Given the chance to talk to the US defense secretary, one soldier asked what was on the minds of many: When will the worldwide fight against terrorism be over?
"I mean, should I get my 3-year-old ready for air assault school?" the soldier asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during an Iraq tour last month.
"I wish I could give you a date, but I can't," Rumsfeld said. That would be like estimating when a town will no longer need firefighters or police, he told the soldier.
PHOTO: AP
Privately, administration officials have said for months that they see the anti-terrorism fight as a decades-long struggle similar to the Cold War that dominated the second half of the 20th century. A private memo from Rumsfeld to his top aides brought the issue once again to the public's eye last week.
"It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog," Rumsfeld wrote in the memo, which was leaked to the press.
Two years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon clearly is digging in for that long slog. In one of the most striking signs, the military is repositioning its forces to encircle areas of the world seen as possible hotbeds of terrorism.
Many of the changes were envisioned before the Sept. 11 attacks. But the terrorism fight has added momentum and urgency.
Rumsfeld's memo expressed doubt that those changes can be made quickly.
"It is not possible to change DOD [Department of Defense] fast enough to successfully fight the global war on terror; an alternative might be to try to fashion a new institution," Rumsfeld wrote.
Some of the most visible changes involve where American troops will be based overseas.
Pentagon planners are considering moving some of the 116,000 troops under the US European Command away from their Cold War bases in Western Europe and into former Warsaw Pact countries closer to the Middle East.
"We think we have a fairly good, rough sense about how we should be arranged in the world," Rumsfeld told soldiers at Fort Carson, Colorado, this month.
Last month, the Army announced it will close two logistics bases in the Netherlands that had handled prepositioned military gear.
Officials in Romania and Bulgaria have said the US is considering using huge training bases in those countries that could be used as staging points for counterterrorist military action.
"This is probably the closest point in Europe to the sort of threat which is centered in the areas of Central Asia" or the Persian Gulf, Romanian Defense Minister Ioan Mircea Pascu said.
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have joined NATO. Romania, Bulgaria and five other former communist nations are in the process of joining the alliance. Eastern European countries are eager to help the US and generally supported the war in Iraq.
Poland, for example, commands a division of troops in Iraq, which also includes troops from Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania and other former communist countries. The US used a base in Hungary to train Iraqi exiles who accompanied American troops into Iraq and reportedly plans to train Iraqi police there.
Germany, host to about 80,000 American troops and the headquarters of the US European Command, opposed the Iraq invasion. On the other hand, Germany sent troops to Afghanistan and once led the peacekeeping force in Kabul.
American forces are using bases in the former Soviet states of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia to help fight the war in Afghanistan. Those bases could be used even after fighting is over in Afghanistan.
The US military also has stationed a task force of Marines and other troops in the tiny African nation of Djibouti to have a presence in the Horn of Africa, another possible terrorist site across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
IMPASSE: US President Donald Trump pressed to end the filibuster in a sign that he is unlikely to compromise despite Democrat offers for a delayed healthcare vote The US government shutdown stretched into its 40th day yesterday even as senators stayed in Washington for a grueling weekend session hoping to find an end to the funding fight that has disrupted flights nationwide, threatened food assistance for millions of Americans and left federal workers without pay. The US Senate has so far shown few signs of progress over a weekend that could be crucial for the shutdown fight. Republican leaders are hoping to hold votes on a new package of bills that would reopen the government into January while also approving full-year funding for several parts of government, but
TOWERING FIGURE: To Republicans she was emblematic of the excesses of the liberal elite, but lawmakers admired her ability to corral her caucus through difficult votes Nancy Pelosi, a towering figure in US politics, a leading foe of US President Donald Trump and the first woman to serve as US House of Representatives speaker, on Thursday announced that she would step down at the next election. Admired as a master strategist with a no-nonsense leadership style that delivered for her party, the 85-year-old Democrat shepherded historic legislation through the US Congress as she navigated a bitter partisan divide. In later years, she was a fierce adversary of Trump, twice leading his impeachment and stunning Washington in 2020 when she ripped up a copy of his speech to the
RSS