Radical leftist to hold sway over defense - Rep Ron Dellums of California to assume chairmanship of House Armed Services Committee - Column

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Jan 25, 1993 | by Frank Gaffney, Jr.

No doubt about it: The national security is in for some rough sledding as a result of the direct and indirect effects of the 1992 election. Not the least of these effects will be the expected ascendancy of a radical left-winger -- Rep. Ron Dellums, a California Democrat -- to the chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee. This is the likely result of President-elect Bill Clinton's nomination of the committee's current chairman, Rep. Les Aspin, a Wisconsin Democrat, to be the next defense secretary.

To be sure, moving Aspin to Defense has its merits. Over the eight years of his chairmanship, Aspin has established a reputation for coalition-building and generally thoughtful analysis of national security issues. He played a courageous -- and, arguably, pivotal -- role in supporting a U.S. military response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. On occasion he has fought tenaciously for vitally needed weapons systems like the V-22 Osprey.

Aspin has also resisted to a commendable degree some of the most irresponsible demands from colleagues intent on gutting the Defense Department budget. Notably, the sponsor of some of the worst of these demands in recent years -- including a proposal to cut a staggering $400 billion from defense spending over four years -- has been Dellums.

Such reckless proposals, regrettably, are symptomatic of Dellums's track record on major national security issues. That record -- which is likely to be exacerbated by the latitude a chairman has to appoint staff and set the committee's agenda -- suggests that the once influential House Armed Services Committee may soon become, at best, irrelevant. At worst, it could become a menace to the U.S. security posture.

Some have pointed to Dellums's relatively responsible conduct as chairman of the committee's Research and Development Subcommittee and, previously, of its military construction subcommittee as evidence that, his radical rhetoric aside, the congressman from Berkeley will not abuse his vastly expanded power and influence. This is likely to prove an illusory hope, however; while both subcommittees dole out vast sums -- the stuff of which congressional deal-making and porkswapping is made -- the expenditures they authorize do not translate into immediately usable war-fighting capability and therefore generally do not conflict with Dellums's radical agenda.

And let there be no doubt: The Dellums agenda is a radical one. His support of unilateral disarmament; of procommunist regimes (like Fidel Castro's in Cuba and Maurice Bishop's in Grenada) and organizations (such as the World Peace Council and the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador); and of dismantling the U.S. intelligence community ("piece by piece, nail by nail, brick by brick") is well-documented. For example, after U.S. forces liberated Grenada in 1983, they discovered a letter that Carlottia Scott, a Dellums aide at the time, had written shortly before to Bishop, the island's Marxist dictator. It said, among other things: "[Dellums] really admires you as a person and even more so as a leader with courage and foresight, principle and integrity. Believe me, he doesn't make that kind of statement often about anyone. The only other person that I know of that he expresses such admiration for is Fidel."

Individually, these indications of Dellums's policy predilections are deeply troubling. Taken together, they raise serious questions about both his judgment and the uses to which he may want to put the House Armed Services Committee.

In short, Clinton may come to rue the day that he removed Aspin from the committee. This is particularly true inasmuch as Dellums's ascendancy comes at a very sensitive moment: Just as events around the world are underscoring the need for a robust U.S. security posture in general and for flexible, credible power-projection capabilities in particular, Dellums will be in a position to erode both.

Specifically, he can be expected to help like-minded members of Congress exploit the end of the fire walls between defense and social spending accounts that was imposed by the 1990 budget agreement. The net result may be a reckless savaging of the Defense Department budget.

It can only be hoped that the new president and his defense secretary will be able to check the considerable mischief Dellums and his friends may try to make. The best bet for doing so may be for Clinton and Aspin to try to forge the sort of bipartisan coalition that the late Sens. Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson, a Washington Democrat, and John Tower, a Texas Republican, fashioned in the late 1970s -- a coalition that began the necessary process of rebuilding America's might and set the stage for the military successes of the 1980s and 1990s.

In its absence, self-described new Democrats like Clinton and Vice President-elect Al Gore may find that "old" Democrats in the Congress, led by Ron Dellums, will derail their professed goal of maintaining U.S. military capabilities and engaging where necessary overseas. Along the way, vital American interests may be compromised -- if not sacrificed outright.