Two authors, Winslow Wheeler and Lawrence Korb, recently published a history entitled "Military Reform Movement, Military Reform: A Reference Handbook." Win Wheeler was in the thick of it at the time as a staffer to several members of the Congressional Military Reform Caucus. He is today director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the military watchdog group the Center for Defense Information in Washington. Larry Korb is a former assistant secretary of defense and today is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Democrat-leaning think tank in Washington.

To make my own position clear, I was a staffer first to the senator who started the whole thing, Bob Taft Jr., R-Ohio, then to Sen. Gary Hart, D-Colo., who gave the movement its name and founded the caucus with Rep. Bill Whitehurst, R-Va. I was also part of the informal "Reform Group," which included retired U.S. Air Force Col. John Boyd, Pierre Sprey, Jeff Record and Norman Polmar, that did the intellectual work for the caucus.

The book's stronger chapters are those by Wheeler, who pulls no punches when discussing the ways various members of the U.S. Congress betrayed the reform cause.

The "Washington Game" is to create an image with the public that is a direct opposite of what the senator or congressman actually does behind closed doors, and the caucus saw plenty of that game. Standouts were Sen. Bill Cohen, R-Maine, who attended caucus meetings while busily working with Sen. John Tower, R-Texas, to block any reform of the Navy and who went on to be perhaps the most ineffectual secretary of defense in the Department of Defense's history; Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., later speaker of the House of Representatives, who really "got" reform and played a big role in the early history of the caucus, then did nothing to advance its ideas once he gained power; and Rep. Dick Cheney, R-Wyo., who also used reform to generate an image and now, as vice president, does nothing.

As I said years ago to a U.S. Marine friend who was trying to get a job on Capitol Hill, working as Hill staff is the post-doctoral course in studying spiritual arrogance. Wheeler's chapters dissect many an inflated reputation.

Why the U.S. media failed to adequately cover military reform
"Military Reform: A Reference Handbook," by Winslow Wheeler and Lawrence Korb, is an important and enjoyable guide to the U.S. military reform movement that started in the 1970s, peaked in the 1980s and died by the early 1990s.

Wheeler, who is today director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Washington military watchdog group the Center for Defense Information, does a good job discussing the U.S. press, which did what it always does: build something up -- which creates news -- and then tear it down again -- which creates more news.

What drew many members of Congress to the Reform Caucus was the opportunity it offered to get some good ink. When the wind started blowing the other way, those illustrious legislators blew with it. But the corruption of the press itself is a story told less often, and it needs telling. Why do defense companies buy full-page ads in major newspapers? Not because anyone buys a fighter plane based on a newspaper ad, but because the six-figure price for a full page buys the newspaper.

Larry Korb's most important chapter is on "Defense Transformation," and he makes something of a hash of it. Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense, is today at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic-leaning Washington think tank.

"Transformation" is the latest buzzword for what started out -- in the Soviet military -- as the "Revolution in Military Affairs," the notion that new technology would magically eliminate war's confusion, uncertainty and friction. Reform always took the opposite view, namely that to be effective in war, technology must be used in ways that conform to war's nature. Korb fails to see Reform and Transformation as opposites and enemies, although in the end he does lay out how Transformation failed in Iraq.

Wheeler's last chapter defines reform, with the hopeful purpose of renewing it and making its ideas available to a new president. The fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with federal spending that is endangering the country's financial stability, should put military reform back on the political front burner. But that "should" means nothing in Washington, where all that counts is helping the usual interests feed off the nation's decay. The only presidential candidate who might pick up the reform agenda is Libertarian nominee Bob Barr.

The book concludes with four important appendices, including a condensed version of the FMFM-1A Field Manual on Fourth Generation War, and a superb piece by Don Vandergriff on improving military education. The last alone is worth the price of the book.

It may be that the Military Reform Movement remains nothing but a historical footnote, one of many vain attempts to rescue a decaying empire from its appointment with history's dustbin. But as Win Wheeler makes clear in "Military Reform: A Reference Handbook," it was also the source of some important ideas on how to win wars and, for those of us who were involved in it, a hell of a ride.

(William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation.)

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