[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 142 (Tuesday, October 4, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: October 4, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                    MILITARY ORDER OF THE WORLD WARS

                                 ______


                            HON. IKE SKELTON

                              of missouri

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, October 4, 1994

  Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, on September 23, 1994 Gen. Carl Mundy, the 
Commandant of the Marine Corps, spoke to the military Order of the 
World Wars, Greater Kansas City Chapter. This dinner honored foreign 
officers attending the Command and General Staff College at Fort 
Leavenworth, KS.
  General Mundy's remarks were quite appropriate for the occasion, as 
they reflect excellent military thinking and foresight. I include the 
remarks made by General Mundy:

Remarks to the Military Order of the World Wars Made by Gen. Carl Mundy

       This is the second time this year I've had the pleasure of 
     addressing the Military Order of the World Wars. In January, 
     I spoke to your National Convention down in Charleston--and 
     the warmth and enthusiasm of your welcome there made it hard 
     to resist a second opportunity to visit with you.
       Another reason I jumped at the opportunity to come out here 
     is the chance to address an organization that captures so 
     much that's good about America--the remembrance of honorable 
     service rendered abroad from the First World War to today, 
     and, also, a strong sense of ongoing public service. The 
     support you give ROTC, your education programs like the 
     Patriotic Education Foundation, and your regional youth 
     leadership conferences--these are all very important 
     initiatives, and they have a powerful--and positive--effect 
     on the young people of our country.
       I'm also pleased and honored to be up here with Congressman 
     Skelton. I think it's particularly fitting that he be here 
     tonight at this gathering that honors Command and General 
     Staff College students, because he has been one of the true 
     leaders in the Congress on the issue of professional military 
     education.
       Tonight, as we honor the International Officers in 
     attendance at Command and General Staff College, I want to 
     take a few minutes to talk to you about our national defense 
     capabilities and the requirements of the post cold-war world.
       As you know, I wear two hats--as a member of the Joint 
     Chiefs of Staff, and as a Service Chief. I'm going to give 
     you the perspective I have from both of those jobs. The 
     National Security environment is as unclear as it has ever 
     been in my lifetime. Since our victory in the cold war, there 
     have been a number of flashpoints that required U.S. and U.N. 
     intervention. Some of these have been natural disasters--the 
     rest man-made--but all have required the use of U.S. forces. 
     We also have challenges at home that all of us want to 
     address--from crime, to health care, to education. DOD isn't 
     going to fix these latter problems, but we can help to meet 
     the challenges--both foreign and domestic--that face us.
       How we defend our Nation in this multipolar, regionally 
     oriented world is both straightforward, yet difficult: we 
     must be ready--both for the rational and the obvious--and 
     also, for the irrational and the unexpected. We can't always 
     choose when and where we'll have to fight. All states don't 
     behave rationally. For example, North Korea in 1950, Iraq in 
     1990, and most recently, the dictators in Haiti, weren't 
     operating within the same rational calculus that shapes most 
     of our foreign policies.
       We must be prepared to meet the requirements that stem from 
     these challenges--from the overriding danger of nuclear 
     proliferation--to the serious threats of major regional 
     conflicts--and to the more likely, almost everyday threats 
     that require deterrence and crisis response. In other words, 
     for every potential Desert Storm, there will be dozens of 
     potential Somalias and Haitis.
       In a way, our problems are more difficult because of our 
     own success. Today--tonight--the armed forces of the United 
     States are the gold standard--the standard against which all 
     armed forces are measured.
       But that means we're also an open book--and we're being 
     carefully studied by people out there who don't wish us well. 
     We can rest assured, I think, that potential future 
     adversaries will avoid Desert Storm-type encounters. While we 
     may have a superb Army, they'll avoid a direct conventional 
     conflict. Our Air Force is clearly the world's best, but we 
     may find it hard to find attackable targets. All our 
     opponents won't array their forces on a billiard table. In 
     other words, everyone has read the after-action reports on 
     Desert Storm, and, just as we apply those lessons, we can 
     expect our enemies to do the same. It certainly complicates 
     the way we approach future defense issues.
       We're in a period of reorganizing the Department of 
     Defense, and to help meet those domestic challenges I 
     mentioned before, we've begun a period of steep decline of 
     defense spending. The spending level for defense as a 
     percentage of the gross national product is the smallest 
     since 1948. We're on track to have, by 1997, the fewest 
     number of men and women in uniform in 57 years--the fewest 
     since 1940.
       Let me give you a brief example of some pretty dramatic 
     changes in capabilities that we've already undertaken. We no 
     longer have any nuclear weapons under the control of ground 
     forces of the United States, and we no longer deploy tactical 
     nuclear weapons at sea.
       At the same time, we've taken all our strategic bombers off 
     day-to-day alert. We've reduced our total active stockpile of 
     nuclear weapons by almost 60 percent--with a goal of almost 
     80 percent by 2003. We've made significant reductions in our 
     conventional forces as well. These are remarkable changes in 
     capabilities--capabilities that were once critical to 
     deterrence, but are now of lesser value. The world has 
     changed. One thing that won't change, though, is this: at 
     some time and place in the future we'll have to support 
     diplomacy with force.
       History teaches us this inevitability. We don't know where, 
     we can't predict accurately when; but on one thing, I'll give 
     a stiff wager. The United States will again commit its young 
     sons and daughters to conflict; and much as we might hope 
     that conflict will be the sterile, precise, video-game, hi-
     tech, low or no casualty conflict some ``silver bullet'' 
     strategists would like, it will, unfortunately, involve 
     infantry, and mud, and rifles, and casualties.
       And that brings me to the heart of what I want to say 
     tonight. Readiness--the core of our military effectiveness, 
     is people. We fought and won Desert Storm--magnificent 
     victory by any standard--with a force that many of you in 
     this room helped conceive and plan--a force that, to 
     paraphrase general Schwarzkopf, could have swapped equipment 
     with the Iraquis and still beat them. Why? Because it's the 
     people, not the equipment--it's not the tanks--it's not the 
     aircraft--it's not the ships--instead, it's the pilot, it's 
     the infantryman, it's the tanker, it's the sailor--the man or 
     woman who remains the key element of the equation.
       As all of you know, that is not a force that represents a 
     cross-section of America--instead, as an all-volunteer force, 
     it's a force that represents something better--our finest 
     vision of national service and self-sacrifice. The quality of 
     our people today is very high, by any standard you care to 
     measure us with--in the number of high school graduates we 
     recruit, in the number of enlisted men and women who earn 
     their undergraduate degrees while in the service, in the fact 
     that we have a drug free environment--consider that. And 
     while we may recruit with a variety of economic incentives, 
     it's not just money that motivates the men and women who 
     stand in our ranks.
       This isn't just another job. An excellent editorial that 
     appeared this week described their motivation in this way:

       Those who bear arms in the Nation's defense know and feel 
     mysteries beyond the reach of those who do not * * *

       Members of the Order of the World Wars--and your guests 
     tonight--you know what I'm talking about.
       So I think that while the weapons are going to change--and 
     our potential adversaries are only going to get smarter and 
     tougher--our success will remain directly related to our 
     ability to continue to put the very best America has to offer 
     into our ranks. We're on the razor's edge on this issue--our 
     forces are being ridden hard and put away wet.
       Here's an example from the Marine Corps: Tonight, Marines 
     are, of course, in Haiti and in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba--but 
     we're also in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean with 2,000 
     Marines; offshore Mogadishu; and ashore in Kenya with Marine 
     aircraft supporting our operations in Rwanda * * * while 
     other Marine forces operate in the Mediterranean and in 
     Aviano, Italy, with an F-18 squadron in support of Deny 
     Flight; and in Croatia as security for our hospital there. 
     These forces are combat ready--or ready for anything else--at 
     a moment's notice. The Corps is at its' highest tempo of 
     operations in my 37 years of active service.
       That's a tough pace to maintain, and we've got to look on 
     down the road--not only for today, but for tomorrow as well. 
     While we're healthy today, we may not be healthy 5 years from 
     now, unless we carefully match our capabilities to our 
     requirements, and provide the national resources to sustain 
     them.
       This, then, is our future as I see it: an era where all our 
     forces will continue to be used frequently, for diverse and 
     challenging tasks--from major regional contingencies, to 
     peacekeeping, to deterrence, and everything in between--and 
     we'll be doing this in an increasingly austere fiscal 
     environment.
       We're going to face opponents who have the book on us, and 
     we'll be employing increasingly complex weapons, all with 
     Rules of Engagement that may be blurred and uncomfortable. In 
     these situations, we won't be saved by our equipment. We will 
     be saved by our people. That's why I jumped at the chance to 
     come out here tonight. In this room, out here in front of me, 
     I can see the people who carried us to victory in earlier 
     wars * * * and the people who will carry us to victory in 
     future battles--those battles that we can foresee, and those 
     battles that we haven't yet dreamed of.
       Your charge is to carry this message back to your friends 
     and your neighbors. Tell them that today's military--all the 
     services--remain as ready to serve the nation--to sacrifice 
     if need be--as you were. We must not forget the underlying 
     lesson that America's wars in this century have taught us, a 
     lesson purchased in blood, and that is this: the forces that 
     defend our Nation must have the capabilities to meet not only 
     the crises we can anticipate and prepare for, but also the 
     unforeseeable, uncomfortable hot spots--the threats to 
     freedom--that are sure to arise in this new, uncertain world.
       To prevail will require some difficult trade-offs for 
     American citizens, but as we continue our very good start 
     into the post cold-war world, these are lessons that are too 
     bloody to be forgotten and too dear to be re-learned. But in 
     all this, remember: It's the people.

                          ____________________