• Home
• /
• Opinion

Call from the Pentagon

As a journalist, I try to avoid having anything to do with governments.

But on rare occasions, I do participate in academic-style briefings and conferences when I feel my half century of experience in the Mideast and Asia can be used to benefit.

Particularly so in Washington, after the Bush Administration has gone so badly and dangerously astray in its foreign and military policies.

The last time I was in the Pentagon was during my army service in 1968, when I participated in command briefings for the Chiefs of Staff. For this edifice’s 23,000 military and civilian personnel the Chiefs are like Valhalla’s gods.

In the Pentagon’s 17 miles of corridors, I half expected to see some lost WWII officers still looking for an exit.

Checkmate,’ planner of the crushing 1991 US air campaign against Iraq, is an interesting outfit. Its commander, Brig Gen Lawrence Stutzriem, reports directly to the Air Force Chief of Staff, four-star general Michael Moseley, who sits on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the supreme authority of the US military, and personally advises the president.

Checkmate’s mostly military staff is highly educated, smart, and have open, seeking minds that are often too rare in the stultified, bureaucratic military.

It’s noteworthy they are seeking new thinking, even from a frequent critic of administration foreign policy like myself. Could this be a sign of Gorbachev-style glasnost and perestroika’ in Washington?

The US Air Force has always been the most progressive, forward-thinking of the services. Among Checkmate’s’ jobs are innovative strategy, thinking ahead, and evaluating different strategic viewpoints.

My briefing was aimed at explaining the sources of the Muslim World’s anger at the west and ways in which America could lessen it and improve currently terrible relations.

There is a high level of concern in the Pentagon over what new problems and threats a US retreat from Iraq will create. Pakistan’s increasingly uncertain future is also causing anxiety in the Pentagon, which worries its 30,000 troops in Afghanistan could be isolated if there are political convulsions in that nation. The USAF is fizzing with new ideas, but it is also not happy.

The US Army and Marines are getting most of America’s sympathy and support for their role in Iraq. The Air Force, without which these wars could not be waged, and which provides decisive, 24/7 top cover for the troops with almost instant response, gets far too little credit.

Ironically, the USAF is a victim of its own success. No US ground troops have been attacked by enemy aircraft since 1953. The USAF has no enemies because it has shot them all down.

America’s air force fights so efficiently and seemingly effortlessly that neither the US Congress nor public understand the enormous logistic, manpower, financial and technological efforts required to keep it dominating the globe’s skies, space up to 160,000 km above earth, and its newest area of operations, cyberspace – meaning the entire electro-magnetic spectrum.

The over-stretched USAF has been in non-stop combat for the past 17 years, mostly in Iraq and the Balkans. Its aircraft are getting dangerously old. B-52 heavy bombers are now 60. One B-52 pilot I met, knick- named Boomer,’ must have been near half his bomber’s age. Tanker aircraft date to 1957. Many fighter aircraft are 24-years old. Non-stop operations over Iraq and Afghanistan are rapidly wearing out aircraft and men.

Meanwhile, war against Iran continues to loom.

A senior Pentagon source closely linked to the Israelis insisted the decision to attack Iran has not been made;’ and an attack is unlikely.’

I found this very interesting, since Israel has pressing the Bush Administration to go to war.

But there are many others signs that suggest the opposite. One senses a growing degree of war fever in fin de regime’ Washington. But not necessarily in the Pentagon, whose forces are already stretched to the breaking point and exhausted.

Official Washington is often accused of not knowing what’s going on abroad.

But there are many smart people in the Pentagon, CIA and State who do know.

The problem – and tragedy - is their masters in the White House and Congress are just not listening.

Eric S. Margolis is a veteran American journalist and contributing foreign editor of The Toronto Sun.