Cutbacks, Criticism Take Toll on Military’s Morale

Pride in the Persian Gulf War victory still runs deep in the American military, but last year’s spirit of triumph has given way to a pervasive anxiety about the future.

The generals, captains and sergeants who assembled the force that crushed the Iraqi army are now engaged in the woeful task of dismantling it, although many consider it the finest army ever fielded.

And as they do, they must endure a wave of revisionist analysis that concludes that the war was at best a hollow and a partial victory.

According to this line of reasoning, Saddam Hussein still rules in Baghdad, the United States-led war was a massive human rights violation that left 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead, and American military technology was more hazardous for American troops than the enemy was, producing an unprecedented level of “friendly fire” casualties.

Professional soldiers learned long ago not to expect lasting gratitude from the nation. But there is a growing bitterness among those who devoted their lives and careers to securing victory in the Gulf War--and the Cold War--that America now sees its armed services as little more than a bloated vault from which can be drawn a massive peace dividend.

“Public ingratitude is neither unusual nor surprising,” said Roger Spiller, a professor of military history at the Army’s Command and General Staff College. “This is a country with a very short memory. Or maybe no memory at all.”

It is natural that America’s armed forces should suffer through a period of emptiness or aimlessness after the intensity of the Gulf War. People who a year ago were focused on the overwhelming anxiety of the unknown today have returned to their mundane and predictable prewar lives.

In the intervening year, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which for four decades provided the threat for which American forces trained, has compounded the sense of drift in the military. Although senior service leaders say the tempo and rigor of training has not abated, the troops cannot help but wonder exactly what it is they are preparing for.

A year ago today, Air Force Lt. Col. Carl Van Pelt was at an air base in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia--”sandland,” he calls it--serving as assistant operations officer for a squadron of F-15s from the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing.

“It was a time of suspense, as well as a sense of being part of history,” Van Pelt said. “We were absolutely focused on the job. We didn’t know the date and time it would kick off, but there was a current running among everybody that the waiting couldn’t go on indefinitely.”

Today, Van Pelt runs an aircraft support squadron and says his chief task is trying to maintain the combat readiness the unit had a year ago. “The problem, in this time of change in the world and the Air Force,” he said, “is keeping the young people and the doers focused on the fact that we still have a job to do here and now.”

As the operational commanders concentrate on keeping the troops below them motivated, senior military officials are casting wary glances across the Potomac at the White House and the Capitol.

In his State of the Union message later this month, the President is expected to announce substantial reductions in defense spending to free up funds to address domestic ills. Although no major new manpower cuts are expected, officials said the Administration may accelerate the 25% personnel cuts already planned. In addition, big weapons programs like the B-2 bomber and the Seawolf attack submarine will be sharply curtailed.

In a telling and painful symbol of the era the Army is entering, Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, the service’s chief of staff, is in Germany today to roll up and retire the flag of the 3rd Armored Division, which landed on Omaha Beach in World War II and fought in Iraq a year ago. The division is being eliminated as part of the reduction of the Army from 780,000 troops to 535,000 by 1995.

Although senior military officers understand the need for the armed forces to shrink, they fear that the appetite for cuts will become insatiable. “My biggest concern is they’ll pull the rug out from under us and we’ll go into an undisciplined free fall,” said Vice Adm. Leighton W. Smith Jr., deputy chief of naval operations for plans, policy and operations.

The anniversary of the Persian Gulf War has brought the inevitable post-mortems and the first batch of what will be dozens of books. The conventional wisdom appears to be developing that Bush halted the war too soon, allowing Hussein to escape with the bulk of his forces intact. The critics say that the rout of the ill-trained, ill-equipped and ill-led Iraqis was at best a modest military achievement by a force with overwhelming superiority.

Critics contend also that Bush made the tragic error of encouraging revolt by dissident Kurdish and Shiite minorities in Iraq, then failed to support the uprisings with American military power, contributing to the deaths of an estimated 35,000 civilians and guerrillas.

Humanitarian groups assert that the strategic air campaign that virtually destroyed Iraq’s electrical generating capacity led to the deaths of as many as 90,000 Iraqi civilians because of the breakdown of civil services, including water purification, sewage treatment, heating, cooling and medical care.

Some commanders involved in planning and conducting the war express frustration at these complaints, saying they are being simultaneously criticized for killing too many Iraqis and not killing enough Iraqis. They defend the decision to halt the slaughter after four days of ground combat as humane and militarily justified.

Many in the military share the view that allowing Hussein to remain in power was a mistake, although there is also considerable doubt that the 28-nation coalition that fought Iraq would have supported the occupation of Baghdad.

In the lower ranks of the military, there is a visceral sense that Hussein is taunting America, that he was slapped but not hard enough. There is also concern that Bush will feel compelled, in an election year, to return and finish the job.

“I personally think maybe we should have gone in there and got the man,” said Air Force Staff Sgt. Susan Brown, an F-15 weapons coordinator with the 27th Fighter Squadron. “I do fear we’ll be back. There’s going to be another war.”

Asked his reading of the mood of the military, Spiller, the Army historian, said: “I think there’s a good deal of anxiety. They’d have to be completely insensitive not to feel anxiety about the impending reductions in the Army. These are men and women acutely aware of their surroundings, which right now are rather hostile to their future plans. They are anxious about their careers--and the institution. At the same time, they’re remarkably philosophical. They understand what is happening and the reasons for it.”

He said that the preoccupation of the military leadership is to maintain the quality achieved at great cost and effort over the last 15 years as the military rebounded from the depths of the post-Vietnam War era. It is a tremendous challenge in a period of shrinking resources and apparent public indifference to the military, he said.

The nation stands at a watershed in international relations, a time to learn from the triumphs of the Gulf War and the Cold War and to reassess America’s grand strategy, Spiller said.

“One of the things that a period like this does, not only for the armed forces but for the country as a whole, is to really put a premium on original thinking,” he said.

But what is more likely, he said, is that the country’s leaders will fall into the age-old trap of assuming that the next war will be like the last one. “There’ll be plenty of lessons learned, and they’ll all be wrong,” Spiller said.