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TalkBack Live

Who's to Blame for the U.S. Military's Problems?

Aired August 31, 2000 - 3:00 p.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AL GORE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our military is the strongest and the best in the entire world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DARYN KAGAN, GUEST HOST: But that's not the whole picture according to Republicans.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DICK CHENEY (R), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Let us look at the people in our military. They will tell you firsthand parts are in short supply, maintenance canceled or delayed, exercises cut off.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAGAN: The Republican vice presidential candidate also suggests America's armed forces don't have trust in the current commander in chief.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHENEY: The first order of business is to renew the bond of trust between the commander in chief and the military.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAGAN: Reports out this week show the Reserves had trouble recruiting for the past three years, and the Marines are suspending some operations because of equipment problems.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHENEY: It's that combination of sort of overcommitments lots of times to nonessential missions like Haiti while at the same time we cut the budget, shortchange the force, and expect them to do more with less.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAGAN: Are the armed forces in deep trouble? If so, who's at fault and who is best-equipped to fix it?

Welcome to TALKBACK LIVE. I'm Daryn Kagan, staying late after school today, filling in for the vacationing Bobbie Battista.

Dick Cheney isn't shy about laying blame. He accuses President Clinton and by proxy Al Gore of running down the military and neglecting the national defense. Here to talk about that to start our hour, Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of "Winning Ugly: NATO's War to Save Kosovo." Also, Elaine Donnelly, who's president of the Center for Military Readiness.

Thanks for joining us. Appreciate your time today.

Mike, let's start with you. You wrote a piece for "The Washington Post" that ran last weekend that makes it pretty easy to understand how you break down if the military is ready or not. You do it by grades.

Basically, overall, do you think the U.S. military is ready to get if need be?

MICHAEL O'HANLON, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Yes. Today we are in pretty good shape to go today. There are some problems looming on the horizon. Some of them are being addressed by the Clinton administration, the Congress. Others require more attention. But the short answer is yes, we are ready to go today.

KAGAN: Elaine, I have a feeling you have a different opinion of that.

ELAINE DONNELLY, CENTER FOR MILITARY READINESS: Where are we going? We have a serious problem with readiness in the military, and to deny that these problems exists just goes to show just how unqualified to be president Mr. Al Gore is.

We've been deploying these troops for far too many missions. We've cut the budget by a third to a half, and the result is a military that's in deep trouble. Every measure that you can look at indicates that that's true.

KAGAN: Let's go ahead and use the piece that Mike wrote for "The Washington Post" where he gives grades on specific areas. We'll hear Mike's grade, and then Elaine we'll let you pop in how you would grade the same topic.

First of all, readiness of individual units. Mike, you gave it an A-.

O'HANLON: That's right, in the sense that if you look at how hard people are training, if you look at the quality of the people, their aptitude, their experience levels, and the general condition of the equipment, it's quite good. It's not excellent. It's fallen off a little from George Bush's years, but it's still about as good as under Ronald Reagan. So I say A-.

KAGAN: Elaine, how would you grade that? DONNELLY: I can't believe I'm hearing this. Just the other day,-front page story: 12 of 20 combat training units are rated C-4 for readiness. That's rock-bottom. We have a situation where people are being cannibalized, just like engine and airplane parts are being cannibalized in order to make equipment stretch longer than -- or farther than it otherwise would.

KAGAN: Is that an F or a D from your grade book?

DONNELLY: I think it's dangerous. Give it D for dangerous, because when you don't train people properly, when you pilots going in the Iraqi theater there or over the Kosovo air war, flying without training in the night-vision goggles and they have to rely on their back-seat radar intercept officer to guide them, you have to admire the bravery of these people. It's amazing how well they did in the air war. But they had to do it pretty much with duct tape and baling wire, according to the news accounts at the time.

KAGAN: Our next topic on the report card: ability to execute war plans. Again, Mike, you give pretty high marks.

O'HANLON: Well, the foes that we're fighting today are not as strong as they were, and I'll President Bush and Dick Cheney credit for defeating Saddam Hussein a decade ago. That military is not as strong. North Korea's is not as strong. We can afford to be smaller because we're also in many ways better.

Elaine is right. There are some problems. I don't agree with her suggestion that the Air Force has in any way fallen off from its training levels. There are some problems, as she mentions, with the Army. But overall, things are quite good, and we have gotten better by getting better weaponry.

We've had some problems with equipment, some with people. And she's right to emphasize those. But the overall trends are in our favor, and we could easily win at least a single another Desert Storm if we had to. The second one would be tough, but the first one we could definitely do very well.

KAGAN: Just to understand the topic and the grade, the idea is if the U.S. had to go to war today, you're saying A- in terms of being ready to go and go well.

O'HANLON: Against realistic adversaries, yes.

KAGAN: But only against one adversary, not against two.

O'HANLON: The second would be tougher. I think we could at least deploy a smaller force to prevent any major tactical defeats and to begin an air campaign that would inflict punishment like we did against Serbia last year. But if we wanted to overthrow that enemy regime, we might have to wait until the first war was concluded. I would agree with that point.

KAGAN: Elaine, I can hear the tension in your voice. DONNELLY: You know, this kind of illusory talk is really dangerous. In order to do what's been suggested here, you would have to have an awful lot of magic wands. A magic wand warrior might count on them, but magic wands are in short supply and so are the kinds of ammunition and equipment that we need.

But let's talk about the two Army units that were declared unready. This is what Governor George W. Bush mentioned in his speech, rated rock-bottom, C-4 for readiness last year. Those units are back home now, and by the way, it's not a reflection on their reputation. It's a reputation -- it's a reflection on the Pentagon for putting them in that situation.

There are other troops over there now. They came out of the training commands that I mentioned just a few minutes ago. We are moving people overseas, but we still have a problem in Kosovo and Bosnia. We don't have a decent airfield there. There's still not a seaport there. So if we had to fight a major war somewhere else in the world, those troops and the elite units would have a much harder time getting there than has been the case before.

We don't have the transport aircraft. We don't have the ability to execute what we did during the Bush years or the Reagan-Bush year.

KAGAN: And I know it's kind of trite to put letter grades with us, but just to help us better understand, in terms of ability to go to war, where would you put the U.S. military right now? To execute a war plan today?

DONNELLY: I think the military is struggling, not only because of budget cuts, but because of what's been loaded on in the way of social engineering issues that make the military much more difficult and more dangerous. I think we need to talk to people out there in the front lines, trying to make due when they know they don't have enough ammunition. Training exercises are being canceled constantly.

And in the Navy, there are ships in the Pacific fleet that have not been able to go on scheduled deployments because they don't have enough money for fuel. Fuel costs have gone up.

We're just putting the problem down the road a piece, but the erosion has been constant. And for the vice president to make the claims that he has shows that he's not ready to be president.

It takes more to be a commander in chief than just to wear the VFW hat.

KAGAN: Mike, as you look ahead, your grades do kind of fall. I mean, not your grades, but the way you grade the U.S. military on the topic of sustaining readiness for the coming decade. Your grade falls there.

O'HANLON: That's right. What I say is -- and unlike Elaine I would disagree with many of her points -- she has identified a number of specific problems. You have to distinguish between that and the broad picture. Most of these units are in very good shape today, and where there are problems we try to address them.

But the problem that really is of concern is two-fold. One equipment is wearing out. We bought a lot of new equipment during the Reagan period. We did not need to buy very much in the 1990s. That means the next president, whoever he is, is going to have to buy more, otherwise we will really see serious problems with equipment aging. And at some point, the safety records, which today are better than ever under Clinton and Gore, will get worse. That's a problem.

Also, we are working our troops very hard. I would disagree with Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush that there's some easy way to change that. But we are working them hard. We've got to pay a lot of attention to their well-being, their morale.

There have been some recent improvements in morale and in retention and in recruitment, but overall it's still a challenge. And if we don't pay a lot of attention to that problem, we could break the all-volunteer force. But I am relatively confident that if we keep making the kinds of changes that we have in the last couple of years, we will solve that problem in the future.

KAGAN: Elaine, I imagine you see things as bad and getting worse.

DONNELLY: We are well on the way of breaking the volunteer force. I can't tell you how many people in uniform I've heard from who are just waiting for the outcome of the election to decide whether or not they will stay in the military or not.

The best thing that Dick Cheney said in his speech both yesterday and in Philadelphia is -- and he said it right to the troops -- help is on the way. And I think because he was in the Pentagon before the last eight years ensued, he will be in an excellent position to compare what the situation is now and what it was then, and then take constructive steps to repair the damage.

KAGAN: OK. I'm going to ask both of you to stand by. We have some e-mails coming in. I want to show you some of them.

From Kelly in Florida: "Any country that would are attack the U.S. would soon find out how fast our country would united and how powerful we really are." And from Rita in Louisiana: "We have troops are spread too thin. Pay is too low. Housing is terrible. Both my children did short stints in the military. You can believe me they both went back to school after leaving the service."

We encourage you to e-mail and call in. Also, we want you to go online and check out our Web site.

As we take a quick break, we want to show you what the question is of the day. Today's TALKBACK LIVE viewer question: The military under the Clinton-Gore administration, has it gotten worse, has it gotten better, has there been no change? Log on, stay tuned, and we will also show you the results later in the show. We'll be back after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Welcome back to TALKBACK LIVE, as we continue our conversation on whether the U.S. military is ready to go. We've been having a interesting conversation with two people who have different opinions on that, and our audience has been listening and has a question, I think, for Elaine. Here is Lowell (ph) from New York.

LOWELL: Yes. I'm wondering where all of these facts are coming from. I haven't heard where the facts have been identified from, what political agendas those fact-finding organizations may have, and a lot of this discussion does sound as if each participant is pushing a particular candidate rather than observing the merits of the issue.

DONNELLY: Well, you know, Lowell, my organization is non- partisan, sometimes I'm critical of Republicans, too. But the facts that I just put out to you are from all the major newspapers, you can find them everywhere, "The New York Times", "The Wall Street Journal," "The Washington Post," the military press, "Army Times," "Navy Times," even defense linked. The Department of Defense's own Web site tells the story, we have a problem with readiness. Now, these facts cannot be denied.

And for the Gore campaign to say that you can't talk about these issues without being accused of not supporting the troops, that is outrageous. The people who really support the troops are the ones who are saying, look, these people are there to serve their country. We admire them. We want them to be safe, and we don't want their job to be more difficult and more dangerous. It's time to debate these issues. It is the commander-in-chief we're going to elect in November, and if we can't debate or discuss this, then what else is there to debate?

KAGAN: Well, there has been that criticism when George W. Bush came out and criticized the military, what are you doing to U.S. forces around the world? Are you sending a message to the Saddam Husseins of the world, to terrorists of the world, guess what, we are not ready, come and get us?

DONNELLY: Guess what? Saddam Hussein knows that we're not ready. He knows exactly what his capabilities are versus ours, and there are a lot of -- certainly there is a lot of information out there, that he intends to take advantage of that perceived weakness. Now, if we were attacked, would we be able to retaliate? Of course we could, we're the greatest world power there is. But we know that there are problems, there is erosion in trust.

Certainly, the trust issue is one we ought to look at, because Dick Cheney mentioned it -- about 34 percent of people in uniform interviewed by Center For Strategic and International Studies -- it's not a conservative group -- found that only 34 percent said, my commanding officer, if you -- if he said something is true, you can believe it's true. Now, when only a third of the troops believe something like that, we know we have a problem. We have to be able to trust the commander-in-chief. That counts for the military and for those of us, civilians who care about national security. KAGAN: Betsy from Pennsylvania has a question, I think, that expresses a lot of the frustration that folks feel, just -- we are not talking about the military, wonks who like to talk about all day, but just regular people.

BETSY: My question was, you often hear people who are against military spending tell us that the United States has the power to destroy the world 10 times over. You know, what is the truth there?

DONNELLY: Well, I tell you, we are a nation that is surrounded by wonderful oceans that have protected us from attack from the beginning of our existence, but in order to project the kind of power that's needed by a nation as great as the United States, it requires a big budget. So to compare the United States' defense budget to that of the next nine very small countries, or even some of the larger countries, really is a distortion of reality.

The budget levels now are about as low as they were just before Pearl Harbor. The best way to cause problems or to be attacked is to have a budget so low and morale so low that we invite instability and some nation, even a small nation deciding to challenge us.

KAGAN: Michael O'Hanlon, here's maybe a question that you can deal with us, the bigger picture. We could sit here and talk to experts like you and Elaine all day long, but the average person probably would say, yes, I want a prepared U.S. military, but I hear all these facts and figures thrown at me from different positions, from people who do have political agendas. If you are just an average voter and you just want to figure out what you believe is true, where do you go to find that out?

O'HANLON: Well, let me just say one thing in relation to what Elaine just mentioned. She said that military spending is the lowest since before World War II. She's correct by one way of looking at the problem, which is, defense spending as a percent of our nation's wealth. That's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is how much do we spend in actual dollars. And even after you adjust for inflation, we spend about as much now as we did during the Cold War, about 90 percent the average. So what I would say to people is, any one statistic is probably going to be misleading.

And Elaine and I actually haven't disagreed today on any specific index of readiness, we have just been using different ones. So a listener, I think, needs to try to get a complete picture. As far as defense spending, I would say it's neither high nor low. As Elaine says, it's low by historical standards as a percent of our nation's economy, but it's still high in dollar terms, and it's high compared to other countries.

I think you need to weigh all of these things together, and just keep getting more information and also, as I think Lowell said a minute ago, be a little bit wary about the political agenda of the person providing the information, because any one camp -- and it's been true in this campaign as well -- any one camp will give you numbers that support their case and don't necessarily paint a balanced picture. KAGAN: Here's Patrick from Ireland. We surprised you, Patrick, but you had a good comment during the commercial break, so we wanted you to share on the air, too.

PATRICK: As an outsider, I can't help but being a bit cynical about this, and I feel that it's an election issue, that it's used as a vote-catching exercise, and I simply believe that it's a question of relativity, that relative to America, other countries are weak.

I can't see any country coming within reach of American military might. And when that was put to the test in the Gulf War, America came out trumps. And I think we in Ireland really applauded them at that point.

And since then I don't think we've seen any proof to show that America has weakened in any way. That's my comment.

KAGAN: There's our Irish perspective, with that...

GUEST: During the Gulf...

KAGAN: Sorry, sorry, Elaine. We have to take a break. We'll get to you right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: We have it on. We have music. We have Bernie Shaw.

As Bernie mentioned, we are talking about the readiness of the U.S. military. I want to show you some faxes that we've been getting in while doing breaking news. Let's go around here and look at this. All different kind of opinion, talking about military readiness. This one, "My husband is active duty. I am a reserve soldier. We are both patriotic and ready to serve, but we'll be getting out when our contracts are up. We qualify for food stamps."

Then there is this e-mail. "If the Cold War is over, why do we need such a huge military? There is no major power to challenge us. Mary in Massachusetts. Two different ways of looking at the issue of military preparedness.

We let our two guests, because they had to go. And now we're going to bring in two more guests to talk about military readiness and the United States. Ambassador Marc Ginsburg is senior adviser to the Gore-Lieberman campaign on foreign aide and defense policy. He is a former U.S. ambassador to Morocco. Also with us is Frank Gaffney, former assistant secretary of defense. He is now director for the Center of Security Policy. We do -- we would like to say that we invited a representative from the Bush-Cheney campaign. They were not able to join us today. So we are very appreciative of the two gentlemen who were able to join us today.

Mr. Ambassador, let's start with you. There has been a lot of criticism, especially from Dick Cheney, over the last couple of days, about the Clinton-Gore administration and what the military would look like under a Gore administration. Do you think that's been fair? AMBASSADOR MARC GINSBERG, SENIOR GORE DEFENSE POLICY ADVISER: No, it hasn't been fair, Daryn, and let me tell you why. Let's put this in context, because the American people deserve not to have a lot of numbers thrown at them. We're talking about quality of leadership of the two presidential candidates and their vice presidential candidates.

Al Gore, first and foremost, is a veteran who served in Vietnam. He has made some very difficult choices when it comes to defending American national interest abroad, in the context, for example, of voting for the Persian Gulf War against the interest of the Democratic Party. He understands how complex military decisions and foreign policy implications are, and in the context of these issues, let me just say that the argument is really over whether or not we have experienced a hurricane and whether or not there's a thousand flashlights in the Home Depot and now there's only 700. Does that mean that we should have had 1,000, or does that mean we used the 300 wisely?

The issue in the campaign in which the Republicans are camouflaging and turning into personal attacks on the abilities of Bill Clinton and Al Gore to be commanders in chief really relates more to their unhappiness and resentment over America's global leadership role in the world. They do not favor the types of commitments that we have made to defend American values and interests abroad, whether it be in Bosnia or Kosovo, whether it be in Haiti. And George Bush has called for a complete across-the-board assessment we review of these deployments. Does he intend to pull back from Korea. Does he intend to pull back from the Middle East? Does he intend to pull back from Europe? He's sending a that signal that he prefers a strong military without providing American global leadership.

KAGAN: Frank Gaffney, here is some numbers Dick Cheney was dropping as he passed through Georgia yesterday. He said commitments worldwide for the U.S. military in the last decade are up more than 300 percent, but he says the military forces and their readiness is down, and what's being spent on them is down 40 percent. How do those numbers jive with what you think?

FRANK GAFFNEY, FORMER ASSISTANT DEFENSE SECRETARY: Let me start off by saying I am not speaking on behalf of the Bush campaign.

KAGAN: Right, we want to be clear about that.

GAFFNEY: And I am not associated with him. I am an old Reagan man myself, but and I am happy to address what I think is really the most important question we're facing today. You know, there's a lot of talk in the course of this campaign, and most especially I think out of the Gore camp, but both camps, about saving Social Security. And I think it's clearly time that we be spending at least as much energy thinking about saving national security, and the numbers that you've just cited, Daryn, we could go through a whole litany of numbers. You did, in fact, in the earlier part of the program.

I believe our evidence, and it's just really common sense for most Americans, you are asking them to do more with less. At some point, the system breaks. I believe the system has broken, and my only quibble with the Bush-Cheney critique of the Clinton-Gore years is, I don't think they're telling the full story. I believe that we have broken the system to the point where using the Clinton-Gore administration's only analysis, the so-called quadrennial defense review of 1997, you use those assessments of what's required, and it turns out we're about $100 billion short for each of the next five years. That's real money, and that's the kind of money that neither candidate, to this point, has talked about expending in order to save, as I think that we must, national security.

KAGAN: So in your eyes, even the Bush-Cheney ticket isn't talking about spending enough money to really fix the system?

GAFFNEY: Well, I think they're not talking about spending money for what really needs to be addressed here, which is not just today's readiness. We can quibble about whether the Clinton-Gore guys are cooking the books by changing the definition of ready so that more ready is the case today than it was yesterday. That's interesting, but it's not as germane to the future security of this country as the question of, are we providing today for tomorrow's readiness? And let me make the most important point. I believe as a nation, we will pay for our future security. The question is, do we pay now in dollars, and thereby maybe prevent future wars? And that's the name of the game, or do we pay later in a currency that I think we all hold much more dear, namely human life, the lives of our men and women in uniform. Some of whom may be kids today, but who will be casualties if we have not made the investment in the future.

KAGAN: Frank, I just have to interrupt one second. We do have breaking news.

(INTERRUPTED BY BREAKING NEWS)

KAGAN: Thanks for sticking with us here at TALKBACK LIVE. In between all of this breaking news, we've been talking about military preparedness and is the U.S. ready to go and do people really care as they decide who they're going to vote for, for president in November.

Let's bring the ambassador back in, Ambassador Marc Ginsburg.

You're an insider in the Gore campaign. Does the campaign think that people care about this issue?

GINSBURG: I think the American people deserve to have a commander in chief who cares about this issue. After all, it's their sons and daughters who are on the front line, and Al Gore being a veteran of Vietnam understands this. He understands the importance that it's not just the weapons that are important to our men and women: It's also their quality of life.

It's important also that the American people hear the facts accurately, which is why we're so concerned that Dick Cheney and George Bush have been, shall we say, remiss with the facts and throwing a lot of numbers around. And in the final analysis, what we're talking about, on the one hand, is American global leadership, and on the second hand, who has the commander in chief experience. After all, Al Gore has served 30 years in Congress. Served as a principal in the National Security Council. Served in the military, and understands -- and George Bush, of course, has none of those attributes.

These are the reasons why he cares so much and understands the important the American people attach to these issues.

KAGAN: Frank Gaffney, let's bring you back in, too. Frankly, when it takes a turn toward the political, people, at least in our audience, kind of start rolling their eyes. But people are interested in the issue. What they really want to know is, without having so many numbers and facts interpreted for you and thrown at you, where can people go to figure out what they believe on the issue?

GAFFNEY: Well, I think frankly it's common sense. I think if you look at the history of the past century, and you see that time after time after time, the United States did what democracies frequently do, which is see the end of some immediate, imminent threat or danger, and say, well, let's cash in the peace dividend, let's divert money that we had previously been spending on maintaining a defense sufficient to deter aggression, and we'll spend it on health care or education or other important priorities, to be sure.

But invariably, what happened was, either because we created a vacuum of power or we encouraged others to think that we were weak or simply because we weren't paying attention, we found that suddenly a new threat, an unexpected threat, a serious threat had emerged, and we wound up throwing money at the problem: in some cases, actually, not just money, but throwing men's lives into the equation, too.

That's not what we want to do, again I don't think. And what this debate has to be about -- it's not just leadership; that ought to be part of it. It's not just numbers. It ought to be about whether we as a country are going to learn from those past mistakes and maintain the kind of national security posture sufficient to deter future threats and prevent wars.

GINSBURG: Daryn, if I may...

KAGAN: Yes...

GINSBURG: I want to -- I want to -- I'd like to add...

KAGAN: Well, hold on. Hold on. That increasingly loud music means we have to take a break. We are not prepared. Got to go. We're back after that.

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