Okay, we kicked ass in Iraq. But while we're handing out kudos for the quick and decisive victory, who should get credit for the dominance of the US military?
Well, Lawrence J. Korb, director of national security studies at the Council on Foreign Reflations and former assistant secretary of defense in the REAGAN administration gives us the answer. Since the Boston Globe site has been down all day, here's an extended snip from an intrepid typist over at BartCop. I'll provide the link when it's available.
While it is understandable that President George W. Bush and his secretary of defense are receiving plaudits for the relatively swift military victory in Iraq, the fact of the matter is that most of the credit for the successful military operation should go to the Clinton administration.As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld noted, the battle plan that led to the American success was that of General Tommy Franks, an Army officer appointed to head the Central Command by the Clinton administration. More important, the military forces that executed that plan so boldly and bravely were for the most part recruited, trained, and equipped by the Clinton administration.
The first Bush defense budget went into effect on Oct. 1, 2002, and none of the funds in that budget have yet had an impact on the quality of the men and women in the armed services, their readiness for combat, or the weapons they used to obliterate the Iraqi forces...
The Clinton administration actually spent more money on defense than had the outgoing administration of the first President Bush. The smaller outlays during the first Bush administration were developed and approved by Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell, who were then serving as secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff respectively.
Clinton’s last secretary of defense, William Cohen, turned over to Rumsfeld a defense budget that was higher in real terms than what James Schlesinger had bequeathed to Rumsfeld when he took over the Pentagon for the first time in 1975 at the height of the Cold War.
Not only did Clinton spend a large amount of money on the military; most of it was spent wisely. In the first Persian Gulf War, less than 10 percent of the bombs and missiles that were dropped on Iraq were smart weapons. That number jumped to 70 percent during this war because the Clinton administration ordered large quantities of upgraded munitions that made these “dumb” weapons smart. The Clinton administration also invested heavily in the technology that gave the on-scene commanders a much more vivid picture of the battlefield than a decade ago.
It was the Clinton administration that improved the accuracy of the Tomahawk cruise missile and upgraded the Patriot missile, which was so much more effective this time than the original Patriot in the first Persian Gulf War. The Clinton administration also kept the quality of our military personnel high by closing the gap between military and private sector compensation, a gap that the first Bush administration had allowed to grow, and improving retirement and health benefits for military retirees.
So if this latest military effort warrants a victory parade for the troops, let’s insist that Clinton and his secretaries of defense are invited. They deserve it. And if the Bush administration wants to learn how to rebuild the nation of Iraq, they might ask their predecessors how to go about it.
