Department of Defense debate heats up after national terrorist attacks

By Amanda Tracy
Norwich Guidon Managing Editor

The tragic acts of terrorism in New York and Washington, D.C. bring questions to the minds of Americans that are at the heart of a central debate going on within the Department of Defense.

That debate is of transformation in the United States military, a topic that encompasses national missile defense, information security, ground troops and combat forces, as well as the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Military budget spending, in addition to recruitment and retention of armed services personnel are also critical issues surrounding the debate.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee in a hearing on June 21 that he was concerned that the United States was not properly estimating our global threats, but the tone of the hearing was set by Sen. Carl Levin, (D-Mi.).

"We may not be putting enough emphasis on countering the most likely threats to our national security and to the security of our forces deployed around the world," said Levin.

Ironically, mere months before Sept. 11, Levin recalled the 1993 bombing of the Wold Trade Center to support his argument. He said that attacks that were not sponsored by established government, "like terrorist attacks on the USS Cole, on our barracks and our embassies around the world, on the World Trade Center," needed to be seriously considered when the military was trying to assess its needs.

An unspoken consensus seemed to begin the meeting when Rumsfeld said, "our challenge, it seems to me, in doing so is complicated by the fact that we really can't know precisely who will threaten us in the decades ahead."

He said that the US military has frequently been incapable of successfully assessing its threat. He said that though Iran was a key U.S. ally in the mid-1970s, within the span of a few years, Iran was "in the throes of an anti-Western revolution and was the champion of Islamic fundamentalism."

He also cited the United States history with Iraq as a key example. "In March of 1989, when Vice President Cheney appeared before this committee for his confirmation hearings," said Rumsfeld, "not one person uttered the word 'Iraq,' and within a year, he was preparing for U.S. war in Iraq."

Rumsfeld used this uncertainty in the committee meeting to stress the point that, in order to meet these threats with military strength, the department of defense needed to conduct a complete review of its current assets.

This assessment takes place in the form of the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). The QDR is an across the board, congressionally mandated, top-to-bottom look at military affairs, structure and strategy. "The strategy devised through the QDR can be summed up in three words: shape, respond, and prepare," said former Secretary of Defense William Cohen.

The QDR was scheduled to be released by the Department of Defense in September, but could now be pushed back further.

The strategic review contained within the QDR is based on current Pentagon intelligence assessments of the global threat facing the United States.

According to one Pentagon official, who asked that his name not be used, "[the recent terrorist attacks] changed the whole debate surrounding the future of our military and national security issues."

Back to Guidon index