[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 1695-1696]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                            NATIONAL DEFENSE

  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I understand there have been speeches 
given this morning with respect to the military and the decision by 
President Bush to take a very serious look at what is happening in the 
military--a pause, if you will, in the funding and planning until we 
get our hands around exactly where things are.
  I want to comment about the wisdom of that particular approach. If I 
may, I want to go back to the most inconsequential military career 
perhaps in the history of America--my own. It will demonstrate what 
happens in the military and demonstrate the power of inertia because 
once something gets started in one direction, it continues in that 
direction until some outside force is put upon it. That is not just 
Newton's law of motion; that is the law of motion in government as a 
whole.
  I went into the military in 1957. I joined the Utah National Guard 
and was sent on active duty for training, first to Fort Ord, CA, and 
then, because my Guard unit was in the artillery observation business, 
to Fort Sill, OK.
  I went to Fort Sill, OK, to be trained in sound ranging. If that does 
not mean anything to you, Mr. President, I would not be surprised 
because sound ranging is a military skill that reached its apex of 
applicability in World War I. It had some applicability in World War 
II, very little in Korea, and virtually none in 1957 when I was trained 
in it.
  But the inertia of the military organization was such that no one had 
reviewed the pattern of training people in sound ranging. So going 
forward, as a body in physics, moving in the same direction, it 
continued in the same direction. I and my fellow classmates were put 
through a program on sound ranging.
  As it happened, I graduated first in my class. That is not as big an 
achievement as it might sound because I was the only member of the 
class who had been to college. I was a college graduate; the others 
were draftees who were high school graduates; and if I had not finished 
first, it would have been a disgrace.

[[Page 1696]]

  Having finished first, once again the pattern of inertia in the 
military decreed that I should become an instructor and that the next 
sound ranging course that would go through Fort Sill, OK, would be 
taught by me. This is very flattering, except that my time on active 
duty with the National Guard would expire before the next class would 
convene.
  I spent the remainder of my time in the day room, or at the post 
library, or doing other things because there was absolutely nothing for 
me to do. At the time I wondered: Doesn't anybody review these things? 
Doesn't anybody look at this and say: Wait a minute, this is a program 
that has long since outlived its usefulness, should be stopped, and we 
should just forget this?
  No, nobody did. I got so bored, I went in and volunteered to teach 
other classes and had to go back to school, if you will, on my own time 
to learn logarithms so that I could teach that mathematical skill to 
the surveyors in the school. Basically, this was the least 
distinguished and least significant military career in American 
history, but it demonstrates what happens when we allow inertia to take 
over. We allow the military to go forward in one direction, and we do 
not ever stop and say: Wait a minute, are we doing the right thing?
  Summarizing it another way, there are some historians who say the 
generals always fight the last war; they are always prepared for the 
last battle, not the battle that is to come.
  The cold war is over. That is a cliche. Like most cliches, it happens 
to be true. Much of our military is geared towards fighting the cold 
war. Much of our military is geared towards a circumstance where the 
military commanders involved are comfortable with the way things are 
going because they are the way things have been.
  The idea that there should be a careful look at where they are and a 
reassessment of the direction they are taking is a little bit 
threatening; it is unsettling; it implies uncertainty. The one thing 
many military men hate worse than anything else is uncertainty.
  As I was going through the airport, flying back for this week's 
session, a book caught my eye. Tom Clancy is the author. We all know 
Tom Clancy. The reason it caught my eye was his mention of a military 
officer who had helped him write the book, a man named Chuck Horner. I 
met Chuck Horner when he was the commander of the U.S. Space Command, a 
four-star general located in Colorado Springs. He was the commander of 
the air war in the gulf. He was the top Air Force officer with respect 
to the Gulf War.
  I found him fascinating, and when I saw his name on the cover of this 
book written by Tom Clancy, I decided to buy the book because I wanted 
to learn more about General Horner.
  The reason I found him fascinating, among other things, was this 
statement he made to me during the time I spent with him. He said: The 
Gulf War was the first war fought from space. Tanks got positioned by 
virtue of instructions that came from space. Colin Powell said this is 
the war where the infantryman goes into the field with a rifle in one 
hand and a laptop in the other. Even that is now obsolete because he 
would take a palm pilot instead of a laptop; a laptop would be too 
cumbersome.
  The Army, with its current advertising campaign, is beginning to talk 
about that. I am not sure it is the right advertising campaign--every 
soldier is an army of one--but it demonstrates how vastly changed 
things are.
  Against that background where those things not only have changed but 
are changing, doesn't it make sense for the Secretary of Defense to say 
it is time for us to pause in the direction we are going in our 
procurement, in our threat assessment, in our strength establishment, 
and look toward the kind of military we are going to need in the 
future? Isn't it time for us to take a break when we do not have an 
immediate military threat and reassess from top to bottom everything we 
are doing?
  I think it demonstrates the maturity of the Bush administration that 
Secretary Rumsfeld is engaged in this kind of activity. I think it 
demonstrates that the Bush administration has a very long-headed view 
of life; that they are not looking to this week or next week; they are 
not looking to the current polls; they are not looking to what might 
work in terms of a special interest group that has an attitude toward 
the military; they are saying: What does America need for the next 
decade? What kind of long-term decision can we make that will make 
America prepare for the different kind of threat we are facing? I think 
it means a military that will very quickly say we don't need any sound 
ranging classes, and we don't need any people sitting around with 
nothing to do. There is far too much to do in terms of planning and 
training and direction. I applaud President Bush for this decision, I 
applaud Secretary Rumsfeld for carrying it out, and I wish to make it 
clear that this Senator will do everything he can to support and 
sustain this effort.
  I yield the floor.

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