive them as such at the time, the equally obviously flawed nature of his present stance may be no more clear. But it should be to the rest of us.

    Enough Already

    The issue now, however, is not one simply of bad judgment. Rather, it is a question of how a Cabinet member who disagrees with the President’s judgment should conduct himself. It is simply not acceptable for one to be engaged in trying to “delay or derail” the implementation of his President’s policy — the words an unnamed “source close to Powell” used with Time Magazine to describe how the Secretary of State has “fought” Mr. Bush’s determination to use force if necessary to effect “regime change” in Iraq.

    Such activity, which has been going on for most of the Bush presidency, has the effect of seriously impeding the articulation and implementation of policy. Worse yet, it calls into question the coherence of the policy-making process itself, inviting attacks at home and abroad on the President’s competence, vision and leadership that has a far more pernicious and corrosive effect.

    Lyndon Johnson, with characteristic color, once expressed a preference for having his critics inside the tent urinating out rather than doing so from outside the tent inwards. A similar logic evidently causes his successor from Texas, George W. Bush, to refrain from asking for Secretary Powell’s resignation — or, it would appear, even disciplining him.

    The Bottom Line

    A time of war is, however, no time for the Commander-in-Chief to have insubordinate subordinates. General Powell should take it upon himself to choose as Mr. Bush has asked others to decide in this conflict: He is either with the President or against him, a key part of his team or part of the opposition to it. But he can’t be the latter from inside the Administration.

    It is to be hoped that Colin Powell will get with the program and use his considerable abilities fully to support his boss in liberating Iraq and ending Saddam’s malevolence the old fashioned way — by force of arms. If, as they say in the military, his judgment prevents him from “shaping up” in this fashion, he should do the right thing and “ship out.”

    Cheney makes case for pre-emptive strike on Saddam; says US fears nuclear blackmail

    Vice President Dick Cheney made the administration’s strongest argument yet on the need for a pre-emptive strike against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

    In a Monday address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), Cheney opened with a line favored by the VFW leadership – healthcare – but devoted his speech adding much-needed coherency to the administration’s often muddled message about what to do about Iraq.

    “This nation will not live at the mercy of terrorists or terrorist regimes,” Cheney told the veterans. Those urging legalistic approaches to wait until the US can prove Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, Cheney said, have flawed reasoning. “We will not simply look away, hope for the best and leave the matter to some future administration to resolve,” he stated.

    Inaction “could bring devastating consequences for many countries, including our own,” the vice president said. “Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror and seated atop 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world’s energy supplies, directly threaten America’s friends throughout the region and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail.”

    Wall Street Journal Derides Efforts to ‘Spin’ G.O.P. Opposition To Liberating Iraq and Champions of ‘Stability’ Uber Alles

    (Washington, D.C.): Today’s Wall Street Journal features a lead editorial that helpfully clarifies where it — and the vast majority of Republicans and, indeed, most Americans — stand with respect to the need to liberate Iraq. Explaining that it solicited an op.ed. article from former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft (which appeared on the Journal’s pages on 15 August) in order to “put on record a view that has a long and honorable tradition,” the paper proceeds to trash the “track record” compiled by the adherents to that tradition, including notably Mr. Scowcroft.

    In particular, the Journal correctly takes to task not only Brent Scowcroft but his sometime partner, former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, and the latter’s incumbent successor, Colin Powell, for their shared belief that “stability” is the highest priority in international affairs:

    Mr. Scowcroft (and Lawrence Eagleburger) favored keeping Yugoslavia together, even under Slobodan Milosevic. That mistake kept blood flowing for a decade until even the Europeans begged for U.S. intervention. Mr. Scowcroft also presided over the first President Bush’s “Chicken Kiev” speech that argued for keeping the Soviet Union together under Mikhail Gorbachev. And of course he urged that same President Bush to stop the Gulf War early, based in part on a CIA fear that a divided Iraq without a dictator was worse than a “stable” Iraq ruled by Saddam or his Baath Party successor.

    Colin Powell was complicit in all of those mistaken judgments, as was the State Department over which he now presides and which is usually the home of such Realpolitik. It dominated Bush I, but not the Reagan years, and it looks to be losing under Bush II. (Emphasis added.)

    The Journal also puts the wood to its competitor, the New York Times, noting that it is among the “media looking for August news or with an ideological agenda.” The editorial characterizes that agenda is one pursued by “the old anti-Vietnam Left.” Presumably, that explains why the Times persists not only in running articles critical of (if not downright subversive to) the effort to topple Saddam, but why it has significantly — and serially — misrepresented the views of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger by describing him as also opposed to the war with Iraq.

    While today’s editorial is a valuable corrective, all things considered, it might have been better if the Journal had refrained from offering its prestigious platform to Gen. Scowcroft in the first place. Perhaps in the future, promoting views its editors know to be seriously flawed can be left to op.ed. pages that understand less well the magnitude of the damage — past and possibly prospective — done by the stability uber alles crowd.

    THIS IS OPPOSITION?

    The Wall Street Journal, 19 August 2002

    We’re pleased, we guess, that the New York Times thought our article on Iraq by Brent Scowcroft1 last Thursday was important enough to lead its front page two days in a row. We’d be more pleased, though, if instead of trumpeting our story to advance a tendentious theme, the Times kept its opinions on its editorial page.

    The Times’s theme is that the Scowcroft article means the Republican Party, or at least some major faction of it, is in revolt against the Bush foreign policy. This is not news; it’s a wish in the eye of the remnants of the old anti-Vietnam left. The Democrats have been pretty much cowed into silence by fear of the voters; the latest Washington Post poll shows 69% of Americans favor military action to force Saddam from power. This leaves a vacuum to be filled by a few maverick Republicans with assorted motives, amplified by a media looking for August news or with an ideological agenda.

    Dick Armey, in any event retiring from Congress, is fundamentally a libertarian. He was also the last Republican to sign on for the Gulf War; we wish his views on economics were deemed as newsworthy as those on foreign policy. Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel knows he can grab a fast headline by opposing his President; his crack volunteering Pentagon adviser Richard Perle for the first wave was particularly shabby.

    While the Times was spinning such opposition into a major revolt Friday, the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times gave page-one headlines to Condoleezza Rice’s case that Saddam Hussein “is an evil man who, left to his own devices, will wreak havoc again on his own population, his neighbors and, if he gets weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them, on all of us.” Except for a brief editorial put-down, the Times left this to the following day, wrapped into a story on the President “listening” to dissent.

    Not only that, but the Times front-page stories on both Friday and Saturday enlisted Henry Kissinger as another Republican opponent of the war. Here’s what Mr. Kissinger actually said in his most recent op-ed, appearing in the Washington Post last Monday: “The imminence of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the huge dangers it involves, the rejection of a viable inspection system, the demonstrated hostility of Saddam combine to produce an imperative for pre-emptive action.” This is opposition?

    Which brings us to Mr. Scowcroft, who does speak for a point of view worth debating. Honest debate is nothing that advocates of regime change in Iraq, whether President Bush or us, need fear. Indeed, we solicited the Scowcroft article precisely to put on record a view that has a long and honorable tradition, particularly within the Republican Party.

    This view describes itself as realism. It upholds national interest narrowly defined, striving for balance of power in the old European sense. It resists a foreign policy with a strong moral component or one designed to expand U.S. principles and democracy. So it typically favors “stability,” even when it’s imposed by dictators, over democratic aspiration.

    This is a legitimate point of view, but its track record doesn’t inspire confidence. Mr. Scowcroft (and Lawrence Eagleburger) favored keeping Yugoslavia together, even under Slobodan Milosevic. That mistake kept blood flowing for a decade until even the Europeans begged for U.S. intervention. Mr. Scowcroft also presided over the first President Bush’s “Chicken Kiev” speech that argued for keeping the Soviet Union together under Mikhail Gorbachev. And of course he urged that same President Bush to stop the Gulf War early, based in part on a CIA fear that a divided Iraq without a dictator was worse than a “stable” Iraq ruled by Saddam or his Baath Party successor.

    Colin Powell was complicit in all of those mistaken judgments, as was the State Department over which he now presides and which is usually the home of such Realpolitik. It dominated Bush I, but not the Reagan years, and it looks to be losing under Bush II. Vice President Dick Cheney, also involved in the Gulf War decisions, has come around to favoring Saddam’s ouster, though he is too loyal to say so publicly.

    And after all, the leading spokesman for Realpolitik used to be Henry Kissinger, who has since declared that realism needs to be tempered with a dose of American idealism. And on September 11 we learned that in the modern interdependent world national interest cannot be narrowly defined, that the internal character of even the most remote regime can be a life-and-death matter to Americans. Indeed, while reports of Mohamed Atta visiting with Iraqi intelligence in Prague are obviously not conclusive evidence, the probability that Saddam was complicit in September 11 is not zero.

    Mr. Kissinger’s actual point is that the U.S. has to think through how it goes about ousting Saddam so it can succeed in a way that creates an entirely new era in the Middle East. It’s ironic that Mr. Scowcroft’s narrower view of “stability” is now championed by the anti-war left, which never before had any use for Realpolitik. Its current stance shows how little faith an increasingly elitist left now has in promoting democracy and U.S. principles.
    President Bush has from the beginning understood the broader moral and strategic implications of the war on terrorism and its state sponsors. He has increasingly cast his foreign policy in Reaganite terms of freedom and self-determination for Muslims — for Afghans, Iranians and even Palestinians. This is something most Republicans, and indeed most Americans, instinctively understand and will support if Mr. Bush decides to liberate Iraq.

    The ‘Next War’: Will Carl Levin Be Allowed To Leave America Vulnerable To Missile Attack?

    (Washington, D.C.): The baying of Congressional Democrats last week over unfounded allegations that President Bush “knew” beforehand about the September 11th attacks prompted, appropriately, a heated response from Administration figures. White House Press Spokesman Ari Fleischer, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, even the President himself took turns firing back.

    These and other officials explained: the lack of “actionable” information; the reality that, without benefit of hindsight, it was very hard to “connect the dots” before 911; and the fact that the possibility of commercial aircraft being used as lethal missiles had been discussed since President Clinton was in office, but had not been recognized by either administration as an immediate danger.

    Cheney’s Warning

    The most effective riposte to date, however, came from Vice President Dick Cheney. Interestingly, it was not the Veep’s shot- across-the-bow to those he called “my Democratic friends” on Capitol Hill, whom he strongly discouraged from playing politics with these charges.

    Rather, it took the form of a warning Mr. Cheney issued in the course of his appearances on Sunday television talk shows: Another al Qaeda attack against this country is “almost certain.” He cannot say when it will eventuate; “it could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week, it could happen next year, but they will keep trying.”

    Every American, irrespective of party affiliation or political philosophy, is thus on notice: Notions that it is now safe to go back to business-as-usual partisanship on national security are premature and irresponsible. More to the point, Mr. Bush’s critics now have the sort of warning they claim to have wanted prior to September 11th.

    The question then becomes: What form will the next attack take?

    Rumsfeld’s Warning

    There is a certain irony that many of those most critical of the military for focusing exclusively on the sorts of threats confronted in the “last war” are now studiously ignoring a next-war warning first sounded four years ago. It was issued by a bipartisan commission chaired by the man who is now the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

    Asked by Congress to assess the danger of ballistic missile attack on the United States, the blue-ribbon Rumsfeld Commission declared: “Sea-launch of shorter-range ballistic missiles…could enable a country to pose a direct territorial threat to the U.S. sooner than it could by waiting to develop an intercontinental-range ballistic missile for launch from its own territory. Sea-launching could also permit it to target a larger area of the U.S. than would a missile fired from its home territory.”

    This theoretical possibility becomes palpably real when one considers that, according to a recent U.N. assessment, the Taliban had roughly 100 Scud shorter-range ballistic missiles. Al Qaeda is believed to own ships; certainly most terrorist-sponsoring nations do. In fact, there are an estimated 25,000 vessels at sea on any given day, the majority of them flying flags of convenience. For the most part, our wildly overtaxed Coast Guard has no clue what even those ships in or near U.S. waters contain, where they are headed and who are their crew. Sailing 100 miles off our shores, a ship capable of launching one of these Scud-type missile could range most of the Nation’s largest population centers.

    Senator Levin’s Skulduggery

    Unfortunately, should the next al Qaeda attack involve such a missile being fired at us “tomorrow” or “next week,” there is nothing in place to stop it. It will, all other things being equal, reach its destination with devastating effect. Worse yet, Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee — whose colleagues have so recently assailed President Bush for not acting on warnings he had received prior to September 11th — have recently decided to hamstring Mr. Bush’s ability to address the missile threat. They propose to cut funds sought by the President and Secretary Rumsfeld to build missile defenses by roughly $800 million and introduced new bureaucratic impediments to swift acquisition of such defenses.

    This proposal is the handiwork of Committee chairman Carl Levin of Michigan. He induced even colleagues who have long been supporters of missile defense, like Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, to go along, apparently by brazenly transferring missile defense monies to ship-building and other member-directed priorities. As a result, the Levin proposal was adopted by the Committee on a straight party-line vote — even though it cut funds from air-, sea- and land-based programs that have long enjoyed the support of legislators like Max Cleland of Georgia and Jack Reed of Rhode Island.

    In fact, Sen. Reed declared in a speech at a National Defense University breakfast on May 25, 2001 that: “We are pursuing Theater Missile Defense programs…such as [the Patriot] PAC-3, THAAD, Navy Area Defense, Navy Theater Wide and Airborne Laser. Those are systems we should really put some energy and resources behind, even more so than we are doing today.” Instead, the defense authorization bill the Senate will soon consider — perhaps before adjourning for the Memorial Day recess — inflicts deep cuts in many of these and other programs that could produce near-term contingency deployment options, leaving us defenseless even if a missile attack by al Qaeda or from some other quarter comes a year from now.

    Bottom Line

    On Thursday, President Bush told Senators he would veto the defense authorization bill if it included the $450 million he had requested just last January for the Crusader artillery program, before it was cancelled by Secretary Rumsfeld. The least he can do is inform legislators that this bill will meet a similar fate if does not provide the full and unencumbered $7.6 billion he believes is necessary to defend against what may prove to be the next, incoming terrorist attack.

    ‘Mr. Arafat, Renounce This Map’

    (Washington, D.C.): In 1987, a President of the United States confronted a great evil and found a simple, yet powerful, way to call symbolically for its undoing. Ronald Reagan — over the adamant and determined objections of his experts in the State Department — used the backdrop of Cold War Berlin’s barricaded Brandenburg Gate to call on the then-leader of the Soviet Union to put an end to the “Evil Empire.” As he put it on that occasion, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” The rest, as they say, is history.

    Precondition to Peace

    Today, President Bush has an opportunity to sound a similar clarion call as he confronts an evil to which he is no less passionately opposed than was Mr. Reagan to Communist totalitarianism: the determination of many in the Arab world to pursue the complete destruction of the State of Israel.

    Over the next few days, Mr. Bush may order his Vice President, Dick Cheney, to return to the Middle East, in the hope of giving a fresh impetus to efforts to achieve a genuine peace between the Jewish State and her foes. If so, it will be on the basis of evidence not discernable at this writing indicating that Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Yasser Arafat has, at last, taken steps to exercise control over terrorists operating from areas for which he is responsible. And it will be with an eye toward the Arab League summit scheduled to convene in Beirut on Wednesday and Thursday, where participants are expected to discuss a “vision of peace” being touted by Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah.

    The Saudi “plan” reportedly would offer Israel full normalization of relations with the Arabs if the Jewish State will relinquish all the territory on the West Bank and Gaza Strip seized in the course of its defensive operations in the 1967 Six-Day War. Arafat has signaled his support for this formulation, as have a number of other Arab leaders. Today’s State Department experts think a majority of the Arab League states might endorse this initiative, creating a new basis for a permanent, regional settlement of this long-festering conflict. Some even hope that, in this fashion, the League may become, if not actually favorably disposed towards, than less stridently opposed to America’s #1 Mideast priority: toppling Saddam Hussein.

    Reality Check

    Unfortunately, there is reason to believe that the Arabs are no more serious about making a genuine peace with Israel at this juncture than they have been in the past. To the contrary, many in the Arab world and among the Palestinians in particular clearly believe that the time is ripe to “liberate” not only the disputed territories captured by the Israelis in 1967, but all of the land “occupied” by the Jews — including all pre-1967 Israel. They sense that, as in Lebanon, their violence is paying off, driving the Jewish “crusaders” off disputed land and driving a wedge between Israel and her most important ally, the United States.

    This was the goal of Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization when it was established in 1964 — that is, before Israel had “occupied” any territory on the West Bank or Gaza. And so it remains today. However, in the wake of the Arab armies’ 1973 defeat the last time they tried to destroy Israel, the PLO decided that the ultimate objective would have to be achieved in stages. This approach was formally adopted in 1974 and became known as the “Plan of Phases”: In the first phase, Israel would be compelled to relinquish territory that could be used subsequently to drive the Jews into the sea.

    The unwavering commitment to this goal has long been reflected in a map of “Palestine” widely used by the Palestinians and other Arabs. In it, Palestine consists of not only all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but all of pre-1967 Israel, as well. Accordingly, there is no Israel at all on the maps used in Arafat’s offices, on the uniforms of his para-military “police” or on the website of the Palestinian National Authority and its agencies.
    Source: Palestinian National Authority

    Most insidious, perhaps, is this map’s repeated appearance in the textbooks with which the next generation of Palestinian schoolchildren are taught to think about their birthright — and shaped in their expectations about a future homeland.

    A half-hearted effort has lately been made to claim this map as a depiction of an historical nation known as Palestine. This is a fabrication. In his recently re-issued and authoritative work, Islam in History, Dr. Bernard Lewis — one of the most eminent scholars of Mideast history — makes clear that there has never been a Palestine with the boundaries shown on Arafat’s map.

    The Bottom Line

    Under these circumstances, Israel is fully within its rights to resist appeals to surrender land its enemies have used in the past to try to destroy the Jewish State. Indeed, it would be the height of folly and possibly state-icidal to do otherwise. Neither Israelis nor Americans whose national interest is served by having a strong, secure and self-reliant democratic ally in the Middle East can responsibly ignore this reality.

    Consequently, if President Bush wishes to play a constructive role at this difficult moment in the Mideast, he must insist that Israel’s adversaries stop paying lip-service in English to their desire for peace while cultivating the intolerance and destructive propensities that endanger our ally and preclude it from safely considering further territorial or other concessions. A good place to start would be by issuing a call much as Ronald Reagan did a generation ago: “Mr. Arafat: Renounce this map” — and ensure that neither the Palestinian Authority nor its friends any longer use such representations to describe an end-game for the so-called “peace process” with which Israel literally cannot live. 1

    1Watch the Center’s TV ad campaign urging President George W. Bush to demand that Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat renounce the liquidation of Israel.

    *See the Center for Security Policy’s Security Forum entitled: What is Wrong with Arafat’s Picture? ( No. 02-F 14, 07 March 2002).

    Policy Powerhouse’: Guardian Notes Ascendancy of Realists in Bush Security Policy Team — and the Center that Supports Them

    (Washington, D.C.): On 17 December, the Center for Security Policy was paid the highest praise by the British newspaper, the Guardian, both in generously (if somewhat grudgingly) describing the organization’s effectiveness and, more importantly, in noting the Center’s association with the Bush Administration’s most formidable security policy practitioners. The latter include: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, Richard Perle who chairs the Defense Policy Board, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton and Assistant Secretary of Defense J.D. Crouch.

    The Guardian describes such individuals as "hawks." We prefer to think of them as realists — men whose clear-headed judgment is informed by high intellect and enormous experience, gained within and outside of government. They are rendering impressive service to their country and reflect great credit on the man who had the vision and sound, realist instincts to enlist them in his administration: President George W. Bush.

    The Center for Security Policy takes immense pride in its association with people of such quality. It finds daily inspiration in their leadership and looks forward with confidence to supporting their efforts to devise and implement policies of peace through American strength.

     

    Washington hawks get power boost
    Rumsfeld is winning the debate

    By Julian Borger
    Guardian(UK), 17 December 2001

    The gathering for a recent dinner at an expensive Washington hotel was officially to honour the "Keepers of the Flame" – US security officials deemed by their more conservative colleagues to have fought the good fight for bigger defence budgets and tougher policies.

    It was also a celebration.

    The mostly casualty-free military successes in Afghanistan have significantly boosted the power of Washington’s "super-hawks" – a tight-knit group of former cold warriors who have returned from more than a decade in policy exile to grasp the levers of power once more.

    "It’s taken us 13 years to get here, but we’ve arrived," the evening’s host, Frank Gaffney, the head of a hawkish Washington thinktank, declared to applause and murmurs of agreement.

    The new defence establishment clustered around the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, is clearly winning the policy debate against the state department.

    In the latest of a string of setbacks for Colin Powell’s multilateralist approach, the secretary of state’s attempts to keep negotiations going with Moscow over missile defence was abruptly brought to an end last week with the announcement that the United States would withdraw from the anti ballistic missile (ABM) treaty.

    Meanwhile, the hardliners are capturing key squares on the chessboard of Washington power, at the expense of the moderates at state.

    Barring a military disaster in the Afghan endgame, the Pentagon is almost certain to win its battle to pursue the war of terrorism into Iraq and suspected terrorist havens across the world.

    "This is the third significant military campaign, after Desert Storm and Kosovo, in which air power has been the decisive element and where casualties have been negligible," John Pike, the chief analyst at the online security newsletter GlobalSecurity.com, said.

    "To the extent that the administration now can’t tell the difference between a war and a firepower display, there is a greater temptation to resort to force."

    But the hawk ascendancy has had other far-reaching implications.

    Significant foreign policy issues have been annexed by the Pentagon and its militant allies, including the negotiation of key international treaties and the handling of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

    John Bolton – the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz group’s own man in the state department – was forced on Mr Powell despite the secretary of state’s strenuous objections.

    Mr Bolton is under secretary of state for arms control and international security. He serves as senior adviser to the president on non-proliferation and disarmament – a role which causes grim amusement in the state department as he opposes multilateral arms agreements on principle.

    Inserted into the department to oversee the destruction of the ABM treaty, Mr Bolton was also instrumental in torpedoing international negotiations in Geneva earlier this month aimed at enforcing the toothless 1972 biological weapons convention.

    Mr Powell does not have a counterweight to Mr Bolton in the Pentagon, and he is about to lose an important ally in the White House.

    Bruce Reidel, a Clinton holdover who has echoed the state department’s emphasis on the need to maintain an Arab coalition, is due to leave his job as head of the national security council Middle East desk next week.

    The hawks’ candidate to take over is Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-American with little experience in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whose empire will include the Middle East, Iran and Iraq.

    Three years ago, he co-signed a letter to the then president, Bill Clinton, calling on him to throw his weight wholeheartedly into an effort to topple Saddam Hussein. The letter was also signed by Mr Rumsfeld, Mr Wolfowitz, Mr Bolton and others.

    And for the Washington hawks, Israel is a strategic ally which should not be bullied into giving ground – a view promoted by Doug Feith at the Pentagon, and Frank Gaffney, his former colleague at the Centre for Security Policy (CSP).

    "The so-called Middle East ‘peace process,’ which began with secret Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Oslo, has materially contributed to the present, catastrophic situation," the CSP argues on its website. "Successive concessions made in the name of advancing the ‘peace process’ by both Labour and Likud-led governments of Israel have not appeased demands for further concessions, only whetted Arab appetites for more."

    The CSP has now established itself as an influential player in Washington, a policy powerhouse focused on establishing a radical, unilateralist and aggressive new defence doctrine.

    The ballroom for the "Keepers of the Flame" gathering was packed with the high priests of the new security establishment. They included Mr Rumsfeld, Mr Feith and another Pentagon advisor, JD Crouch, sitting alongside the former CIA director, James Woolsey, a leading proponent of a new war against Saddam.

    Among them was Richard Perle, known as the "prince of darkness" in the Reagan-era arms race, who has been reborn as the chairman of the defence policy board.

    Mr Rumsfeld was the night’s keynote speaker. He declared his happiness at being able to speak his mind "among friends" and embraced the mood by telling a cheering audience that after finishing off al-Qaida and the Taliban, "we’d best go after the rest of the terrorists".

    For the time being, at least, there is little in Washington to stop Mr Rumsfeld chasing America’s foes all the way to Baghdad.

    America’s top sabre-rattlers

    Donald Rumsfeld – A veteran of the cold war chosen by the vice-president, Dick Cheney, in the face of opposition from Colin Powell, now secretary of state. His radical policies and abrasive manner initially provoked resistance from the Pentagon generals. But the war on terrorism has made him the most powerful member of the cabinet and he is expanding his influence into foreign policy fields normally managed by the secretary of state.

    Paul Wolfowitz – Mr Rumsfeld’s deputy, and the foremost exponent of a new war against Saddam Hussein. He is a former academic with a wide-ranging network of travellers and sympathisers, commonly referred to in Washington as the "Wolfowitz cabal".

    Doug Feith – The Pentagon’s policy supremo and a former director of the Centre for Security Policy (CSP), who has led the charge for a more pro-Israel Middle East policy.

    Frank Gaffney – a former defence policy official and Rumsfeld acolyte who now runs the CSP – a thinktank and ideological seminary for young hawks. He advocates the scrapping of the Oslo peace process, the forceful promotion of the national missile defence system, and a settling of scores with Baghdad.

    Richard Perle – Known as Ronald Reagan’s "prince of darkness" for his distaste for disarmament treaties, and his hawkish attitude towards the Soviet Union. Mr Perle retains an important role in the defence policy board, a Pentagon thinktank which he chairs.

    John Bolton – The hawks’ man inside the state department. Despite the objections of Colin Powell, he was appointed undersecretary of state for arms control, non-proliferation and international security, even though he is a committed unilateralist who opposes global arms treaties on principle.

    Zalmay Khalilzad – the top Afghan-American in the administration. Three years ago, he signed a joint letter with Donald Rumsfeld and other hawks, calling on the Clinton administration to topple Saddam.

    He is seeking to take over the Middle East portfolio when Bruce Reidel steps down later this month.

    Friends Don’t Let Friends Underfund Defense

    (Washington, D.C.): Today’s Washington Post features a column by Robert Kagan that constructively challenges the adequacy of the Bush Administration funding for the Department of Defense. That such harsh criticism is not only warranted but constructive is assured by Mr. Kagan’s citation of no less an authority than President Bush’s Deputy Secretary of Defense, Dr. Paul Wolfowitz, who has courageously — and correctly — declared repeatedly in congressional testimony that it is “reckless to press our luck or gamble with our children’s future’ by spending only 3 percent of America’s gross national product on defense.” As the Kagan column points out, 3 percent of GDP is all the President’s FY2002 budget proposes to spend on national defense.

    Messrs. Wolfowitz and Kagan persuasively argue instead for a real and sustained increase in defense spending over and above the levels approved to date by the Bush Office of Management and Budget. If history is any guide, doing less invites future defense costs that will make the present shortfalls pale by comparison. An American military perceived to be hollow invites aggression by others, often leading to conflicts that entail U.S. expenditures on the armed forces many times the amounts that, had they been spent beforehand, may well have deterred the adversary from acting in the first place.

    Particularly noteworthy is Mr. Kagan’s cautionary closing note for Republicans: They cannot take for granted the political support they have long enjoyed from those in and out of uniform who subscribe to the Reagan philosophy of “peace through strength.” While fu ture success at the polls is hardly the only — to say nothing of the most important — reason for ensuring America’s military has the equipment, trained personnel and power projection capability required to defend the Nation’s world-wide interests in the 21st Century, the GOP risks disaster in coming elections if it permits others to be perceived (however unjustifiably) as more committed to assuring the robustness of the United States’ armed forces.

    Indefensible Defense Budget

    By Robert Kagan

    The Washington Post, 20 July 2001

    President Bush’s defense budget is inadequate and reckless. Who says so? His own deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz. In little-noticed testimony before Congress last week, Wolfowitz said it was “reckless to press our luck or gamble with our children’s future” by spending only 3 percent of America’s gross national product on defense. Bush’s proposed defense budget of $329 billion puts defense spending at 3 percent. As Republicans liked to point out during the Clinton years, it hasn’t been that low since Pearl Harbor.

    Wolfowitz’s gutsy whistle-blowing follows a losing battle with the White House. According to administration sources, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked the White House last month for a $35 billion increase over the Clinton defense budget. The Office of Management and Budget sliced his request in half. This week Rumsfeld said he would need at least another $18 billion next year, but OMB has said he won’t get more than $10 billion.

    So much for Vice President Dick Cheney’s campaign promise to the military: “Help is on the way.” Tax rebate checks are on the way. Real help for the military is not. Last year Cheney warned that defense budget “shortfalls” in the Clinton era were forcing the military to cut back on training and exercises and creating dangerous “shortages of spare parts and equipment.” But this week Rumsfeld frankly told Congress that Bush’s budget “does not get us well.” Joint Chiefs Chairman Henry Shelton was even more blunt: “We’re not going to be able to make significant inroads into fixing the modernization and the transformation and the infrastructure at three cents on the dollar. . . . I don’t believe that we’ll be able to sustain our long-term readiness under these conditions.” All of which led Democratic Rep. Norman Dicks to ask why, if both Rumsfeld and Shelton “know that the country is underfunding the defense budget,” they couldn’t “convince the president and OMB . . . that we’ve got to have a significant increase, or we’re going to let America’s military capability deteriorate?”

    Rumsfeld had no answer, but it’s a good question. Serious defense experts of all political hues agree that even Rumsfeld’s original $35 billion request was low. Jimmy Carter’s defense secretary, Harold Brown, and former defense secretary James Schlesinger have argued in these pages for an increase of at least $50 billion a year, and former Clinton Pentagon officials agree. The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines say they need $32 billion this year just to keep planes flying, tanks rolling and troops training. Never mind buying new weapons systems to replace those that are now a quarter-century old. As one Pentagon official put it, President Bush’s $18 billion is barely enough “to keep us treading water.” With $9 billion set aside for military housing, health and pay increases, Bush’s budget gives Rumsfeld too little to repair the military’s readiness problems, much less to modernize and “transform” it to fight the wars of the future.

    So now what? Rumsfeld says he’ll try to make up for the inadequacies of the president’s budget by increasing “efficiency” at the Pentagon. But even if he eliminates all the waste — improbable — and persuades Congress to close more military bases — highly improbable — he’ll be lucky to eke out a few billion dollars. Shelton is more candid: If your armed forces don’t have the capability to carry out their missions, he told Congress this week, you can either increase the capabilities or decrease the missions. Whether Bush realizes it or not, he has chosen the latter course.

    In fact, Bush’s inadequate defense budget will soon start driving his foreign policy, if it hasn’t already. The first casualty may be the American role in Europe. Last month Bush promised to enlarge NATO and to keep U.S. troops in the Balkans as long as necessary. But Rumsfeld’s top adviser, Stephen Cambone, has bluntly warned the Army that it will lose two or more divisions under the new budget. Most of those cuts will come in Europe, which will make the U.S. presence in the Balkans increasingly difficult to sustain and raise doubts about Bush’s commitment to NATO, much less to an enlarged NATO.

    That’s just the beginning. Bush officials say they intend to shift America’s strategic focus to Asia. Fine. With what? The Navy, which had almost 600 ships in the 1980s, now has 310, but Rumsfeld warns that lack of money is driving the number down to an “unacceptable” 230. The chief of naval operations says stocks of precision- guided munitions — the wonder-weapon of choice in Kosovo and Iraq — are “below the current war fighting requirement,” which poses a “major risk” to U.S. forces. The Air Force says the number of aircraft readily available for use in combat has been steadily declining due to shortages of spare parts and maintenance. Add it all up and Bush’s stated commitments to defend Taiwan and get tough with Saddam Hussein start to look pretty hollow. Maybe Bush’s soft approach to Iraq since February has been driven by the fear that he literally can’t afford another conflict. Or, to be more precise, he doesn’t want to afford it.

    Remember when Republicans were more trustworthy on defense and national security than Democrats? This Bush presidency may change all that. After years of berating Clinton, Republicans are suddenly mute — what defense budget crisis? — while Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are hung out to dry.

    The writer, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes a monthly column for The Post.