Military News - Military Times

Military Times editorial board meeting with Sen. Barack Obama

July 2, 2008

Note: Military Times interviewed Republican candidate Sen. John McCain in October, and is currently seeking a follow-up interview for his latest view on a full range of military and defense issues.

Q: What qualifies you to be commander in chief?

A: Well, I think that the most important quality that a commander in chief needs at this juncture in history in particular is judgment, an ability to see what America’s challenges are, to be able to see around the corner and anticipate where threats may come from in the future and to exercise that judgment effectively in deploying not just our military, but our whole arsenal of American power: our diplomatic power, our economic power, our intellectual, scientific and cultural power. And as somebody who has worked on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on critical issues like nuclear proliferation and the threat of pandemic, as somebody who has traveled widely and grew up traveling around the world, I think I have a clear sense of the nature of both the transnational threats and challenges, but also the opportunities that are going to determine our safety and security for the foreseeable future. And that’s why I think I can be an effective commander in chief.

Q: What makes you better than John McCain?

A: John McCain has extraordinary service to our country, so I would never try to compare what he has done as a military officer, as well as his lengthy service to our country. I believe that I have a better grasp of where we need to take the country, and how we should use the power of, again, not just our military, but all of our power in order to achieve American security. I think I have a better sense than he does of where we need to go in the future. That doesn’t in any way diminish his past service. But moving forward, I think I can exercise better judgment and anticipate what future opportunities are going to be.

Q: Provide an example if you could of where you can exercise better judgment.

A: I would argue in thinking about the war in Iraq from the start. I continue to believe that our decision to go into Iraq was a strategic mistake. It wasn’t just a problem of execution but it was problem of conception.

John McCain may have been a critic of particular tactics of the Iraq war but he believed that it was the right thing to do. I believed that we needed to keep our focus in Afghanistan to hunt down al-Qaida operatives, to consolidate the gains that had been made by the outstanding military efforts in Afghanistan. I think we took our eye off the ball. And as a consequence, created an extraordinarily difficult circumstance for ourselves that fanned the flames of anti-American sentiment, that has cost us dearly both in terms of blood and treasure, distracted us from what I consider to be the primary threat, and that is al-Qaida in Afghanistan and has contributed to less stability in the region.

Now, that does not detract from the extraordinary work our troops have done. They have performed brilliantly throughout the process. And obviously, I am very pleased to see the reductions in violence that have occurred over the last several months. There’s no doubt that because of their heroism and their outstanding work, we had the opportunity to salvage the situation in Iraq. That doesn’t detract from the fact that this has been a very costly endeavor. And if you look at costs and benefits and if you look at the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, overall I think it was a bad decision on the part of our commander in chief. And it was a decision that John McCain supported.

Those are the kinds of decisions that are going to be coming up in the future. We’re going to have to make decisions about Iran, we’re going to have to make decisions about Pakistan. The capacity of the next commander in chief to forge alliances so that we can, when we act militarily, act in the ways that we did during the first Gulf War, a war in which, not only were our casualties kept low, but it effectively cost us almost nothing in terms of taxpayer dollars. For us to think in a forward-looking way about energy, and understanding the strategic geopolitical implications of our failure to implement a serious energy strategy in this country. Our ability to engage the Muslim world in a serious way so that we are tamping down anti-American sentiment even as we recognize that there is always going to be an element of extremism that can only be dealt with militarily. But at least we will have alliances and they will not be as effective at recruiting. Those are all issues where I think I have exercised better judgment than John McCain in the past and will in the future.

Q: Can we talk about your Iraq policy for a moment? Particularly where you talk about withdrawing one or two brigades every month soon after you are elected as a process to get us down quickly. What will you do if your military commanders advise against that and they tell you you can’t do that? Like [Army Gen. David] Petraeus I think said before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — you were there — that this is going to put everything at risk, my God you can’t do that.

A: Look, I’ve said this repeatedly from the start, and so I welcome the opportunity to correct the record. This whole notion that I would initiate a precipitous withdrawal just isn’t borne out by anything that I’ve said. What I have repeatedly said from the start, when I introduced my first piece of legislation on this issue in January of 2007 is that we should be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. That we should send a clear message to Iraqi leadership that we are not going to engage in a permanent occupation in Iraq and that we are not going to have permanent bases there. That we want to bring a gradual withdrawal of our combat forces, that we would maintain a counterterrorism force in the region that could continue to keep al-Qaida on the run. That we would continue to have a protective force for our embassy, our civilian and humanitarian forces and that we would continue to train Iraqis both army and police, so long as those who are being trained were not falling back into sectarian patterns. And I have always said that as commander in chief I will absolutely seek the advice and counsel of our generals and our commanders on the field, not just our generals, but our mid-level officers and those who are on the ground doing the fighting.

But what I have said is that it is the job of the commander in chief to set strategy. One of the differences that I’ve had with the Bush administration has been the tendency to say, that well I’m just going with what General Petraeus says. Which in fact was oftentimes the excuse they gave before General Petraeus was in place. Every time something went wrong — well I’m just doing what the generals tell me to do. That’s an abdication of responsibility. My job as commander in chief will be to set strategy. I have to set strategy with respect to Iraq in light of a range of other potential threats and situations. If we have only one battle-ready brigade available outside the Iraq rotation to respond to other risks, that’s not good strategic planning by the commander in chief. If we have a situation in Afghanistan where we are seeing more and more violence in the eastern portion of Afghanistan, at a time when we’ve actually increased the forces down there and we’ve got some of the best battle-tested operations deployed there and we’re still seeing increases in violence, what that tells me is that we’ve got real problems. And I’m going to have to make a series of strategic decisions if I’m commander in chief, and Iraq is just one part of that overall decision-making. In fact I would argue at this point that part of General Petraeus’ job now is to think about not just Iraq but how the entire alignment of threats in [Central Command].

My point is I will always listen to them. But what I won’t do is abdicate my responsibilities to make the final decisions about strategy in consultation with them about how we effectuate this broad-based strategy.

Q: If the withdrawal doesn’t begin as soon as you take office, when would you like it to begin? What kind of strategy would you set in terms of timing?

A: It’s very hard to anticipate what it’s going to be like six months from now. We saw how rapidly things have changed over the last six months, because of not only the extraordinary work of our armed forces, but also the shift in attitudes of tribal leaders in places like Anbar, the Mahdi army’s decision to — for now at least — to stand down the more aggressive posture that the Maliki government took in going into places like Basra. So if current trends continue and we are at a position where we continue to see reductions in violence and stabilization and continue to see some improvements on the part of the Iraqi army and Iraqi police, then my hope would be that we could draw down in a deliberate fashion in consultation with the Iraqi government at a pace that is determined in consultation with General Petraeus and the other commanders on the ground. It strikes me that that is something we could begin relatively soon after inauguration. If, on the other hand, you’ve got a deteriorating situation for some reason, then that’s going to have to be taken into account.

Q: It’s the first wartime transition in 40 years. The basic concern within the Pentagon is that things will be lost or continuity will be lost. Do you expect to keep any political appointees in place?

A: Here’s what I’ll tell you. I try to avoid signaling what a cabinet will look like. I can tell you this: I do think that [Defense] Secretary [Robert] Gates has brought a level of realism and professionalism and planning to the job that is worthy of praise. I think that the Pentagon is operating more effectively. I think he has improved greatly the relationships with the Joint Chiefs and the military generally.

Q: He just fired one of the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

A: Well, that’s OK. The truth is, part of improving relations is improving accountability. That’s something we should always expect from our military leadership and our civilian leadership, something that has been in short supply over the last seven years. So overall I think Gates has done a good job. But whether that means that he would continue in that position, or would even want to, I think that’s something that will be determined later. I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself. I think I have a little more work to do before I have to make those decisions.

Q: When is it appropriate to fire a military officer?

A: I don’t think there is a single set of criteria that are always going to apply. I think that it’s situational. But my general feeling is that when a military officer is either engaged in a dereliction of duty or has failed in his responsibilities to supervise and take responsibility for those under him in ways that are damaging to the mission of the military then they have to be held accountable. And I think that’s what noncommissioned officers want. That’s what mid-level officers want. They want a sense that accountability is not just for the guy out on patrol, but it’s also the guy who is ordering the patrol and the guy who is setting strategy for a particular set of engagements. And that is something that I think sometimes has been missing in the conduct of the war and that I think is bad for morale overall.

Now as I said, part of that tone has to be set by the president himself. I am a strong believer in Harry Truman’s adage that the buck stops here — the buck stops with me. If there are mistakes that are made in the conduct of a wartime operation, then the president also has to hold him or herself accountable and has to have an exacting standard of behavior on the civilian side as well as on the military side, and that has been missing. There are times during the course of this war where I felt that the military was blamed for bad planning on the civilian side, and that, I think, is unfortunate and is the sort of politics I think has to be removed when it comes to the national security side.

Q: Is there any example that is on your mind where the military was blamed for something that was done to them?

A: I will tell you that some of the criticism of [Army] Gen. [George] Casey, for example, during his confirmations, I thought was a little bit convenient on the part of some politicians who had set missions that were inherently difficult, had not provided adequate resources for, and, as you’ll recall, this was at a time when the war in Iraq was not going very well, and it looked to me like there was a little too much eagerness on the part of those who were four-square behind the war to again blame the problems all on execution opposed to some of the conceptions of the mission.

But this started early on, when we saw at the outset estimates by folks in uniform saying “we’re going to need a lot more troops on the ground if we’re going to carry this out successfully,” or “this is going to cost a lot more than we’re talking about here,” and those folks are thrown overboard. That set a tone that I think couldn’t have been good for military morale and wasn’t good for our democracy because it clouded, I think, our assessment of what was going to be involved if we were serious about this mission.

Q: You’re on record supporting the growth of the Army and the Marine Corps. Where are you with the Navy and the Air Force?

A: What I want is a fully integrated armed forces that can deal with the full spectrum of threats that are out there. I want them to be able to engage in counterinsurgency and asymmetrical presences that are out there. I also want them to be able to respond if near peers are able to mount attacks in situations that are more conventional. Our naval and air superiority has to be maintained.

Whether that means that we need more airmen and sailors or whether that means that our budget maintains the extraordinary technological superiority that we have in air and on the seas, that is something that I would determine based on consultation with the military itself. I do not want to rob Peter to pay Paul because I see our joint forces as one, and I’m not somebody who thinks that inter-service rivalries are particularly productive.

I also am aware of the fact that the Air Force and the Navy have served in a whole host of functions in Iraq and Afghanistan that are not their traditional functions. And that has to be recognized, and they’re also having to be prepared to be dealing with contingencies given how badly strained the Marines and the Army are right now. But I am not prepared to say at this point that we need an increase in Air Force or naval size. But I don’t anticipate a reduction, either.

Q: Right now, the Air Force is halting its drawdown [while the] Navy is continuing to drawdown. Outside the realm of growing, do you think the Navy should actually be shrinking?

A: This is an area where I want to do an evaluation. What are the force levels needed to man the ships that we have, to deal with the contingencies that we have. It may be that the structure that we have now, for example, might require smaller crews than we’ve had in the past because of technology. That’s something that I would want to determine in consultation with military brass.

Q: You said you don’t want to rob Peter to pay Paul, so how are you going to pay Paul? Troop increases are an enormous expense.

A: They are. Well, one of the ways I want to pay for it is by making sure that we are not spending all of our military resources on this war in Iraq. And something that hasn’t been talked about enough is the cost of this war just in terms of being able to equip and maintain our military more effectively. If we’re spending 10 to 12 billion dollars a month in Iraq for the foreseeable future, it is going to be hard – there’s no doubt about it.

That’s part of the strategic decision-making that the next president’s going to have to be involved in. It doesn’t mean, by the way, that I don’t think that we can’t ferret out some waste, fraud and abuse inside the Pentagon budget. Just because I don’t want to reduce in a significant way, necessarily, Air Force and naval personnel, I’m still happy to take a look at how we’re funding our weapons systems and whether every one of those systems is giving us the best bang that we need for the buck.

I should add, by the way, that part of the change that I want when it comes to Army and Marine structures is the mix of training that we’re providing and mix of personnel that are in these forces. One of the things I have been so impressed with is the heroic job that our men and women in uniform have done basically on the fly having to train themselves on the spot to function as engineers or function as social workers or function as translators or political consultants. There’s just been a whole bunch of work that has been done that we haven’t prepared people for. They learn on the job, but if anything Iraq should have given us a template for the kinds of skill sets that we’re going to have to provide to our military. And that’s true in Iraq. That’s true in Afghanistan. That also means, by the way, that we’re going to have to, I believe, reconfigure our civilian national security force. In a way that just hasn’t been done.

I mean, we still have a national security apparatus on the civilian side in the way the State Department is structured and [Agency for International Development] and all these various agencies. That hearkens back to the Cold War. And we need that wing of our national security apparatus to carry its weight. When we talk about reinventing our military, we should reinvent that apparatus as well. We need to be able to deploy teams that combine agricultural specialists and engineers and linguists and cultural specialists who are prepared to go into some of the most dangerous areas alongside our military.

Q: What Secretary Gates has called soft power.

A: Absolutely, but the only problem with soft power is the term itself makes people think it’s not as strong as hard power. And my point is that if we’ve got a State Department or personnel that have been trained just to be behind walls, and they have not been equipped to get out there alongside our military and engage, then we don’t have the kind of national security apparatus that is needed. That has to be planned for; it has to be paid for. Those personnel have to be trained. And they all have to be integrated and that is something that we have not accomplished yet, but that’s going to be what’s increasingly important in our future to make sure that our military has the support that it needs to do what it does the best, which is fight wars.

Q: The size of our military has really been built on the military’s ability to be effective. It’s built very heavily on National Guard, and very heavily on private contractors to provide everything from food service to aircraft service and gun-toting security. What are the proper rules for those different pieces and how should that change?

A: We have overburdened our National Guard and our reserves. They have performed wonderfully and I think the quality of their service has been outstanding — oftentimes under some pretty adverse circumstances.

But we have to give them some regularity, some predictability in their service, No. 1. No. 2, we have to recognize that the National Guard has important uses here at home. No. 3, I don’t like National Guard or reservists being used almost as active duty but not getting the benefits.

And so part of the reason I think increasing the size of the Army and the Marine Corps is so important is to make sure we’re providing some relief and returning the National Guard and the reserve corps back to their provisional role.

When it comes to private contractors, there is room for private contractors to work in the mess hall providing basic supplies and doing some logistical work that might have been done in-house in the past. I am troubled by the use of private contractors when it comes to potential armed engagements. I think it puts our troops in harm’s way. I think it creates some difficult morale issues when you’ve got private contractors getting paid 10 times what an Army private’s getting paid for work that carries similar risks.

When it comes to our special forces, what we’ve seen is that it’s a potential drain of some of our best-trained special forces, and you can’t blame them if they can make so much more working for Blackwater than they can working as a master sergeant. That, I think is a problem.

Q: Blackwater would argue that they’re a bargain: that you get a higher level of ability, that they can put people there, they can keep top-level talent there perpetually.

A: I am not arguing that there are never going to be uses for private contractors in some circumstances. What I am saying is if you start building a military premised on the use of private contractors and you start making decisions on armed engagement based on the availability of private contractors to fill holes and gaps that over time you are, I believe, eroding the core of our military’s relationship to the nation and how accountability is structured. I think you are privatizing something that is what essentially sets a nation-state apart, which is a monopoly on violence. And to set those kinds of precedents, I think, will lead us over the long term into some troubled waters.

Q: You’ve spoken about what you’d like to do about the stress on the military force and about recruiting and retention. And you have a few proposals that address that directly — pay parity is one of them; ending stop loss is one of them; and trying to cut the deployment schedule so that people have more regular careers is one of them. Do you think that if you combined those things, that that’s enough to fix what’s wrong with recruiting and retention for the active force?

A: Well, it’s a pretty good place to start. What I have always been so impressed with is the pride in service that you see in all our men and women in uniform — and so I don’t think that the decision to sign up is purely economic, and obviously people aren’t looking for an easy life if they join the military.

Q: And if they’re looking for it, they wouldn’t find it.

A: Yeah, exactly [laughs]. Maybe they’re not getting enough information from the recruiter. But that’s doesn’t mean that they can ignore basic quality-of-life issues, particularly with their family. And if the basic housing allowance doesn’t allow them to rent a decent apartment, much less buy a home — if they’re on two or three tours so that they literally don’t know their children, and their wives are finding themselves isolated and alone, or husbands are in situations that are similar, over time that wears folks down. I hear these stories everywhere I go. People are proud of the work they’re doing, but are burdened by the knowledge that this is putting enormous strain on their families. And some of our best mid-level officers, you see them getting out just at a time when they would be starting to move into key leadership positions for the future, because at some point their spouses say, “We’ve done this.”

So I think that if we improve pay and benefits, we are serious about providing for our military families — and I’ve actually recommended a council that would advise on quality of life issues for military families, and they would inform the administration and Congress with key recommendations. If we’re making sure that our deployment schedules are at least predictable in ways that they have not been, all those things, I think, will strengthen our all-volunteer force, which has proven itself time and time again, but which is being strained badly by these current efforts.

Q: Are service members adequately paid?

A: I think that, given the responsibilities that they have, doing a better job of making sure they’re keeping pace with inflation, and their overall pay package allows them to care for their families, I think we can do a much better job than we’re doing right now.

Q: What does that mean in terms of —

A: Well, I don’t want to start getting into dollar figures, but as I’ve said before, if you have people who have served with honor and distinction for years still having problems housing their families in decent circumstances, that’s a problem.

Q: The current administration, every year it’s been here, has opposed larger military pay raises proposed in Congress, arguing that it’s overly generous and they don’t need them. You’re saying that you would not be one to do that?

A: I would argue that this administration is wrong, and I have argued that this administration is wrong. There is a habit on the part of this administration — partly because, I believe, they were so badly off in their predictions of how much the Iraq war was going to cost — to lowball continually the costs of not only the war itself, but also the care of our veterans when they come home. I serve on the Veterans Affairs Committee, and every year it seems you’ve got the administration refusing increases in the VA budget because they don’t want to fully account for the costs of the hundreds of thousands of folks who are returning, and then midway through the year they’re coming back, hat in hand, with a sheepish look, saying “It turns out we need an extra $1.5 billion.” And in the meantime you still have waiting lists of six months for people to get their disability claims processed, which is outrageous and unacceptable.

So look, I want to be honest — we are going to be in a tight budget situation. We’re not going to be able to do everything all at once. And so, I’m mindful that there are going to be some constraints. I don’t want to over promise, because there’s nothing worse than a politician who promises everything and then doesn’t deliver anything. What I can tell you is that I don’t know a higher priority than making sure that the men and women who are putting themselves in harm’s way day in and day out are getting decent pay and decent benefits so that when they return home as veterans they don’t have to wait six months to get benefits that they’ve earned, that they’re not winding up homeless on the streets, that they’re being screened for post-traumatic stress disorder, that if a spouse is widowed, the benefits are sufficiently generous.

These are just basic requirements of a grateful nation. For us to try to save and scrimp on that, at the same time that we’re providing lavish tax cuts to people who don’t need them and haven’t even asked for them, I think is a big problem. I mean frankly, this is what you were asking earlier about why me instead of John McCain — our domestic policy differences have an impact on our ability to deal with some of these issues. If John McCain is proposing a $300 billion corporate tax cut, a quarter of which will go to people making $2.8 million or more per year, then it becomes a lot more difficult for us to find the resources we need to deal with some of these issues.

Q: Senator, if I may, we’ve entered the lightning round — “don’t ask don’t tell,” you want to repeal it. Why isn’t the policy working?

A: There are equity issues involved, but there are also effectiveness issues involved. And I think that at a time when we are pressed, we should have an attitude of “all hands on deck.” If we can’t field enough Arab linguists, we shouldn’t be preventing an Arab linguist from serving his or her country because of what they do in private. I think [retired Army] Gen. John Shalikashvili’s assessment is right, that people’s attitudes have evolved. You’ve got our British counterparts and Israeli counterparts without this policy, and nobody would suggest that they have had problems on the ground.

I want to make sure that we are doing it in a thoughtful and principled way. But I do believe that at a time when we are short-handed, that everybody who is willing to lay down their lives on behalf of the United States, and can do so effectively, can perform critical functions, should have the opportunity to do so.

Q: How do you get the military leadership to go along with that?

A: Well, I’m a pretty persuasive guy [smiles, laughter]. I think we have to distinguish whether there are functional barriers to doing this, and are people prepared for the political heat.

Q: Are you?

A: Let me put it this way: Precisely because I have not served in uniform, I am somebody who strongly believes that I have to earn the trust of the men and women in uniform. I don’t presume that from the day I’m sworn in that every single service man or woman suddenly says “This guy knows what he’s doing.” I think that I have to display those qualities in leadership in listening, standing up for our military on some of the critical issues we’ve talked about, on delivering on my promises, so that relationships and trust are built, and so that people who are serving in armed forces feel like, “You know what? This is a guy who’s looking out for us, and he’s not looking just to score some cheap political points.” And I respect that.

By the way, that’s my attitude when it comes to the American people as well. Just because you’ve gotten elected doesn’t mean that everybody’s going to fall in lock-step immediately. I think that you always have to perform a little bit before people say, “You know, this is a guy who I can follow.” And I hope to be able to earn that respect during the course of my presidency.

Q: You’ve got to get through that three-month honeymoon period ...

A: My goal is that — you know, you’re going to make some enemies and you’re going to break some eggs to make omelettes and all that — but my hope is that, at least when it comes to our men and women in uniform, when you get to the end of my service as president, that they say, “This guy was really good for our military.”

Q: Will your vice president have military experience?

A: I have promised, and I won’t make an exception for the Military Times, that I will not discuss vice president selection until I’m introducing my vice presidential nominee. ...

Thank you, guys. I enjoyed it. I hope this is the first of many future conversations.

Related reading:

* Sen. Obama’s positions on some key defense issues

* Candidate’s wife says she’ll focus on military issues

* Army fiancée backs Obama

* Obama calls on Americans to enlist

* Video of this interview

* What would you ask Obama?