*EPF407 02/26/2004
Transcript: Myers Says Coalition Partners Committed to Defeating Terrorism
(Chairman outlines formula for stabilizing Afghanistan, Iraq) (3350)

The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff says America's coalition partners around the world are committed to winning the war on global terrorism.

Air Force General Richard Myers told members of the Baltimore chapter of the Council on Foreign Affairs (CFA) February 23 that anti-terrorist operations are under way in Colombia, the Philippines, the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

Myers said some 95 nations are part of the broad international effort to defeat terrorism with contributions ranging from logistical support, basing or overflight rights, and intelligence gathering, to deploying military personnel.

"The enemy we face is smart...agile...adaptable. They're planning the next attacks right now....So we can't just huddle in a defensive crouch and hope for the best," he said.

The U.S. commitment to winning the war against terrorism in solid, Myers said, and it reflects the realization that achieving its goal requires more that dispatching troops. "It's going to take virtually all agencies of our government working together more closely than we ever have before," he said, including the Departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, Justice, Commerce and Treasury.

With "Operation Enduring Freedom" in Afghanistan now entering its third year, Myers said the formula for success requires components that tackle security, economic growth, and sound governance. The three components must transpire simultaneously for success "and to prevent the kind of environment that allows terrorists to flourish," he said.

That same formula will bring success to Iraq, the general added.

Both countries "are already better members of the international community than they were under the brutal regimes of their recent past. If we continue on the course we've set," he said, "their potential as stabilizing influences in the region is, in my view, enormous."

The pursuit of success in both countries requires patience, he said.

Following is the transcript of Myers' remarks:

(begin transcript)

General Richard B. Myers
Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
Baltimore Council on Foreign Affairs
Baltimore, Maryland
February 23, 2004

Thank you, Frank [Dr. Frank Burd, President of Baltimore CFA] for the kind introduction. It's good to be in Baltimore this evening.

The first attack came in the morning hours on a mid-September day. The events that unfolded would ultimately create a symbol of U.S. honor and resolve. The enemy picked what they thought was an easy target. They thought we would panic. They thought our young nation wouldn't know how to respond.

But the U.S. troops at Fort McHenry that September in 1814 held their ground, fought back, and successfully defended Baltimore. And the anthem inspired by that battle inspires hope and courage for millions of us today.

Unfortunately, we're a nation at war once again. And I'm sure you realize this is a very different kind of war from the War of 1812, or for that matter any we've fought since. I'd like to talk to you for just a minute about what the War on Terrorism means to our country, what I believe is at stake, and what it will take to win.

The goal of terrorists, by definition, is to create fear. That's why they attack the softest, most visible targets they can find. That's why they attack innocent civilians. That's why they attack again and again, adapting as best they can to our defensive measures. I believe that this terrorist threat is the biggest threat our nation has faced at least since the Civil War, perhaps ever. The stakes simply couldn't be higher.

Think for a minute about the impact of September 11, 2001. Of course, first and foremost is the toll in human lives-roughly 3,000 people from more than 80 different countries around the world who were murdered that day, and the families who have to live with the consequences of that loss forever.

The monetary impact of those four attacks is also hard to define. There's property loss of course, lost income for the businesses that lost offices, lost airline and tourism revenue, lost tax revenues, insurance costs, security costs -- the list goes on and on. It's probably over a mile long. There are dozens of experts with dozens of estimates, but you can easily justify numbers in the hundreds of billions of dollars, for what that one attack cost this country.

You have to consider also the toll on our nation in terms of our freedom and our prosperity, the secondary and subsequent ripples through our lives. For example, consider the impact on the airline industry alone. I doubt if any of us today has booked tickets on the airlines, or completed a journey, without the shadow of 9/11 somewhere in our thoughts as we do that.

I don't think it takes a lot of imagination to envision what another wave of attacks could do to this nation of ours. As I see it, failure is simply not an option.

The enemy we face is smart; they're agile; they're adaptable. They're planning the next attacks right now. You can bet on it. So we can't just huddle in a defensive crouch and hope for the best. That's why we have to fight this war in ways we've never fought wars in the past. It's going to take a tremendous amount of patience, a tremendous amount of will and commitment on the part of our entire nation and our allies for that matter, to be victorious.

When I talk about t commitment, I'm not just talking about committing military forces. It would be very wrong to assume the military alone could win this war. It's going to take virtually all agencies of our government working together more closely than we ever have before. That includes not just the Department of Defense, but the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, and also Justice, and Commerce, and Treasury. And we could go on through as many agencies and departments as we have, because everyone who deals with this, down to law enforcement, down to the municipal level and state level, has to be part of this.

You caught a glimpse of this interagency coordination over the holidays when the terrorist threat level was elevated for a week or so. It took a really integrated effort to respond as we did to the intelligence that we had. And you probably also realize that we wouldn't have been as successful preventing terrorist attacks without a coherent international effort as part of that as well.

This holds true for antiterrorist efforts-the defensive part of the war-as well as our operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, Colombia, the Philippines, and other places around the globe. Some 95 countries now support the War on Terrorism. Whether we're talking troops on the ground, basing and logistics support, or intelligence gathering, it is clearly-and has been for some time-an international effort.

Our government is absolutely committed to winning this war. Our coalition partners are committed to winning this war as well. But winning also requires the commitment of the American people.

Despite the enormously high stakes, the impact on most Americans' daily lives is pretty minimal. We aren't rationing gas or conducting scrap drives or planting victory gardens like we did during World War II. Daily life for most Americans is unaffected by the fact that we are a nation at war.

But this isn't the time to retreat into the comfort of our daily lives and ignore what's going on in the world, so I can tell you right now I'm really encouraged to see all of you out here today. The fact that you chose to be engaged and informed on foreign affairs means that you take your role as citizens very, very seriously, and I thank you for that, because that's what's going to keep this country great.

Can I see a show of hands, how many of you here today have a friend or relative or family member in the Guard or Reserve who's been called up or deployed since 9/11? You're really more directly involved in this conflict, because that call-up clearly impacts their families, their communities, and their employers.

What we're doing is everything we can to minimize the impact to all of the above, to make sure that our Guard and Reserve personnel aren't on active duty a day longer than required. And we're trying to give them as much notice as possible, so they can better plan their lives.

About 7 percent of our Guard and Reserve personnel have been called up more than once in the last 14 years. That may seem initially like a pretty small number, but we're looking at those specialties that are in high demand to make sure we have the right amount of each capability and the responsibility is shared as equitably as we can among our entire active and Reserve component.

We definitely appreciate the Reserve component's service. There has never been a more important time for them to serve than right now. For all our troops -- active, Guard, and Reserve -- this is their moment to determine what the future will look like, whether the freedoms we've defended for the last 200-plus years will survive for our children and our grandchildren.

Osama bin Laden for one has said that he wants to reduce America to a shadow of its former self. And he really thought it would be easy. He badly underestimated the will of our men and women in uniform.

I have the great privilege of visiting them all over the world, in the Middle East and other places, and it's always a tremendously positive experience. I'm also fortunate to be close enough to Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospital to be able to visit our wounded there, as well. And I can tell you I always get a positive response.

One soldier, a 21-year-old who'd been wounded in the leg, was at Walter Reed. And he said, "I want to get back to my unit as quickly as I can." He was an artilleryman. He'd been asked to assist with the municipal governance in Kirkuk. He said, "I want to go back and continue to help them. I felt like a rock star there. The Iraqi children would run up, the other Iraqis wanted to take their picture with me. Where can a 21- year-old have such an impact on the lives of so many people?" That was not an isolated story -- that's the story when you meet these folks who've had their lives altered by the wounds they've received. He understood the mission perfectly, and the impact of his contributions.

Bin Laden, al-Qaida and other terrorist elements are finding out just how strong our will is. There's no way that we're going to lose this war, because we know what's at stake. I won't tell you that we're not asking an awful lot out of our troops right now, because we are. And the fact is, they're delivering. They're well trained, they're professional, and they're respected around the world, as much for their character and compassion as for their courage and combat capability.

They are without a doubt our most treasured resource, and we don't take them for granted. They're an all-volunteer force, and we can't forget that. We are certainly paying close attention to retention and recruiting. Of all the components, and by that I mean Active, Guard and Reserve, in the four services, only one -- the Army National Guard-fell short of its recruiting goals last year, 2003. We haven't seen any problems with the retention part -- retaining those who are already recruited -- in any of the services, either last year or this year, at least not yet.

But we can't just focus on the snapshot right now. We have to look out two, three, four, five years. We don't want to create a crisis after this major effort is over, so we're paying close attention to the stress levels on our forces, and we're always working on quality of life issues, including pay and benefits and family support mechanisms.

You may have seen some discussion in the news about increasing our total force strength. We're looking at all these options very, very closely. It's tempting to say, if we had one or two more Army divisions we'd be in great shape and all our problems would go away in terms of our operations tempo. And I'm sure Napoleon would be very comfortable with that logic.

But of course it's a lot more complicated today. I'm not sure what next year will look like for the War on Terrorism. Is our operations tempo that we're experiencing today a spike, or is it a new plateau or baseline? Anyone who tells you they have the answer to that for sure is going to be mistaken.

It's our job to figure out how best to prepare for that uncertainty, and I think the solution lies in the capability, flexibility, and availability of the 1.4 million troops we have on active duty and the additional 860,000 in the Guard and Reserve.

We have -- today -- about 210,000 servicemen and women deployed for the War on Terrorism right now. That's about 10 percent of our total force, but we admit we're stressed. So we're looking for new ways to increase the number of personnel available to deploy. And that's the heart of what General Schoomaker has done as the Chief of Staff of the Army, working on ideas to restructure their combat forces to increase the number of combat brigades significantly, with only a small increase in total force strength.

The Navy has already done similar things in terms of redesigning their deployment concepts. They're going to tailor both the size and length of the battle group deployment to the situation, keeping more of their forces ready and on call for crises that may develop.

These are just two examples, and we need to look for more approaches like these. It just makes common sense, in my view.

Simply increasing end strength is a very lengthy and expensive solution. We spend about 60 percent of our budget in personnel costs. As most of you in this audience in business know, that's roughly the number you spend. It's quite high. It also takes a lot of time to recruit, stand up and train new forces to be effective. If we need to do that, make no mistake, we will. We'll make those recommendations and take those to the Secretary and the President. But right now I don't think we've made the case, and none of the Joint Chiefs of Staff do.

The future is definitely uncertain. But I will tell you that I think this is going to be a long war and we have to be patient.

The war in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom, is into its third year. We've toppled the Taliban regime, disrupted al- Qaida training camps, and captured or killed many terrorist leaders. And we're still conducting major offensive operations against remnants of the Taliban regime and al-Qaida. We also have 12 Provincial Reconstruction Teams building schools, clinics and roads and providing security. I say "we" because the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, is a big part of this. They're leading one of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams, as well as providing the command and control for the security force -- we call it the International Security Assistance Force --around Kabul. So there's a NATO flag planted a long way from NATO territory, because they see it in their security interest.

The formula for success in Afghanistan, in my view, has three parts: you've got to work the security piece, you've got to work the economic growth piece, and you've got to have sound government. And all three really have to take place, basically, simultaneously for it to be successful, and to prevent the kind of environment that allows terrorists to flourish.

The formula for success in Iraq is the same. And we're making steady progress there as well, which doesn't mean in either case -- Afghanistan or Iraq -- that there won't be more vehicle-borne explosives devices that go off, because there will. This is a very violent part of the world that will continue to be violent for some time to come. So there are going to be many challenges for the military and others.

In Iraq, we've already completed thousands of projects throughout the country -- everything from clearing irrigation canals to rebuilding schools and providing school supplies. We're getting a lot of intelligence now from the Iraqi people who, now that their fear is reduced, come forward with information, information that we then use to go out and take on those who are perpetrating these terrorist acts.

Even with our successes, we have to stay focused. We could easily mistake important milestones, such as a transfer of sovereignty, an election, or a new constitution, for the finish line. But it's more than that, and we have to stay and finish the job we began.

Patience will continue to be an important factor in the coming months. Iraq and Afghanistan are already better members of the international community than they were under the brutal regimes of their recent past. If we continue on the course we've set, their potential as stabilizing influences in the region is, in my view, enormous.

When U.S. forces defended Baltimore so bravely at Fort McHenry nearly 200 years ago, they were fighting for the survival of one of history's boldest experiments: a society founded on the concept of human liberty. Clearly it's no longer an experimental idea, but we are called upon to defend it again and again.

I'd like to share with you some words-maybe you saw it in the paper, it's been many months now -- by a fighter pilot, when asked why he fought. And this would not be me, because I could not write words this eloquently, but this fighter pilot could write. He said,

"I would say that I was fighting the war to rid the world of fear ... of the fear of fear is perhaps what I mean. If they win the war only [the bad guys] will dare to do anything. All courage will die out in the world-the courage to love, to create, to take risk whether physical, or intellectual, or moral.

Men will hesitate to carry out the promptings of the heart or the brain because having acted, they will live in fear that their action may be discovered and themselves cruelly punished. Thus all love, all spontaneity will die out of the world. Thought will have petrified, the oxygen breathed by the soul, so to speak, will vanish, and mankind will wither."

Those were the words of a British fighter pilot in World War II. And I put "bad guys" in there instead of Germans because I wanted you to think it was contemporary. But it still applies today.

I was speaking to an American Bar Association dinner the other night, and someone in the audience said you know, this ought not to be the War on Terrorism. It should really be called the "War for Freedom from Fear." And he was speaking about President Roosevelt's 1941 "Four Freedoms" speech. President Roosevelt said in that speech that he hoped for a secure world founded upon four basic freedoms: freedom of expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

He understood that when fear reigns, the human spirit is in fact diminished. But when there's freedom from fear -- freedom from terror-then human dignity, creativity, and productivity have a place to thrive. That's what this war, in the end, is really about.

So I'll borrow President Roosevelt's closing words in that 1941 speech: "Our strength is our unity of purpose," and "there can be no end save victory."

I look forward to your questions. Thank you.

(end transcript)

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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