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Jewish World Review May 21, 2002 /10 Sivan, 5762

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.

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The 'next war'


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | The baying of Congressional Democrats last week over unfounded allegations that President Bush "knew" beforehand about the September 11th attacks prompted, appropriately, a heated response from Administration figures. White House Press Spokesman Ari Fleischer, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, even the President himself took turns firing back.

These and other officials explained: the lack of "actionable" information; the reality that, without benefit of hindsight, it was very hard to "connect the dots" before 911; and the fact that the possibility of commercial aircraft being used as lethal missiles had been discussed since President Clinton was in office, but had not been recognized by either administration as an immediate danger.

The most effective riposte to date, however, came from Vice President Dick Cheney. Interestingly, it was not the Veep's shot-across-the-bow to those he called "my Democratic friends" on Capitol Hill, whom he strongly discouraged from playing politics with these charges.

Rather, it took the form of a warning Mr. Cheney issued in the course of his appearances on Sunday television talk shows: Another al Qaeda attack against this country is "almost certain." He cannot say when it will eventuate; "it could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week, it could happen next year, but they will keep trying."

Every American, irrespective of party affiliation or political philosophy, is thus on notice: Notions that it is now safe to go back to business-as-usual partisanship on national security are premature and irresponsible. More to the point, Mr. Bush's critics now have the sort of warning they claim to have wanted prior to September 11th.

The question then becomes: What form will the next attack take?

There is a certain irony that many of those most critical of the military for focusing exclusively on the sorts of threats confronted in the "last war" are now studiously ignoring a next-war warning first sounded four years ago. It was issued by a bipartisan commission chaired by the man who is now the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

Asked by Congress to assess the danger of ballistic missile attack on the United States, the blue-ribbon Rumsfeld Commission declared: "Sea-launch of shorter-range ballistic missiles...could enable a country to pose a direct territorial threat to the U.S. sooner than it could by waiting to develop an intercontinental-range ballistic missile for launch from its own territory. Sea-launching could also permit it to target a larger area of the U.S. than would a missile fired from its home territory."

This theoretical possibility becomes palpably real when one considers that, according to a recent U.N. assessment, the Taliban had roughly 100 Scud shorter-range ballistic missiles. Al Qaeda is believed to own ships; certainly most terrorist-sponsoring nations do. In fact, there are an estimated 25,000 vessels at sea on any given day, the majority of them flying flags of convenience. Our wildly overtaxed Coast Guard has no clue what even those ships in or near U.S. waters contain, where they are headed and who are their crew. Sailing 100 miles off our shores, a ship capable of launching one of these Scud-type missile could range most of the Nation's largest population centers.

Unfortunately, should the next al Qaeda attack involve such a missile being fired at us "tomorrow" or "next week," there is nothing in place to stop it. It will, all other things being equal, reach its destination with devastating effect. Worse yet, Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee -- whose colleagues have so recently assailed President Bush for not acting on warnings he had received prior to September 11th -- have recently decided to hamstring Mr. Bush's ability to address the missile threat. They propose to cut funds sought by the President and Secretary Rumsfeld to build missile defenses by roughly $800 million and introduced new bureaucratic impediments to swift acquisition of such defenses.

This proposal is the handiwork of Committee chairman Carl Levin of Michigan. He induced even colleagues who have long been supporters of missile defense, like Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, to go along, apparently by brazenly transferring missile defense monies to ship-building and other member-directed priorities. As a result, the Levin proposal was adopted by the Committee on a straight party-line vote -- even though it cut funds from air-, sea- and land-based programs that have long enjoyed the support of legislators like Max Cleland of Georgia and Jack Reed of Rhode Island.

In fact, Sen. Reed declared in a speech at a National Defense University breakfast on May 25, 2001 that: "We are pursuing Theater Missile Defense programs...such as [the Patriot] PAC-3, THAAD, Navy Area Defense, Navy Theater Wide and Airborne Laser. Those are systems we should really put some energy and resources behind, even more so than we are doing today." Instead, the defense authorization bill the Senate will soon consider -- perhaps before adjourning for the Memorial Day recess -- inflicts deep cuts in many of these and other programs that could produce near-term contingency deployment options, leaving us defenseless even if a missile attack by al Qaeda or from some other quarter comes a year from now.

On Thursday, President Bush told Senators he would veto the defense authorization bill if it included the $450 million he had requested just last January for the Crusader artillery program before it was cancelled by Secretary Cheney. The least he can do is inform legislators that this bill will meet a similar fate if does not provide the full and unencumbered $7.6 billion he believes is necessary to defend against what may prove to be the next, incoming terrorist attack.

Correction: In this space last week, I mistakenly described how Jimmy Carter "embraced Manuel Noriega's regime in Nicaragua." Many astute readers pointed out that, while Carter did much mischief in Panama, the Sandinista regime he embraced in Nicaragua was led by Daniel Ortega.

JWR contributor Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. heads the Center for Security Policy. Send your comments to him by clicking here.

Up

05/15/02: Ex-presidential misconduct
05/07/02: When 'what if' is no game
05/02/02: Careful what we wish for
04/24/02: The real 'root cause' of terror
04/02/02: First principles in the Mideast
03/26/02: 'Renounce this map'
03/20/02: The inconvenient ally
03/12/02: Adults address the 'unthinkable'
03/05/02: The Saudi scam
02/26/02: Rumsfeld's 'now hear this'
02/19/02: Where's the outrage?
02/12/02: Post-mortem on 'Pearl Harbor II'
02/05/02: Spinning on the 'Evil Axis'
01/29/02: A challenge for the history books
01/22/02: Who pulled the plug on the Chinese 'bugs'?
01/15/02: No 'need to know'
01/08/02: Sentenced to de-nuclearize?
12/18/01: Missile defense mismanagement?
12/11/01: Is the Cold War 'over'?
12/04/01: A moment for truth
11/29/01: Send in the marines -- with the planes they need
11/27/01: 'Now Hear This': Does the President Mean What He Says?
11/20/01: Mideast 'vision thing'
11/13/01: The leitmotif of the next three days
11/06/01: Bush's Reykjavik Moment
10/30/01: Say it ain't true, 'W.
10/23/01: Getting history, and the future, right
10/16/01: Farewell to arms control
10/05/01: A time to choose
09/25/01: Don't drink the 'lemonade'
09/11/01: Sudan envoy an exercise in futility?
09/05/01: Strategy of a thousand cuts
08/28/01: Rummy's back
08/21/01: Prepare for 'two wars'
08/14/01: Why does the Bush Administration make a moral equivalence between terrorist attacks and Israel's restrained defensive responses?
08/07/01: A New bipartisanship in security policy?
07/31/01: Don't go there
07/17/01: The 'end of the beginning'
07/10/01: Testing President Bush
07/03/01: Market transparency works
06/27/01: Which Bush will it be on missile defense?
06/19/01: Don't politicize military matters
06/05/01: It's called leadership
06/05/01: With friends like these ...
05/31/01: Which way on missile defense?
05/23/01: Pearl Harbor, all over again
05/15/01: A tale of two Horatios
05/08/01: The real debate about missile defense
04/24/01: Sell aegis ships to Taiwan
04/17/01: The 'hi-tech for China' bill
04/10/01: Deal on China's hostages -- then what?
04/03/01: Defense fire sale redux
03/28/01: The defense we need
03/21/01: Critical mass
03/13/01: The Bush doctrine
03/08/01: Self-Deterred from Defending America
02/27/01: Truth and consequences for Saddam
02/21/01: Defense fire sale
02/13/01: Dubya's Marshall Plan
02/05/01: Doing the right thing on an 'Arab-Arab dispute'
01/30/01: The missile defense decision
01/23/01: The Osprey as Phoenix
01/17/01: Clinton's Parting Shot at Religious Freedom
01/09/01: Wake-up call on space
01/02/01: Secretary Rumsfeld
12/27/00: Redefining our Ukraine policy
12/19/00: Deploy missile defense now
12/12/00: Sabotaging space power
12/05/00: Preempting Bush
11/28/00: What Clinton hath wrought
11/21/00: HE'S BAAAACK
11/14/00: The world won't wait

© 2001, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.