[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 164 (Thursday, November 18, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2453]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    TRIBUTE TO COLONEL HARRY SUMMERS

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. IKE SKELTON

                              of missouri

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, November 17, 1999

  Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr., United 
States Army, died this week. In his passing, the Army and the Nation 
have lost a soldier and scholar, who ranks among the preeminent 
military strategists and analysts of this century.
  As an Army officer, who began his professional life as an enlisted 
soldier, and later as a military analyst, author and commentator, 
Colonel Summers knew personally the bayonet-point reality of war and 
thought and wrote widely about strategic issues. He was a decorated 
veteran of combat in Korea and Vietnam, awarded the Silver Star and the 
Bronze Star for Valor, and the legion of Merit; twice awarded the 
combat infantry badge; and twice awarded the Purple Heart for wounds 
received in combat.
  An infantry squad leader in the Korean conflict, he served as a 
battalion and corps operation officer during the Vietnam war, and later 
as a negotiator with the North Vietnamese in Saigon and in Hanoi. 
Instructor of strategy at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff 
College, he was a political-military action officer on the Army General 
Staff, a member of the then Army chief of staff Creighton Abrams' 
strategic assessment group, and served in the Office of the Army Chief 
of Staff from 1975 to 1980, before joining the faculty of the U.S. Army 
War College.
  At the war college, Colonel Summers was at the heart of the rebirth 
of strategic studies in the professional military education of our 
Armed Forces in the early 1980's. His book On Strategy: The Vietnam War 
in Context provided a critical strategic appraisal of American strategy 
in that war and a seminal American work in the relationship of military 
strategy to national policy. On Strategy has been characterized as 
being ``about'' the Vietnam war in much the same way that Clausewitz is 
``about'' the Napoleonic wars or that Mahan is ``about'' 18th-century 
naval struggles between France and England. That is, Harry Summers used 
the Vietnam war as a vehicle for analysis and illustration of 
principles of war that apply universally.
  After his retirement from active service, Harry Summers continued to 
contribute to the professional development of the officer corps and to 
the development of strategic thought and military strategy as a 
lecturer, visiting professor, columnist, editor, and commentator.
  When Harry Summers testified before the House Armed Services 
Committee in December 1990 before Operation Desert Storm, he 
reemphasized the need for clarity of purpose and the relation of means 
to objective as this House wrestled with the decision to go to war 
against Iraq and commit U.S. military forces to protect the vital 
interests of the United States. He appeared before the committee again 
as we reviewed what happened to U.S. forces in Somalia in 1994 and 
provided valuable insights on the relation of military force and 
commitment to our national objectives and commitment in that country.
  Harry Summers was justifiably proud of his sons and their service as 
Army officers and of his daughter-in-law who served as a warrant 
officer in the Persian Gulf War. In all this, he was supported by his 
wife, Eloise. My good friend, Floyd Spence, the chairman of the House 
Armed Services, joins me in sending our sympathies to them at this 
time.
  Colonel Harry Summers made a tremendous contribution to the rebirth 
of the study of military strategy and to the professional military 
education of our armed forces, and that legacy lives on after him. His 
commitment to the Nation and the Army that he loved was unstinting. The 
Nation and the Army are poorer for his passing.




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