Prime Ministers Chamberlan and Pelosi

Neville Chamberlain was Prime Minister of Great Britain. Prime Ministers of Great Britain like many other Parliamentary governments have the authority to direct foreign affairs and the conduct of war, albeit in the name of a King. Pelosi thinks she is Prime Minister of the United States.

Under the Constitution, Speakers of the House aren't Prime Ministers, and the Constitution specifically reserves the authority to direct wars and foreign policy to the President, and not to the Congress. We nearly lost the Revolution through Congressional meddling so the Founders ensured that the Congress couldn't do that again.

There is with these Presidential powers a great deal of difference in opinion in what the powers of the President as Commander in Chief can do. Bush has stretched those meaning far beyond all but a short list of other presidents have. But at the narrowest interpretations of those powers, and that of his/her control of foreign policy means that the movement of troops in foreign countries is exclusive to the President. Congress has no such authority.

Congress does has the authority to declare war, and to some extent considerable control to authorize military operations, but once authorized the control shifts to the President until a treaty has been signed and is ready for the Senate to ratify .... the House isn't included in that latter action.

Congress has eighteen specified powers of which seven deal with war and the military. The have the specified and exclusive powers to raise, equip, staff, and provide for the regulation (doctrine) of forces, including the mobilized militia. In short, the Congress designs and provides the forces the President gets to command.

In this latter regard, the Congress has given this authority to the Executive branch through law and appropriation and walked away from all but trivial pursuits in this regard. As such, the E-Ring establishment developed the military into a closed union shop designed to stabilize the careers of those in their second and third decades of service ... field and flag ranks and the Sergeants Major.. And with no regard of how to win a war, focusing on battle as a means to fatten 201 files.

WE have had a large standing permanent (regular) military only since about 1980. Most of the Cold War was conducted with a large standing military with over half it's ranks in a temporary status. The concept of a large temporary force was the logical response to the fact that wars are temporary in duration and when the war is over, the temporary forces go home. The Cold War was the first really "long war", lasting forty years, a longness the E-Ring wants to replicate.

The temporary forces used in wars include the Guard and Reserves, historically the Guard. Unknown to the E-Ring Warriors is the fact that the Guard is the default military force provided for in the Constitution. All others are at the wish, whim, and will of the Congress. Including the USMC and the Navy.

The Constitution restricts the Guard by prohibiting the states from maintaining standing troops (full time units) or ships of war in peace. There used to be Naval Militia units but only New York has one now. The regulations (doctrine) of the Guard (militias) is the business of the Congress to preclude the problem of different manuals of arms and battle drill that occurred in the Revolutionary War.

By allowing the E-Ring Warriors to focus on building a military based on career management criterion instead of war management criterion, they built a concept called "Transformation" which replicated the dynamics of rotating brigades to Irwin to rotating to war zone, and increasing the number of Army modular brigades by adding ten colonel command slots and no more guns to enhance the competition of colonels for flag rank, creating top heavy under gunned and maladjusted to eclectic warfare.

No credible battle study exists to justify standardization of combat brigades into expeditionary packages to meet all and sundry contingencies. Were it not for the fact that the troops in the field, four stars and below, pay absolutely no attention to the intent of the E-Ring that task organization only applies to echelons above Colonel. The tact that the Pentagon still clings to “life cycle management” for brigades is evidence that the E-ring considers actual combat according to FM3-24 a temporary aberration.

The war in Iraq requires far more sophisticated tasking, tasks, missions, and organizations than at any time in our past. And is doing it with ease. That's what we are really good at. AT present, Navy officers provide EW support at multiple levels of command on the ground. USAFR officers have OPCON of mixed forces of other services and nations. That is an unsung battle except on the podiums of our military schools.

Fortunately, the school system and the troops outside the E-Ring have developed the right doctrine now published as FM 3-34 put together by General Petraeus now putting it in effect in Iraq. It is a multi-level multi-discipline approach aimed at providing basic services and governance at the lowest level, a level ignored by most third world countries.

Unfortunately, this threatens the E-Ring, and surprisingly, has enraged the Bolshevik branch of the Democratic Party led by Prime Minister Pelosi whose connections with Viet Cong "revolutionary" war principles tell them that the Petraeus Doctrine has a chance of working. So far, the Bush doctrine was doomed, something the VC base campuses know, and have rallied to replicate their victory over the USA in the Vietnam War using the same rhetoric.

"Ending the War"is classic Bolshevik rhetoric that they used to undermine the armies of the Tsar in 1917, the French in 1940 when the Bolsheviks were allied to Hitler, and the US in Vietnam. This rhetoric,when used against the Bolsheviks earns on a one way trip to the killing fields or gulags when they have to fight a war. Hollywood turned from anti-war to pro-war overnight on June 21, 1940 when Hitler doubled crossed the Kremlin.

Prime Minister Pelosi isn't another Chamberlain, she wants to be another Cromwell or Robespierre. Unfortunately for her, the military won't follow her, and the killing fields or regicides past won't happen again.

What to do? First, Bush shouldn't veto the appropriations bill, he should accept it and ignore any provisions that restrict his authority unconstitutionally. He can have his new Attorney General issue the appropriate readings, make a signing statement, and use the money which now has no strings attached. Unless someone is harmed by ignoring such which would allow the courts to deal with the issue, a process which will take longer than Bush has in office. The Congress can't do diddly to enforce such silly provisions, as enforcement is in the Executive branch.

The next Congress should be directed by the electorate to rebuild our military establishment along traditional lines by reducing the size of the active establishment to that which is needed to deal with foreign threats, and a military capable of expansion and retraction with capable forces drawn from the Guard and Reserves.

The Guard's traditional roles require combat forces, with an enhanced capability in engineers and military police and other forces dealing with natural disaster. This should also include such medical, PSYOP, civil affairs, and water borne forces as are needed. The Coast Guard and Reserve may need larger craft whose wartime usages are riverine and littoral defense, including ASW and minesweeper units.

The Reserve components of the services (USAR, USAFR, USNR, etc) need to refocus on the combat aupport and service support structures needed for field armies and corps, and to some extent forces needed stateside such as the WW2 equivalent of the US Army Service Forces which was equal with the Army and Army Air Force.

Additionally, the Reserves are the only component of providing trained individuals and are doing that now by cannibalization of TOE units, reducing the effectiveness of the latter. Only twenty percent of the IRR seems ready to roll, involuntarily. Once they walked away from any commitment involving commitment in time and effort, they became useless unless and until the Federales are willing to arrest, convict, and execute those who miss movement to combat as the law allows.

Units and activities for reservists need to be established to provide training for pay in those individual and collective skills needed in war. This means allowing overstrengths in existing units, IRR detachments training as if they were deployable (sans gear) in virtual reality training to allow mobilization as replacements or as the core of new units.

This country put ten percent of it's population under arms in WW2, today that would be a military of thirty million. WW2 had one hundred divisions and one hundred aircraft carriers. Do the math. After five years of war in Iraq, we don't have much to show for it except a lot of damn good troops.

The mess in Iraq is the fault of the Congress no less than the President, both of whom took advice from the self serving.

It's time for a real change, one which is non partisan.

Gordon S Fowkes
Lt Col, US Army (Ret)