December 1999, Vol. 82, No. 12
By Robert S. Dudney, Executive Editor
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.