Defense Secretary rouses USTRANSCOM, AMC troops during visit
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Rumsfeld came to America's heartland and the heart of the military's global defense transportation at Scott Air Force Base, Ill., to talk to the troops and view the command and control operations of U.S. Transportation Command and Air Mobility Command. The secretary's town hall meeting was nationally televised.
USTRANSCOM is the single Defense Department manager for transportation, bringing transportation components of the armed services under one commander in chief. AMC is the organization's Air Force component. The commands have put together one of the largest airlift operations in history to Afghanistan, surpassed only by the Berlin Airlift and airlift to support Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
Rumsfeld began the meeting with the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, and civilians by recognizing U.S. Transportation Command on its 15th anniversary as a unified command.
The secretary said mobility is fundamental to warfighting.
"Because of all of you here at Scott and your comrades deployed around the globe, America's fighting forces are having the mobility that they need to carry out the important missions that they face, Rumsfeld said. "There's no question it is fundamental to warfighting."
Rumsfeld noted the affect of air mobility in land-locked Afghanistan where everything in the early stages went in by air.
"The amount of it, it's just overwhelming." said Rumsfeld.
Medical evacuation has also been impressive. "The aeromedical evacuation units…have transported an enormous number of patients. I had the chance to see some of them in Washington at the Walter Reed Hospital -- Americans, other nationalities, Afghans whose lives have been saved."
When he spoke about the war on terrorism, Rumsfeld quoted Lenin saying, "The purpose of terror is to terrorize."
He added free people are the most vulnerable.
"To the extent the terrorist is able to terrorize, there's no question but they win, he said. "They really cannot be appeased, they certainly can't be ignored, and they must not be allowed to win."
He took questions from troops in the audience and members of the press.
When asked by Air Force Maj. Keith Boone about the affect of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 on his vision for transformation, Rumsfeld described his thoughts.
"Well, we had put at the top of our priority list homeland security months before September 11th and had begun the process of shifting from a threat-based strategy to a capability-based strategy."
He added that Gen. John W. Handy, USTRANSCOM commander in chief and commander of AMC, when he was the Air Force vice chief of staff, and other senior civilian and military leaders many hours working together on the issue, and how they as a group could get traction to change an organization not easy to move.
"And I must say that in large measure, the discussions that we had prior to September 11th are what led to the strategy, what led to the transformation goals."
He said many questioned fighting a war and pursuing change but said they were "flat wrong." The time that you can make changes is when you need to make changes," said Rumsfeld. "And there is no question but that we as an institution simply must recognize that we've got to be much faster, swifter, more deft, we have to collapse the planning processes that take place in this institution. They're too long, for institution to do what is needed to cope with circumstances in the world."
Rumsfeld said when he was the Secretary of Defense a quarter century ago, new weapons systems could be deployed in between eight to 10 to 12 years, now it takes 20, 25 years. He pointed to private industry that can field new technology in 24 months.
When Air Force Maj. William Bessemer asked the secretary about changes between then and now, Rumsfeld said, "The most important thing is what hasn't changed, and that's the men and women in uniform…and some of the weapons systems."
He reiterated the need to streamline the defense bureaucracy.
"Everything has gotten slower, the process has gotten slower…the institution has become more rigid and less flexible than it was, in my view, and more bureaucratic than it was…. and I think that we've got to do something about it," said Rumsfeld. "But the dedication and the energy and the industriousness and the desire of the people in uniform is the same as it's always been, and we've got a wonderful country."
A later question about the department's planning programming and budgeting system met with a sigh and quick answer.
"It's an antique and it works poorly," he said.
The session had many lighter sides, including a request by Air Force Reservist 1st Lt. Gwendolyn Till to sign a book for her husband who's getting his commission in the Air National Guard next Friday. Rumsfeld accommodated the request on the spot and was met with applause, and laughter.
Rumsfeld gave the reporters in the audience a chance to ask him questions. The last question from reporters followed up one of the secretary's earlier comments that there will be more terrorist attacks, asking if they will be on the same scope as 9-11.
"One can't know," he said. He explained up to 10 nations around the world have been on the terrorist list for years, a number actively developing weapons of mass destruction. Some of those countries have ties with global terrorist networks.
"The concern I have…and the thing that lends great urgency to everything we're doing, is that we experienced the death of several thousand people on September 11th. If one imagines that weapons of mass destruction come into the hands of terrorists (we have to know they're going to be willing to use them. Let there be no doubt about that), then you're not talking about thousands of people being killed, you're talking about tens of thousand, you're talking about potentially more than that."
He said there's a need to recognize a terrorist can attack any time, at any place, with any technique.
"It is physically impossible for any country to defend at every time in every location against every conceivable technique."
He said the country has no choice but to go after those terrorist networks and the U.S. policy of using all elements of what he termed "national power," from financial and economic, diplomatic, law enforcement and military efforts are the best thing country can do.
"It is that pressure and creating an environment that's not hospitable to terrorists, and creating a situation where it's uncomfortable to be a haven or a sanctuary for terrorists," he said, "if we do that and we do it well, we will have done everything we can."
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