Table of Contents

Special Report: War on Many Fronts

FROM THE EDITOR:

American's Arrest Portends an Enemy Within

By Ed Offley

The stunning disclosure on Monday that the FBI had arrested an al Qaeda operative arriving from Pakistan at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport last month has confirmed in stark terms that the terrorist network has not been destroyed in Afghanistan, but rather, has apparently reconstituted itself and is organizing new plots to kill Americans. This has been further compounded by news that a number of suspected terrorists of possible American origin have been arrested in Pakistan.

Attention has focused, quite naturally, on the disturbing allegations that Abdullah al Muhajir returned to the United States from meeting with unidentified al Qaeda leaders to carry out a plan to obtain the materials for a radiological bomb - a conventional explosive that would scatter highly-radioactive materials over a wide area - and presumably set it off in a major U.S. city.

But hidden in plain sight in the avalanche of news articles and broadcasts is a more chilling scenario that should alarm the federal government, the American Muslim community, civil rights activists and all Americans: If the allegations against the former street gang member and ex-convict names Jose Padilla are true, Al Qaeda has demonstrated success in recruiting terrorists from within the American Muslim community itself.

Consider: The overwhelming opposition and protests mounted by the American Muslim community and civil-rights lawyers since the aftermath of 9-11 has been that citizens of this country of the Muslim faith have been persecuted and harassed solely because of their religion and ethnicity, and not because of any proven infiltration of their mosques and neighborhoods by the al Qaeda network.

Even when Californian John Walker Lindh was captured in the al Qaeda prison riot at Mazar e-Sharif, civil libertarians and other activists dismissed his involvement as that of a hapless vagabond and wanderer who misguidedly strayed into Afghanistan at the time the Taliban was mounting press-gang efforts to send every available male to the front. Activists also dismissed as a technicality the case of accused Taliban fighter Yasser Esam Hamdi, 22, who was raised as a Saudi citizen from infancy but has been found to hold U.S. citizenship because of his birth in Louisiana.

But Abdullah al Muhajir confronts us all with a serious and dangerous scenario: That there may well be an "enemy within" the American Muslim community armed with U.S. passports and Constitutional rights but still intent on organizing and carrying out acts of terrorism utilizing weapons of mass destruction. Al Muhajir's arrest and the growing allegations of his willing self-recruitment into al Qaeda - and unconfirmed reports from Pakistan that as many as another half-dozen men "of U.S. origin" (as UPI reported this week) are in custody there suspected of al Qaeda membership - opens up the stark and unavoidable possibility that America is threatened by a small but potentially deadly number of its own citizens.

One of the saddest tragedies of World War II was the political panic after Pearl Harbor that prompted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to order the involuntary internment of over 120,000 Japanese-American citizens (and a far smaller number, about 2,000 German and Italian descendants) out of fear that they might constitute a "fifth column" of spies and saboteurs aiding the enemy.

It turned out that there was never a single proven case of one of these citizens actually assisting the enemy, and the United States in 1990 formally apologized to the 60,000 survivors of that disgraceful episode. The only shining light to come out of the internment camps was the dedication of 17,000 young men who volunteered to serve their country in uniform despite the injustice that had been brought down on them and their families (see Article 12 in this edition of DefenseWatch concerning one of them belatedly awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery).

The United States must not ever repeat that mistake.

But if the situation today is no less controversial, it is even more difficult to ignore. The clear implication of this alleged operation is that al Qaeda intends to use American citizens because they could more easily slip past even the heightened security and intelligence networks that are on 24/7 alert for more attacks. (The CIA and FBI deserve strong credit for their ability to track down and arrest al Muhajir at such an early stage of his alleged plot.)

It is understandable that the Muslim-American community is concerned about incidents of harassment and prejudice against them in the wake of 9-11, and everyone will agree that the vast, overwhelming majority of the hundreds of thousands of Muslims in this country are devoted citizens and law-abiding people just as outraged by the acts of al Qaeda as everyone else.

But the federal government cannot ignore the potential threat that al Muhajir represents to us all, and it is inevitable that the FBI and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies are going to have to expand their surveillance and investigations into Muslim-American organizations and neighborhoods everywhere.

On Sept. 11, 2001, only a small handful of committed terrorists - 19 in all, of whom only a half-dozen are now believed to have known that the hijackings would be followed by suicidal crashes - were able to wreak unprecedented havoc, killing over 3,000 people. They hid in plain sight. Now it appears that others may be hiding in the American Muslim community.

One prays that the federal government can act to identify, locate and arrest any additional al Qaeda terrorists who may be American citizens and residents of the American Muslim community. One hopes that an aggressive, pro-active effort will succeed without causing harm to any innocents mistakenly targeted because of their ethnic background and religion. But the effort must be made.

Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at dweditor@yahoo.com.

While the White House proposes the mother of all bureaucracies as a cure-all, most pundits continue playing the blame game. That's how it goes when our intelligence community misses clues and Americans wind up in body bags.

Remember the feeding frenzy that followed Pearl Harbor? FDR, the Washington brass and our Hawaiian commanders were cut into bite-sized pieces and barbecued over a red-hot fire.

The same gotcha drill occurred when the Reds invaded South Korea in 1950 and during the '62 Cuban missile crisis, the '68 Tet offensive in Vietnam and in dozens of subsequent intel failures, from Beirut in '83 to the self-destruction of the Soviets in '90.

Clearly, intel fiascos are a time-honored American tradition. And let's face it, our spy agencies don't always connect the dots, even with the broad strokes of a spray gun.

As always, someone's going to get nailed. I just hope the folks in the field who put the cuffs on the bad guys aren't forced to take a fall like the brass on the line at Pearl Harbor, who wound up wearing Japan's surprise attack until their recent exoneration. Sixty-one years later, it's official - no one was responsible for Pearl Harbor except the Japanese Navy, and after last summer's politically correct Hollywood extravaganza, that's no longer a given either.

For sure, the FBI's street agents should definitely not go down. They're among our country's best, dedicated to the core, people who, at great personal risk, go to the wall for us day in and day out. Devoted patriots who don't bring home big dough or draw big overtime checks for their post-Sept. 11 seven-day, 18-hours-a-day dangerous workweek like their unionized brothers in blue, they're stuck in a sick system where the career-obsessed incompetents who can't hack it on the street get promoted, end up as unit chiefs in Washington and then go back to the field to even higher positions supervising - you guessed it - the grunts on the street. Go figure.

At the top, the FBI suffers from the same problems as our military, most government institutions and almost every other organization bigger than a squad in this bureaucratized land: careerism and a self-serving attitude.

Our agents on the street are just like our uniformed warriors, suffering under top brass who've also lost touch with those at the bottom. Eliot Ness would be justly proud of this gallant bunch of unsung FBI heroes but would be blown away by the Perfumed Prince jerks and clerks now running the kinder, gentler FBI headquarters in Washington and many of its field operations.

Like the senior management - note I don't say leadership - of the Army, Navy and Air Force, these professional-manager types won't stand in the door or take any risks. They're so into CYA regulations, so worried about rocking the boat, that their unchecked fears too often all but paralyze the hard-hitters out on the line. It's become almost impossible for our street agents to even say hello to a Muslim without having to worry about being accused of racial profiling.

FBI Director Robert Mueller, a valiant Marine hero who chose to serve in Vietnam, needs to get the straight skinny from his troops down where the rubber hits the track. What they're telling me is:

* Give them the freedom and assets to do their jobs, and get out of their way.

* Cut the blubber at the top and beef up the grunts at the bottom.

* Return to the practice of hiring action-oriented former cops and military types instead of Ivy League "zipperheads" only interested in making it to the top with minimum sweat.

* Clean up the ticket-punchers, and end the multi-layered system that's produced a generation of embedded careerists afraid to go to bat for fear of striking out rather than the traditional two-fisted agents who weren't afraid to challenge the boss and make sure the job got done.

* Appoint Minneapolis Special Agent Coleen Rowley as chief of a newly formed "Strange Stuff" Department. You know, to figure out suspicious stuff like why desert rats from landlocked countries are so keen on scuba-diving lessons.

No question America's openness is our country's greatest strength, but it also creates our biggest exposure. Only a reformed FBI can pick up the slack.

http://www.hackworth.com is the address of David Hackworth's home page. Send mail to P.O. Box 11179, Greenwich, CT 06831.

Look for his new book, "Steel My Soldiers' Hearts," (Rugged Land LLC, New York City).

© 2002 David H. Hackworth

By Patrick Hayes

As President Bush attempts to change how Washington bureaucrats operate, the United States must also move beyond the lingering Clintonian angst of political correctness, especially when dealing with global terror. Al Qaeda prisoners vacationing in the sun at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are a case in point: given special food, access to Muslim clerics and not being interrogated because we may offend them, or violate their "civil rights". Yet these terrorists are a constant threat to the Americans guarding them.

Although first published in 1832, On War (Vom Kriege) by Carl von Clausewitz is still a timely and valuable work, particularly relevant to current events. He wrote:

This is still a valid lesson that the West generally, but the United States and Israel specifically, must learn. In a war where terrorists, particularly Muslim terrorists who see their own death as a means to an end and who operate by the principle that the end justifies the means, there can be no negotiated peace. If the United States, Israel and Western European states are going to quash the threat, they need (paraphrasing Col. Hackworth) to steel their hearts.

Currently, the U.S. Marine Corps is observing Israeli Defense Forces tactics used in its ongoing urban counter-terrorist operations - a most likely battlefield of the 21st century. However, the Israelis also need to learn the lessons of von Clausewitz. Trying to win a war without bloodshed is doomed to failure because it begins from a weakened position. The recent Israeli tactic of only destroying the homes of the Muslim bombers and gunmen is one tactic, but brick and mortar can be replaced and such action has not deterred further attacks.

Since Vietnam, U.S. policymakers have labored under a similar timidity about bloodshed and the use of maximum, decisive force against Muslim terrorists and harboring states - Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, the Balkans, the Philippines, the Afghan-Pakistan border region, to name a few. And each show of political weakness has emboldened the terrorists, leading to the threats we now face.

To reach what the Marine Corps identifies as warfighting ability, political and military leaders may consider a review of recent history for "lessons learned" when dealing with terrorists with expediency. Given the threat level, we can no longer afford to coddle or appease them.

One case study of effective, albeit brutal, counter-terrorism was the battle for Algiers in 1957, in which the 10th Parachute Division (Le Para), including the 1st Foreign Legion Parachute Regiment (1er Régiment étranger de parachutiste - 1er REP), took part, under the command of General Jacques Massu. Although French politics have wavered from one Republic to another since Napoleon Bonaparte, the French regular army has produced some stalwart soldiers, particularly the paratroopers and, since 1831, has relied heavily on the Foreign Legion (la Légion Étrangére) in their colonial and post-colonial affairs, particularly in North Africa.

The Foreign Legion was the sharp end of French forces in the colonial outposts from the Sahara to Indochina, but particularly in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria - the latter, at Sidi-bel-Abbès, had been its home base since 1831, which gave the Legion a particular attachment to Algeria. They had also been fighting Arabs and Berbers for over a hundred years in the North African deserts.

However, on All Saints Day 1954, Algerian Muslims turned to urban terror bombings and shootings as their means of seeking independence from France, led by the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), or fellagha.

The brutality of hitting soft civilian targets with bombs, and murdering French and other European civilians, brought about brutal reprisals against the Muslims by French colonials of Algérie Française (known as pieds noirs, or "black feet," a reference to the high boots worn by early French settlers) and the military. In one incidence, a Legion sergeant was knifed to death by Muslim terrorists. Within hours, a Legion company entered the village and killed 25 Muslims in reprisal. They delivered a short, but bloody message to those harboring terrorists.

By January 1957, the FLN bombings, shootings, rapes, beatings and other attacks against Europeans had become constant, and the 10th Parachute Division was sent into the city to quell the uprising and restore order. General Massu moved quickly to identify and locate the FLN terrorists, suspending civil laws as necessary. He incorporated a system of quadrillage offensif, in which Algiers itself and the Kasbah in particular, where the FLN had set up headquarters, were divided into squares. Le Para moved quickly to identify each individual within the squares, making the head of each household and square, or neighborhood, leaders responsible for each member therein.

Within a few days, the FLN called for a general strike. Le Para responded by pulling the shutters off the storefronts, causing the striking owners to be present, if for no other reason than to protect their businesses. The strike ended. The FLN bombings continued, but within a month, a primary bomb factory was located and destroyed.

General Massu also used the weaknesses of the FLN, including clan and racial divisions between Berber and Arab. Using informers and FLN collaborators (la bleuite), he hit FLN hideouts and bomb factories and, with lightening raids, le Para managed to capture a considerable number of documents. Based on these, other arrests were made, including the FLN leader, Saadi Yacef.

Also, just using the threat of la bleuite and rumor within the Muslim community, General Massu's Para observed as the FLN terrorists turned inward and killed many of their own, believing they were traitors or collaborators.

During interrogation, le Para used torture as a matter of expediency. Similar to the American Phoenix Program in Indochina against Viet Cong and the National Liberation Front infrastructure, the French had used torture as a matter of course when dealing with the Viet Minh. Also similar to the American experience, the interrogations were usually conducted by Vietnamese troops. In Algiers, le Para themselves conducted the interrogations, which included beatings and electric shock.

Torture is and has been condemned by much of the Western world (but obviously not by the Muslim world, as with American journalist, Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, and Marine Col. William Higgins and other hostages held in brutal captivity in Beirut during the mid-1980s). To French colonial forces, however, it was a means to an end when dealing with extremely violent Muslim terrorists. According to Gen. Massu:

On one hand, the French regarded torture as an expedient method for destroying the FLN infrastructure. On the other, critics countered that individuals under torture may say anything to stop the pain, or even to throw interrogators off track. However, for the terrorist in custody, erroneous information would not stave off further interrogation indefinitely. Also, interrogators could compare information from one terrorist with that obtained from others. Even the threat of torture was sometimes enough to obtain the necessary information.

Gen. Massu also realized that the troops involved in urban anti-terror warfare were operating under increased and constant pressure, and needed to rotate out of the urban environment on a regular basis. This not only prevented the soldiers in the campaign from becoming too involved in what was seen as a "police matter," but also ensured that, by introducing fresh or rested troops, the French would not lose the momentum against the terrorists.

One key difference between the Battle for Algiers and the ongoing war against terrorism, of course, is that France was a colonial power trying to hold on to a foreign land, while the United States, Israel and their allies are fighting to safeguard innocent lives. Although the French government eventually gave Algeria its independence, there is nothing palatable that either the United States or Israel can surrender to induce Hamas or al Qaeda to cease their offensives.

Israel, a sovereign, democratic country, is fighting for survival against Muslim terrorists and it appears that only their deaths at the hands of IDF soldiers or Israeli security forces will stop the Muslim bombers and gunmen.

The same is also true with the Muslim terrorists who continue to target the United States nine months after the 9-11 attacks. Whatever Americans do to attempt "peace," it should be clear by now, even to the most ardent Left-leaning pacifist and civil libertarians, that no words, political postures or acts of appeasement will deter al Qaeda from its goal of destruction. Decisive, even brutal, action is, therefore, the necessary consideration against such an unyielding enemy.

The United States was not attacked by "independence fighters", but by fanatical Muslim terrorists bent on killing as many Americans as possible - with no distinction between uniformed soldiers and unarmed women and children.

Again, as von Clausewitz wrote, "If one side uses force without compunction, undeterred by the bloodshed it involves, while the other side refrains, the first will gain the upper hand." Al Qaeda terrorists have already shed considerable American blood. The Prussian theorist is correct that victory requires we exert maximum force to defeat the enemy, and to take the conflict to them, rather than waiting for them to take the initiative against us with more attacks.

By definition, terrorists do not seek peace. They seek to destroy. When combating terrorists, particularly Muslim terrorists who hold their own lives so cheaply, there is no alternative to, as von Clausewitz wrote, the violent and maximum use of force to prosecute the war and destroy the enemy. This has never been truer than today as the West faces this no-holds-barred global threat.

Patrick Hayes is a contributing editor to DefenseWatch. He can be reached at gyrene@sftt.us.

By Robert G. Williscroft

The potential for nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan seems to have cooled off in the past few days following shuttle diplomacy by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, but a review of the region's history and an analysis of the nuclear forces of both countries leads to the conclusion that the danger remains high.

Why have these two neighboring states in South Asia come to the edge of a nuclear war?

It is difficult for Westerners to comprehend everyday conditions as they exist in the Indian subcontinent. Nearly the entire region fell under British rule during the 19th century. Finally, in 1947, Great Britain gave up is role in the region, resulting in the creation of two sovereign nations: India and Pakistan. India consisted of nearly the entire subcontinent, except for an area to the northwest about twice the size of California and another section to the east about the size of Iowa that surrounds the Ganges/Jamuna river delta, which - taken together - formed Pakistan. Then in 1971, East Pakistan broke away from its distant sister to form the independent nation of Bangladesh.

The obvious question is why would this region break into three separate nations?

The answer is, of course, complicated and open to many interpretations.

Bangladesh has very limited natural resources consisting of natural gas, some arable land, timber and coal. But one-third of the nation floods each year. Consequentially, it is one of the poorest nations on Earth.

Pakistan is somewhat better off with land, extensive natural gas reserves, limited petroleum, some poor quality coal, iron ore, copper, salt and limestone.

India, on the other hand, is rich with natural resources, having the fourth-largest coal reserves in the world, iron ore, manganese, mica, bauxite, titanium ore, chromite, natural gas, diamonds, petroleum, limestone and lots of arable land.

So why did they break up as they did? Why would the northwest region of this vast land decide to separate itself with its limited resources from the riches to the south? And in particular, why would the poverty-stricken eastern portion go first with Pakistan, and later strike out on its own?

What force in human society can overcome these disadvantages?

An examination of the religious preferences of these three regions suggests a compelling answer.

India consists of about 81 percent Hindu, 12 percent Muslim, 2 percent Christian, 2 percent Sikh, and about 3 percent Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and several others.

Pakistan is 97 percent Muslim (split about 3-to-1 Sunni to Shi'a), and only 3 percent Christian, Hindu and all the others.

Bangladesh is 83 percent Muslim, 16 percent Hindu, and only 1 percent everything else.

So it's all about religion - that's pretty evident.

When India set itself up as an independent nation, it opted for a secular government patterned closely to the British parliamentary format. Pakistan, on the other hand, set itself up as in Islamic Republic. While these forms appear similar on superficial examination, a closer look quickly reveals profound differences. You can find more information on how Islam integrates into government in my DefenseWatch magazine article on March 20, 2002, "Violence and Terror: Fundamental to All Islam."

Pakistan formed independently from India because nearly everyone who lived there was controlled by the Islamic hierarchy, and the Imams insisted on governance through Shari'ah - Islamic law. The larger non-Islamic minority in East Pakistan backed by the Indian Army eventually resulted in East Pakistan breaking off again, to form Bangladesh, which is governed as is India, by a completely secular government.

The disputed Indian region of Kashmir along the northern Pakistan border is a problem precisely because a sufficiently large percentage of Kashmiri Muslims insist on rule under Shari'ah, so that the legally established secular government is constantly at risk.

The problems between India and Pakistan would only be a sideshow on the world stage except that in 1974, India exploded a nuclear device, and by 1983 the United States was convinced that Pakistan had an active nuclear weapons program. In 1998 India exploded several devices within 100 miles of the Pakistan border, and the Pakistanis retaliated by exploding several nuclear devices of their own.

The poorly kept secret was out of the bag: First India and then Pakistan had definitely joined the world's Nuclear Club.

The question now is what will happen to the rest of us in the event of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan?

To answer this question, first we need to examine the delivery vehicles available to each side. India has had a nuclear capability for much longer than has Pakistan. Nevertheless, our best intelligence indicates that Pakistan has a smaller, more sophisticated nuclear device and a fully-capable ballistic missile delivery capability. In a nuclear exchange, India likely would deliver its nukes by plane. Because of this, India faces a tough tactical decision.

In such an exchange, if India were to wait for Pakistan to attack first, India's ability to retaliate effectively or even at all would be severely compromised. Following a preemptive strike against India, Pakistan would be on high alert for retaliatory Indian bombers, and would stand a good chance of knocking them out of the sky before they drop their lethal loads.

On the other hand, it is very difficult and extremely taxing for Pakistan to remain on the high alert necessary to detect and destroy incoming Indian bombers conducting a preemptive strike against Pakistan.

This probably is why Pakistan is so suspicious of any Indian assurance that it will not conduct a preemptive strike. For good reason, Pakistan sees any Indian attempt to relax the tension as a precursor to an Indian first strike. Within Pakistan, there would be strong pressure to strike first in order to eliminate this possibility.

What might be the consequences of such an exchange?

We have only one historical example against which we can measure potential damage from a nuclear strike. Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "paper cities," in the sense that a large portion of the residential areas consisted of flimsy traditional Japanese domestic dwellings constructed of light wood and paper.

The architectural infrastructure of likely target areas in both Pakistan and India are dramatically different. This opens our analysis to significant speculation, since brick-and-mortar structures can absorb a lot more blast energy than paper and wood, and offer dramatically increased protection against radiation.

Furthermore, modern nukes typically do not produce as much hard radiation as their ancestors, except for specifically designed "neutron" devices. These are designed to produce a high-level flood of initial high energy neutrons intended to kill living beings quickly and efficiently, while leaving as much infrastructure intact as possible.

Both India and Pakistan would gain the greatest benefit from neutron devices, because of the very large armies each can deploy on short notice. Intelligence estimates indicate, however, that only Pakistan is likely to have a neutron device, but the evidence is circumstantial, based primarily on the certain knowledge that Pakistan has received material assistance from China, and it is likely that China has such devices.

From intelligence estimates we know that Pakistan probably has 15 or so nuclear devices, based upon its ability to manufacture highly enriched uranium, which forms the basis of its nuclear program. They all may be sufficiently small to fit inside their ballistic missiles, and at least half may be neutron devices.

India may have as many as 50 nukes based upon its ability to produce weapons grade plutonium, employed by its design. These devices probably range from relatively unsophisticated devices manufactured in the 1970s to fairly complex systems of recent manufacture.

From these numbers one can assume that a total nuclear exchange might produce over 40 actual nuclear explosions, which assumes an Indian preemptive strike followed by full-scale retaliation by Pakistan, with 60-70 percent of the weapons actually exploding with a yield near their design parameters.

If one assumes that the Pakistani devices are primarily anti-personnel weapons, the overall projections regarding death and destruction are significantly less than the numbers typically tossed around by politicians and journalists ignorant of nuclear weapons effects. Instead of 20 million killed in the first two or three exchanges, it is much more likely that the number of those killed will range from the high hundreds of thousands to the low millions, depending on whether the Indian bombers make it through Pakistani defenses to Islamabad.

Because all the devices on both sides are relatively modern when compared with the bombs dropped on Japan, the global impact will be relatively small. Regional fallout will follow local wind patterns. Sensitive measuring devices will be able to pick up radioactive debris on a worldwide basis during the following months, but only because of the distinctive character of this fallout. The level will be well below normal background radiation from the sun and cosmic rays, and will pose absolutely no hazard to world populations.

While a nuclear exchange would be horrific to the soldiers and civilians caught in the cross-fire and would vastly complicate our ongoing war on terror, the one thing Americans, Europeans and most of the rest of the world don't have to worry about is radiation poisoning from such an exchange.

Obviously, we would lose Pakistan as an active partner in our ongoing Afghanistan operations, but other than a place from which to launch, it is arguable whether we are getting any other real value from our partnership anyway. Whatever complications we would experience in prosecuting our offensive against al Qaeda, they would experience in spades.

An international effort would certainly mount to assist survivors. We would clearly be part of that effort, and this would tend to distract us from the reason we are there in the first place. Since the probable outcome of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would be considerably smaller than current public perceptions, our level of involvement would also be significantly smaller. Ironically, if the Pakistanis rely on neutron devices, which really do very little damage to the surrounding countryside, the net effect may be far less hungry mouths impacting a food supply that will not be very much different than before the conflict.

Within two or three weeks following such an exchange, the world should come to realize that the situation really is not so catastrophic. The world stock markets should recover quickly, and most of the world probably will go back to business as usual.

Rather than trying to solve all these problems following a nuclear exchange, even though they may not be as horrific as some predict, I would rather see a continuing level of tension between Islamabad and New Delhi so that Pakistan does not feel compelled to strike India preemptively. If our diplomatic efforts can convince India to stand down, unload its bombers and present a believable stance that it will not launch first, then I suspect Pakistan will be far less likely to jump the gun.

In order to accomplish this, we need to convince India that Pakistan really will not strike first unless it believes a bomber led attack from India is imminent.

Our diplomatic efforts are all the more urgent given the likelihood that failure will result in the deaths of our negotiators as part of the initial nuclear exchange.

In the larger view, however, the world can relax. Even if these old enemies resort to the worst they have, regional stability should return relatively quickly, and the rest of us can continue doing whatever we do without fear of any significant physical after-effects from their quarrel.

Robert G. Williscroft is DefenseWatch Navy Editor. He can be reached at dwnavyeditor@argee.net.

SITREP 1: Poor Small Arms Performance

Editor's Note: The following account of U.S. military small-arms performance written on March 26, 2002, was forwarded to Col. David Hackworth by a friend serving in Afghanistan.

The current-issue 5.56mm (.223 cal.) round, especially when fired from the short-barreled, M-4 carbine, is proving itself (once again) to be woefully inadequate as a man stopper.

Engagements at all ranges are requiring multiple, solid hits to permanently bring down enemy soldiers.

Penetration is also sadly deficient. Even light barriers are not perforated by this rifle/cartridge combination. Troopers all over are switching to the seventy-seven grain Sierra Matchking (loaded by Black Hills) whenever it can be found. Its performance on enemy soldiers is not much better, but it does penetrate barriers.

We're fighting fanatics here, and they don't find wimpy ammunition particularly impressive! Adding to our challenges, our issue M9 pistol (Beretta M92F) is proving itself unreliable. They are constantly breaking. To make matters worse, the 9mm hardball round we use is a joke. It is categorically ineffective as a fight stopper, even at close range.

Some troopers, after numerous, desperate requests, are now being reissued [Colt .45 automatic] 1911s! However, the only ones available for issue are worn out. Magazines are hard to find, and 45ACP ammunition is scarce. We are frustrated here that none of the forgoing seems to be of the slightest concern to people in Washington. It is a damn good thing that we have air superiority and are not yet heavily engaged on the ground. Inferior weapons and ammunition are making us all nervous.

Lesson: Here we go again! We're going into war with small arms and ammunition we know to be impotent and (in the case of the M-9 pistol) lacking in durability. What makes the iniquity even worse is that these inadequacies have all been common knowledge since the Gulf War ten years ago. During WWI, American troopers were issued a French light, automatic rifle, as part of an economic sweetheart deal with the French.

The gun, called the CSRG (Chauchat), was notoriously unreliable, and that fact was well known by Americans and French alike. But, it was issued anyway and we will never know how many Americans were needlessly killed as a result. That this kind of casual nonchalance is apparently still standard procedure at the Pentagon, is disillusioning.

We really haven't come very far in eighty-five years. Our young men, in the minds of politicians and military brass alike, are still cannon fodder!

Very respectfully
[Name Withheld]

SITREP 2: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?

Editor's Note: This is a letter from a senior military officer to Col. David Hackworth recounting his recent trip to Afghanistan. The officer's name is being withheld for obvious reasons.

Hack,

I just got back from an ENDURING FREEDOM deployment. Man, have things ever changed since I was there last fall/winter. Last trip we were dropping Air Force iron around the clock, but this time I don't think we dropped a single bomb the whole time I was there. (I got in just after ANACONDA wound down). The B-1 bombers stationed in Oman got redeployed back to The World in early May for lack of targets, though we still have B-52's based out of Diego [Garcia island] orbiting over Afghanistan on call for ARC LIGHT, though they haven't done any lately - the only real job they've had is dropping leaflets for PSYOPs. The only real air jobs anymore are for the recon birds - U-2, RC-135, P-3C, and Predator - helping to scrape up intel on ground targets for the snake-eaters. Had a couple of operations of this style (SNIPE and MOUNTAIN LION) while I was there this trip.

Afghanistan is becoming more of a mess by the day. The AIA (DoD shorthand for Afghan Interim Administration) is so divisive and corrupt they make [Nguyen] Thieu and his South Vietnamese cronies look like the Founding Fathers. The National Army troops we are paying to train and arm are continually defecting to the local warlords and opium kingpins (who, incidentally, are offering bounties for the deaths of U.S. drug enforcement personnel) because those guys pay better.

The Iranians are setting up TV stations that spout anti-Western propaganda over in the Herat area, and are doing everything they can to get a solid toehold in western Afghanistan. The goddam Pakistani intelligence services are continuing to double-deal us by running weapons and ammo to Taliban and al Qaeda holdouts in the east, and the Uzbek and Tajik warlords in the North (the much-touted "Northern Alliance") are also pursuing their own agendas. Yugoslavia was less complicated than this shitbox of an excuse for a country .…

Last of three parts

By Don Vandergriff

Why change the U.S. military personnel system? Because the system is not producing quality combat and support units that can perform the complex missions of 21st century warfare.

The personnel system remains locked in the past, while military people, technology, Army missions and the even the nature of warfare itself have profoundly changed. The Army is still prepared to fight a global war of attrition relying on its mobilization system of individual replacement. It is totally unprepared to fight 3rd and 4th Generation warfare using "pre-emptive operations" as endorsed by President George W. Bush in his speech at West Point on June 1, 2002.

Today, Army leaders and commanders at all levels are frustrated because their personnel managers are caught in a conflict between two different needs: to manage the careers of individual service members, while simultaneously providing highly-competent, ready units.

The problem manifests itself in many different ways across the entire spectrum of the Army. Combat units on the front lines of critically important places such as South Korea may be the least ready in the Army due to the Individual Replacement System (IRS). Meanwhile, officers at all levels are pushed through command positions too quickly to reach adequate levels of competency. Joint Staff operations officers do not receive sufficient time in their positions to become competent. These and other factors result in high turbulence in Army units, forcing training cycles that keep most units at the crawl or walk level.

The Individual Replacement System, combined with organizational cultural traditions that stem from early 20th-century theories of personnel management, is to blame. It is a system that treats individuals as anonymous parts in a machine, and that moves individuals to meet institutional, not individual or unit, goals.

Ironically, the quality of Army combat and support units suffers from this antiquated system as much as the individual soldiers and officers treated as so many interchangeable parts on an assembly line. By 'protecting' individual soldiers from multiple deployments, the system creates even greater instability in those units by guaranteeing excessive personnel turnover. By emphasizing a focus on personnel "fill" rather than stability or effective leadership, the Army readiness reporting system rewards artificial statistics over unit stability.

And the career management and assignment system, with its "up or out" promotion requirements, not to mention the new layer of mandatory joint (inter-service) specialty assignments, ensures that any officer will become an effective and inspiring commander despite - and not because of - the obstacle course of personnel policies and career requirements that he or she must endure and prevail.

This is no abstraction: in early June, the 3rd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division conducted a formal ceremony where it welcomed a new commander. Because of the entrenched Army personnel system, no one probably wondered why the unit - currently deployed in combat in eastern Afghanistan -- would replace its colonel with another officer in a combat zone. Forget the requirements of the war against terrorism: To the IRS, officer career progression comes first, and is blind to the fact that the brigade is engaged in combat or is resting at its home base in peacetime.

But don't think this has little or no impact on the morale of the troops. "Joe Private," still beating the hills in search of al Qaeda fighters and manning the trenches in Afghanistan, does not miss the fact that the colonel intimately familiar with his unit's operational plan just returned home, replaced by an unknown stranger. This "business-as-usual" command change in the midst of a battlefield undermines and weakens the trust of the soldiers in their commanders.

But slowly and unofficially, Army officials are implementing personnel reforms aimed at protecting unit cohesion.

In several units such as the 82nd Airborne Division, the 75th Ranger Regiment and several cavalry regiments, de-facto unit systems are being practiced despite the personnel system's built-in tendency to undermine quality units. In these units, officers serve repetitive assignments, NCOs are "home grown," and people of all ranks know and trust one another. More importantly, there is a strong sense of unit pride, high espirit de corps, confidence and morale, which in turn creates healthy unit competition, from team to battalion level. Ultimately, these factors create superior units prepared for the rigors of combat.

The Army has also broken from the past by rotating units to and from Afghanistan. This is a positive improvement from previous programs where units deployed but were filled with individual replacements during their rotation such as occurred in Vietnam.

The flaw in the current approach, as with previous "unit programs" is that the actual implementation is causing turbulence. As each unit prepares to deploy, it is filled to statistical levels (percentage of fill by military occupational specialty-another by-product of the Progressive era!) by individual replacements. Upon completing its deployment, when the unit returns, it is almost immediately stripped of personnel, sometimes to fill other units going to the theater of war.

Past experience has shown that the deployed unit should not receive individual replacement "fills" while deployed, even if the roster falls below the statistical 90 percent level for critical MOS's. In event of heavy combat losses, the Army should be prepared to modify unit deployments so that the unit suffering heavy casualties can rotate out of line, receive incorporate replacements, restore its combat effectiveness, then return to the combat theater.

An effective Army personnel system will ensure there are fully trained units in the most demanding areas - Korea, the Balkans, the Sinai and Afghanistan and for contingency missions. This is a straightforward blueprint for implementing what I term the First Team unit system.

The first step is to provide both units and service members with a permanent home base at one of the Army's existing forts in the United States, with the concept that each unit will deploy as needed to sites where it will marry up with pre-positioned equipment such as the brigade sets currently stored in Southwest Asia.

While focusing on the unit, the Army can still rotate specialized individuals where expertise is needed.

A successful unit-oriented personnel system must consist of a program of building and sustaining unit cohesion, both vertically and horizontally, while involving the unit in a rotation life-cycle that runs from creation to deployment (this can mean multiple deployments during this time period), to return home, to disbandment. Selective task-force sized and brigade-sized units would operate on a 24-month unit cycle, training up at home for scheduled deployments to current critical areas such as Afghanistan, Kuwait or Korea. A unit deployment cycle would include:

* First Six Months: All leaders at all levels are assigned to leadership training that is aligned with their soldiers' basic and advanced individual training cycles. All leaders complete their basic and advanced courses, battalion and brigade commanders complete the pre-command courses, senior non-commissioned officers the same. On the same dates, these leaders await the graduation of their new soldiers from Advanced Individual Training in order to receive and welcome them to the new unit.

* Second Six Months: The unit trains on collective tasks from the squad and platoon, through company/team to the task force level, cumulating in a rotation to one of the combat training centers. Upon successful completion of the training rotation, the unit is certified as prepared to go to the third cycle - deployment.

* Third Six Months: The unit deploys to a designated combat theater, or is placed on standby to deploy to conduct preemptive operations while it continues to sustain its training levels.

* Fourth Six Months: The unit redeploys to home base, draws down, turns in equipment, but continues to serve as a strategic reserve. The unit can be tasked to perform as a unit many of the "red" (nonessential combat training) tasks currently given non-deployed units such as manning the many essential jobs in running the posts.

Upon termination of the deployment cycle, the unit is then formally disbanded and a cadre of leaders are designated to form a new unit with the same title, designation and regimental heraldry, bringing into it the "lessons learned" from the previous deployment, thus beginning the unit cycle over again. The leaders who do not participate in this next cycle transfer to other units or assignments, but taking their individual experiences of the new system to the rest of the Army.

A key to successful implementation of the new system will be in anticipating and overcoming cultural resistance from the Army's personnel bureaucracy, which has adamantly resisted all meaningful reforms for decades. Those responsible for initiating the new system should learn from the experience of the COHORT program in the 1980s. It is likely any new program will confront the following obstacles and barriers:

Commanders' complaints: It's likely division and higher-level unit commanders raised in the IRS system will not like having some of their battalions out of action for twelve months at a time, fearing that this won't look good on paper compared with other units that are always - on paper - rated as "always C-1" in combat readiness.

A collision of policies: Assuming the new unit personnel system stresses the presence of commanders and leaders with the unit during its formative stand-up period, this will require a higher level of professional skills than the current training system can provide. At the same time, officers and NCOS may fear a compromise in "career equity" as they miss out on professional schools or are force to attend them at a later time.

Funding and unit end-strength: Anticipate resistance to funding priorities to the new unit system. (During the 1980s, when the Army was authorized 85 percent of required strength, manning COHORT units at 95 percent meant that other units would be at 75 percent, leading to the belief that COHORT units were more expensive).

Resistance from the personnel management status quo: Given the Army's historic fixation with personnel programs based on the individual soldier and not the unit, one can anticipate an institutional argument that cohesion is nice to have but not important enough to warrant disrupting existing personnel management procedures. Again, in the case of the COHORT program, the personnel "establishment" argued that COHORT interrupted the smooth flow from recruiting command through training centers, and complained that existing computer programs were not organized to have some units manned on a unit basis and others on an individual basis (forcing all COHORT manning to be managed by hand because no computer tools had been developed).

If the Army is to succeed at organizing and implementing a genuine "Revolution in Personnel Affairs," its senior leaders must do one thing that their predecessors failed to do in the case of the COHORT program 20 years ago: communicate to the entire Army the importance of stability and cohesion in building competent units. For this to succeed, I believe it essential that senior Army leaders themselves must first undergo formal training in the basics of this new approach to personnel management, so that they can understand the true stakes of the issue, and successfully spread that message to their peers and subordinates.

Otherwise, the same old conclusion will occur: The Army's personnel bureaucrats will wait it out as they did with other reform efforts, and in the end they and their obsolete and destructive system will again prevail.

Vandergriff is a Contributing Editor to DefenseWatch, and is author of "Path to Victory: America's Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs" (Presidio Press). He can be reached at vandergriffdonald@usa.net.

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Special Report: Managing Personnel in Wartime

ARTICLE 05

Guest Column: War Used as Pretext To Fill Routine Vacancies

Editor's Note: The following letter from a U.S. Army officer on "Stop-Loss" is being presented as a Guest Column because of the serious allegations he raises concerning the state of the Army's personnel system.

By a Concerned Army Officer

I agree with Daniel Salvucci's comments on Feb. 25, 2002 concerning the current "stop-loss" of military personnel ("Stop-Loss and Deserter Policy," Feedback at sftt.us).

When my MOS was listed on the Army Stop-Loss, I foolishly assumed that I was being prevented from leaving the Army because of the War on Terrorism. I now have learned the harsh reality: I am being prevented from leaving the Army because of its personnel shortages.

Here is my situation. I'm an Army intelligence captain who has already completed his four-year active duty service obligation. Less than five months ago, my wife and I were preparing to leave Army life when the Stop-Loss was enacted. I had orders in hand, less than 90 days left, and a great civilian job waiting for me.

Yet, my wife and I dealt with the situation, believing that it was best for our country and for the war effort. I also foolishly assumed that I would be able to remain in my current assignment since I had no desire to attend the officer's advanced course. (I only assumed that because that is what the Stop-Loss MILPER message said as well as my branch manager's web site.) Neither mentioned anything of my being vulnerable to an involuntary PCS move.

One week before I was scheduled to leave for another trip to the National Training Center, I received orders for a hardship tour to Korea. Not only was I shocked by the orders for an unaccompanied tour, but in the manner in which they were issued - I was given less than 60 days to report. If it had not have been for a DA civilian who sent me an e-mail asking me why I had such a short suspense date, I would have been at the NTC before it ever reached my PSB. I received no e-mail, phone call or even PERSGRAM from my branch informing me of the 60-day reporting deadline.

My boss and chain of command diligently tried without success to have the orders revoked or amended. I even volunteered to go over to Korea as a TCS until an advanced course graduate could be found to fill the vacant position. What was PERSCOM's response? No.

I then volunteered to serve two years in Korea if the Army would send my wife on a command sponsorship. PERSCOM's response again was, No.

My situation went all the way up the Army chain of command to the DA Inspector General. Both the DA/IG and DA Separations Office believe this PCS order is wrong under the criteria of the Stop-Loss. But apparently, someone has beaten them to the Appellate Authority because I am still going to Korea.

I would regard this situation differently if I were going to war or going to an assignment that is contributing to the war effort. You can talk all day about how North Korea is an "axis of evil," but I know I am just going over there to fill an empty slot.

Even the director of combat support told an IG officer that this position does not fit into the big picture on the war on terrorism. He basically said the Army needs an intel officer and since I'm in a Stop-Loss status, I have to go. It is bad enough that my family's life has been turned upside down by the Stop-Loss, but sending me on a hardship tour to Korea is like adding salt to the wound.

I am amazed that in an Army that is trying so desperately to retain young officers that this is happening to me and eight other MI captains. I have offered compromises that would meet the needs of the Army and the needs of my family and have been rejected. I have suffered through an inadequate personnel system that needs major changes.

I had wanted to continue to serve my country after the Army in federal service (e.g. FBI, OSI, NCIS, DIA etc.), but this whole experience has left a bad taste in my mouth about working for Uncle Sam.

I have served my country faithfully, and will continue to do so, even though the Army refuses to look out for the interests of its men and women in uniform. I also agree with Daniel Salvucci: The "All-Volunteer" label needs to be removed from our Army. As May 3, 2002, I was no longer a volunteer.

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Special Report: Managing Personnel in Wartime

ARTICLE 06

For the Record: 'Stifled Innovation' Report

From the Editors: The passage above comes from a blunt and candid report published by the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College in April 2002. Titled "Stifled Innovation? Developing Tomorrow's Leaders Today," it presents a disturbing overview of how Army company commanders have been shackled by higher levels of command from developing leadership skills based on innovation and creativity, even as the service undertakes a transformation designed to cope with far more complex and even chaotic conflicts in the future. The report finds that "the Army values innovation in its rhetoric, but the reality is that junior officers are seldom given opportunities to be innovative in planning training; to make decisions; or to fail, learn, and try again."

"Put bluntly, the Army is relying on a leader development system that encourages reactive instead of proactive thought, compliance instead of creativity, and adherence instead of audacity," the report warns. "If the transformed Army will require leaders who can operate independently in the absence of close supervision, the current leader development experience of company command will have to change. Consequently, [the report recommends that] senior leaders not to do more, but to do less and thus give subordinates more freedom to innovate."

We believe that the report, "Stifled Innovation? Developing Tomorrow's Leaders Today" (PDF) should be read by everyone concerned with the future of the U.S. Army and its sister services, and have posted it here.

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ARTICLE 07

It's Time to Recognize That NATO's Day Has Passed

By J. David Galland

Three years after celebrating its 50th anniversary in Washington, D.C. in 1999, it's time to take a cold, hard look at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). What we find today is an outdated, bulging military bureaucracy with a steadily declining relevance in the emerging international security landscape of the 21st century.

The organization, which was formed after World War II in the urgent need to deter Soviet aggression against Western Europe, is now nothing more than a clique-like political association for the post-Cold War era. Most of its 19 member states figuratively cling to the organization by their fingernails, frantically searching for a purpose.

The former military significance of NATO has eroded piecemeal since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact more than a decade ago. The alliance today hardly resembles the unified military force that for five long decades safeguarded its member nations from attack. Russia, the successor state to the regime that constituted the prime reason for NATO's military mission, last week became a junior member of the alliance.

I personally recall my own trepidation that day - Nov. 9, 1989 - when the aspirations of millions of Eastern Europeans finally breached the long, mined border that had for so long divided a continent. But the joyous event marked the end of an era - with the fall of "the wall" and the subsequent dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, NATO lost its raison d'etre.

The creation of NATO on April 4, 1949, took place in a post-World War II era that has long since vanished. At that time, the world was licking its wounds after the carnage of six years of global war that had ravished Western Europe, leaving it a destroyed heap of bombed-out rubble.

The formation of NATO was necessary. The United States and the recovering Western European nations correctly viewed The Soviet Union as a dangerous adversary. And so American and European soldiers mounted their long watch along the Iron Curtain, and NATO matured in legitimacy and purpose.

The last decade has been a sorry tragic-comedy as the NATO alliance foundered about in a vain attempt develop a new, relevant mission. Some of the actual suggestions to justify NATO's future and rewrite its mandate, included protecting the environment, combating drug abuse and promoting student educational exchanges. (How many armored divisions does that require?)

NATO supporters eventually concluded that the organization should devote its efforts and military might to international social engineering.

So the alliance would endeavor to sort out all of the civil wars in the Balkans. Even today, NATO continues this misdirected peacekeeping mission, bolstered as usual with the usual massive infusion of American funding and equipment. Some 11,400 of our soldiers are currently attempting to enforce order in Bosnia and Kosovo, which have no strategic interest to the United States.

NATO also evolved into a coercive instrument for European political and economic interests, serving to beleaguer, threaten and strong-arm the former communist states to fall in line. Playing ball with NATO carried the promise of foreign monetary aid and investments as the alliance, in effect, became Western Europe's "seal of approval" authority.

What few noticed or acknowledged was that this shift in roles led NATO to exclusively serve European interests - and not U.S. objectives.

And now we come to the latest effort by NATO to redefine itself.

Today, almost thirteen years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, there are rumblings out of NATO headquarters in Mons, Belgium, to realign the alliance to participate in the war against global terrorism. One wonders if the directionless NATO has finally gotten a genuine wake-up call. Could this be its big chance to jump on the rolling bandwagon - pulled and financed by the United States, of course -- of counter-terrorism?

Read for yourself: Last Tuesday, the governments of Great Britain and Spain submitted a joint letter calling for the transformation of the 19-nation alliance. This action came two days ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers. U. S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld attended the meeting. The United States pressed its European allies to lift their defense-spending caps and narrow the cacophonous transatlantic gap in military capabilities.

The four-page vision for the future of NATO, attached to their letter, called for alliance assets and forces to be "used flexibly whenever they are needed" in the fight against terrorism. This sounds like a proposal for NATO to stand up a multi-national military strike force that could be forcibly inserted into any global hot spot if NATO finds such an incursion justified.

This ignores the real issue that undercuts NATO's long-term relevance.

The European Union spends about half of what America has traditionally earmarked for defense. President Bush recently proposed a $48 billion increase in military funding. Just that increase alone is greater than what is spent on national defense by any other of the 19 NATO member countries.

In short, Europe is nothing more than an endless drain that still consumes American defense resources and assets, including the lives of American soldiers. Europe's unquenchable thirst for American military might offers us almost nothing in return, with the exception of the amicable maintenance of alliances forged in the Second World War.

It takes no military genius to predict that this rapid-reaction force will never be created without a generous portion of American soldiers, money and equipment. There simply is no precedent that the European countries would ever rise to support their own autonomous defense.

The Europeans are fully capable of defending themselves and their continent against any plausible threats to their own interests, although it is a different question as to whether they could venture into global expansionism and force projection beyond the continent itself.

The sooner NATO becomes a true, European-organized and European-led alliance, the sooner the United States can focus on the legitimate threats to its own security. It is time for The European Union nations to make it on their own, providing for their own own defense and security.

It's time to consider bringing the post-World War II American Army Of Occupation home from Europe.

J. David Galland, Deputy Editor of DefenseWatch, is a retired veteran of over thirty years of service in military intelligence who resides in Germany. He can be reached at defensewatch02@yahoo.com.

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ARTICLE 08

A Call for the Newest Generation of Veterans to Step Up

By Andrea West

It's a funny thing to be a younger veteran at a Memorial Day service. You stand at the side or at the back of the audience and look out over a sea of silver heads, searching for the guys who served in the same war that you did. Sometimes, you don't see too many.

Most people who attend Memorial Days and Veterans' Days today are those who served in World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam War and their spouses and kids.

That's not to say that younger people, apparently unconnected to anyone else in the audience, don't attend the Memorial Day services.

Where I live, the formal Memorial Day service is held on May 30, the original date codified into law. At this year's service at the local National Cemetery, there was a smattering of younger people present, although they were vastly outnumbered by the older generation.

I looked these younger people over and didn't see many service organization caps or pins, so I could not say with any accuracy how many of them were veterans. Also present were a handful of active-duty personnel and National Guardsmen, and even a couple of members of the Civil Air Patrol. What I found noteworthy was the small number of the younger generation of veterans in contrast to their elder counterparts.

Why is this? One primary factor, of course, is simple mathematics. While the Gulf War-era veteran's population is respectably large - some 2.3 million servicemen and women were on active duty or in the reserve component during the 1991 conflict, and nearly 468,000 members of the armed forces served in the Southwest Asia theater during the six-week war, that is still only a fraction of the number of service people on duty during the three previous major wars in our history.

By the most recent Veterans Administration count (December 2000), there were still 7,619,250 Vietnam-era veterans, 3,170,760 Korean War-era veterans and 5,269,943 World War II-era veterans still alive. (These figures do not show multiple war service such as servicemen who may have participated in two or even all three of those wars. For more information, see the Veterans Administration website at www.va.gov.)

But I suspect another factor for the relatively low turnout of the younger veteran population is the absence of a sense of community based on shared experience in military service.

It is generally known that most members of the Vietnam-era generation - probably because of the controversy over the war and the lack of support at home for returning troops - came home and put away their uniforms and got on with their lives. Mainstream veterans organizations in recent years have seen a modest upswing in new members from that generation, but nothing like the World War II or even Korean War veterans, who flocked in large numbers to the American Legion, VFW and other groups in the late 1940s and afterward.

Comradeship and shared memories aside, there is a compelling reason for veterans who served during the post-Vietnam and Gulf War eras to embrace an active role in veterans' organizations today.

A sizable, active and informed veterans' community can play a major role in the public policy arena - especially in safeguarding veterans' benefits that their members have earned. Our elder brethren of World War II, Korea and Vietnam recognized the strength of sticking together on behalf of all veterans and the current members of the active-duty military.

And, in fact, this shared commitment has worked to bring different generations of veterans together in ways they might not otherwise have experienced. Each succeeding generation of warriors has taken up the burden of responsibility for keeping veterans and the military in the public eye. (A common sight at many local veterans' organizations today is to see the post managed and maintained by Vietnam-era veterans as a place of gathering for themselves and their elders.)

Veterans also have an authoritative voice as a result of their experiences in the military in debating and shaping policies that affect their active-duty counterparts, from service quality of life to defense spending.

If the politicians ever conclude that younger veterans are indifferent about what happens to veterans - older or younger - or that they aren't interested in the welfare of the armed forces, it's a safe bet that these issues will gradually go to the bottom of the congressional priority list - the war against terrorism notwithstanding. This is especially likely given the steep, ongoing decline in the number of military veterans currently serving in Congress.

Despite the profound demographic shifts in the American veterans' population given the passing of the World War I and II generations, there are still a large number of national veterans organizations seeking new members from the younger generation. (A detailed online roster of veterans organizations is available at the Military.com web portal.)

As a military veteran myself, I urge my fellow veterans from this new generation to join service organizations like the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion and the DAV. As a veteran and citizen, I hope my counterparts begin their own personal traditions of visiting war memorials, attending Memorial Day and Veterans Day ceremonies. As one who is proud of my experiences serving my country in uniform, I look forward to the day when veterans from this latest generation become active in writing their members of Congress about issues that affect both the armed forces and veterans themselves.

You'll be glad that you did.

Andrea K. West is DefenseWatch Veterans' Editor. She can be reached at defensewatchvet@yahoo.com.

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