The Mind of War by Grant Hammond

Author:Grant Hammond [Hammond, Grant T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-58834-364-2
Publisher: Smithsonian
Published: 2019-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Congress, the Media, and Reform

Several different groups and many different issues came to be involved in the military reform movement.17 Congressional members of the Military Reform Caucus, formed in early 1981, initially consisted of a couple of dozen bipartisan members of the House and Senate and was chaired by Senator Gary Hart (Democrat from Colorado) and by Representative William G. Whitehurst (Republican, Virginia). Members hailed from across the nation and represented the entire political spectrum and the array of concerns about American national security. By 1983 the caucus had a letterhead and 57 members listed. By 1985 more than 100 members had signed on. Eventually, more than 130 members of Congress claimed membership in the rather loose and amorphous organization. Still, a group with over a quarter of the Congress is hardly a lightweight in the political arena.

Its original executive committee included Representatives Norman D. Dicks (D, Washington) and Newt Gingrich (R, Georgia, later Speaker of the House), and Senators Sam Nunn (D, Georgia, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee), Gary Hart (D, Colorado, former presidential candidate), and William S. Cohen (R, Maine, who became President Clinton’s token Republican in the Cabinet as Secretary of Defense). Representative Richard Cheney (R, Wyoming, Secretary of Defense under George Bush) was also a member. Those who were particularly active included a retired Air Force officer turned Republican congressman from Oregon, Denny Smith; Senator Charles Grassley (R, Iowa); and Senator Nancy Kassebaum (R, Kansas). They could hardly be described as liberal, antimilitary pacifists. Congress’s entry into the fray was heralded by a series of articles, written by the politically odd combination of Gary Hart and Newt Gingrich, that criticized defense policy and publicly stated the case for reform.18

Equally important was a coterie of sympathetic journalists that Boyd and company had cultivated over the years. They knew they could get information from Boyd and that he would give them advance warning on how situations were likely to play out. Boyd knew he could count on them for publicity when he needed it and could thus go outside the system (military and political) to get things public. Jim Fallows received much of his information for his seminal article, entitled “The Muscle-Bound Super Power” in Atlantic Monthly (October 1979), from Boyd and company. It launched the public portion of the military reform movement. A major step in the critical debate (and in Fallows’s career) was the publication a year later of his best-selling book National Defense, which expanded on the same themes raised in the article and publicized Boyd and the Fighter Mafia’s views to the outside world.19

Meanwhile, both the use of the term and its implications grew. “ ‘Military Reform,’ however, is more than a press fancy,” wrote Theodore J. Crackel in 1983. “West Point has hosted a three-day conference on the subject; and in Washington, members of Congress have formed a joint House/Senate caucus dedicated to it. Meanwhile, there have been a host of books dealing both generally and specifically with the subject. ‘Military Reform’ may prove one of the most powerful sets of ideas of our time.

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