Mike Short School of Diplomacy
"I'd have gone for the head of the snake on the first night.
I'd have turned the lights out the first night. I'd have dropped
the bridges across the Danube. I'd [have] hit five or six political
and military headquarters in downtown Belgrade. [Yugoslav President
Slobodan] Milosevic and his cronies would have waked up the first
morning asking what the hell was going on." --USAF
Lt. Gen. Michael C. Short, Operation Allied Force's air boss,
in Oct. 21 remarks to Senate Armed Services Committee.
Purple Haze
"The reason Slobodan Milosevic finally caved in--a primary
reason--was the presence of US Army ground forces in Albania."
--Lt. Gen. John W. Hendrix, commander, US Army V Corps
in Europe, quoted in the Sept. 11 European Stars and Stripes.
Shelton Speaketh ...
"Although we've done much in the past year to improve our
readiness, there's still much more that needs to be done in order
to sustain the momentum. ... Readiness is a very fragile thing,
and, if lost, it takes considerable time and resources to regain.
[Across-the-board reductions in all federal programs proposed
by some members of Congress would be] "devastating. ...
This would strip away the gains that we have made ... to start
readiness moving back in the right direction." --Army
Gen. Henry H. Shelton, JCS Chairman, in Oct. 26 remarks to the
SASC, criticizing a Republicansponsored proposal to trim
all federal programs by about 1 percent.
... Republicans Respondeth
"The fact of the matter is that the national security budgets
submitted year after year by this Administration--and which you
have testified in support of before our committee the past two
years--would have been 'devastating' to our nation's military.
In fact, the 'gains' you referred to in your testimony yesterday
'to start readiness moving back in the right direction' were
initiatives of our committee, not the Administration. ...
"You know that in Fiscal Year 1999, we provided $17.8 billion
in emergency appropriations ... to address shortfalls caused
by our record number of peacetime deployments, including major
operations in Iraq and the Balkan region. You also know that
we and our colleagues in Congress were severely criticized by
the President and this Administration for doing so.
"In Fiscal Year 2000, we added another $4.5 billion to the
President's request for our national security. Again, we were
criticized by the President for the priority we placed on our
nation's defense. In fact, up until the hour he signed the defense
appropriations bill into law on Monday, the President's spokesman
and advisors were expressing concerns about the bill and the
possibility the President might veto it.
"Yet yesterday, you say that it is Congress that threatens
the 'gains' we have made in strengthening our national security."
--Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Rep. C.W. "Bill"
Young (R-Fla.), chairmen of Senate and House appropriations committees,
in an Oct. 27 joint letter of response to Shelton.
Tell It to the French
"Once the threshold is crossed and you're going to use force,
that force has to be as decisive as possible in attaining your
military objectives. ... [In Operation Allied Force], every single
[NATO] nation had a domestic political constituency, and every
single nation had a different set of political problems."
--Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, Supreme Allied Commander Europe,
in an Oct. 21 SASC hearing on the conduct of Operation Allied
Force.
Actually, Tell This to the French
"Since last week, when the Senate voted overwhelmingly to
reject the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, condemnation bordering
on hysteria has rung out from the capitals of the world. ...
"French President Jacques Chirac (who, with his German and
British counterparts, penned a New York Times oped before
the vote, lecturing the Senate on its responsibility to ratify
the test ban) declared that, by rejecting his advice, the Senate
had launched 'an attack on the process of nonproliferation and
disarmament, which is one of the priorities of the European Union.'
"With all due respect to Mr. Chirac, the last time I checked,
no nation was counting on the safety and reliability of the French
nuclear arsenal to guarantee its security. Many do, however,
depend on the US for nuclear guarantees." --Sen. Jesse
Helms (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
in the Oct. 18 Wall Street Journal.
Lost Generation
"As President, I will begin an immediate, comprehensive
review of our military-the structure of its forces, the state
of its strategy, the priorities of its procurement--conducted
by a leadership team under the Secretary of Defense. I will give
the Secretary a broad mandate--to challenge the status quo and
envision a new architecture of American defense for decades to
come. We will modernize some existing weapons and equipment,
necessary for current tasks, but our relative peace allows us
to do this selectively. The real goal is to move beyond marginal
improvements-to replace existing programs with new technologies
and strategies, to use this window of opportunity to skip a generation
of technology." --Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Republican
Presidential front-runner, in a Sept. 23 speech at The Citadel.
The Hazards of Duke
"Troops are supposed to be willing to die so that civilians
do not have to." --Peter D. Feaver, Duke University
associate professor, in a Nov. 7 Washington Post article co-authored
with Christopher Gelpi, also of Duke.
