The Crusader in Context

by Frieda Gardner, WAMM

By the time you read this article, United Defense's Crusader "field artillery system" may have vanished from the future of modern warfare. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld thinks it is too old-fashioned. In George W. Bush's terms, we need "more transformational" weapons.

The New York Times and the Star Tribune have both signed off, saying that even though the Crusader has been dieted down to 40 tons and can shoot twelve shells a minute at targets 30 miles away, it is still too heavy, hard to move, too much like conventional howitzers. Two billion taxpayer dollars have been spent so far. Nine billion more is too much. Needless to say, none of these naysayers present any criteria for too muchness in the realm of military spending. And none, of course, found anything wrong with the very name "Crusader."

The Crusader story is strange in many ways. In February, with the war in Afghanistan moving right along, Rumsfeld, Bush, and the Army were aligned in support, though before September 11, 2001, there had been rumors about Crusader's antique speeds. Then, sometime in April 2002, right around the time the Crusader was scheduled to go from the design stage to manufacture, the military tide turned. And no one seems to know why.

Perhaps the cancellation is a signal from the Bush Administration that it is really, truly serious about "transforming" the military into a lean, mean, light-footed machine for the 21st century. (This signal would be in line with the Administration's plans for National Missile Defense and space-based warfare.)

Or maybe Rumsfeld "won" the contest over "transformational" modernity at the Department of Defense. Yet funding continues for the Marine Corps' Osprey vertical take-off helicopter, among other oldish pieces of military hardware. And nobody's claiming Crusader's demise is part of a program for fiscal responsibility. For twenty years, the Department of Defense has held Congressional authorization for program cancellation, and Crusader represents one of the few casualties of that power to axe. Consider also the size of the fiscal 2003 defense budget: $383 billion, plus extra billions the Bush Administration didn't even request.

Then we have the vast world of the military-industrial complex. The Bush Administration blossoms with defense-industry veterans. Stock prices across the defense industry have moved upward during the months of downturn. I've found no evidence except the Crusader cut that the military-industrial complex will suffer in the coming years. Indeed, in a formal "request" to Congress, Bush asked that the $475 million for Crusader be reallocated to "an assortment of precision munitions programs, including a satellite-guided artillery shell, a multiple-launching rocket system," etc.

And now for the local angles. Senator Paul Wellstone (Dem., MN) has "some concerns" about job losses at United Defense's Fridley, Minnesota, facilities. He also questions the "process" by which Crusader was eliminated: abruptly and with no "normal review" at the Pentagon. Wellstone wants to keep that $475 million in the defense budget, on the chance that there can be some kind of public discussion of the reasons behind the cut. Senator Mark Dayton (Dem., MN), who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, defends Crusader because of the 800 high-tech jobs, as does Rep. Martin Sabo (Dem., MN). And they are not alone. In recent years, the defense industry has diffused its operations over many states, the better to gain widespread Congressional support.

It is both sad and infuriating to see these three liberal representatives putting their energy behind this huge, high-tech cannon (and its two sidekick "resupply vehicles"). But it is not surprising, given the drain on imagination caused by our long-term permanent war economy, now in 24/7 emergency mode because of the amorphous "War on Terrorism."

United Defense's late-May half-page ad in the Star Tribune featured a helmeted soldier whose lips looked like Rambo's. The headline: "He's Number ONE. His Artillery is Number NINE." Amazing!? We've got worse artillery than Iraq and North Korea? Despite all these years of monster defense budgets? There followed the reasons why Crusader is better than air power for protecting our men and women when "they head into harm's way." "Contact your Senators," the Crusader Industrial Alliance (no phone number listed) said.

Yet more phone calls to my senators this busy and discouraging year to say, "No, no. Don't build it. And not for the Bush/Rumsfeld reasons! Don't build it because we shouldn't continue to feed a system which nourishes war of all kinds." I finished the phone calls and in another two weeks I was on the phone again, this time about the impending nuclear war between India and Pakistan--the willing adherents of the Cold War strategy President Bush assures us is outmoded, a blast from the past.