Rumsfeld's declaration of war on the Pentagon :
Bureaucracy to Battlefield
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, The Pentagon
Monday September 10, 2001.
Complete Transcript:
http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/2001/s20010910-secdef.html
The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to
the security of the United States of America. This adversary is one of the
world's last bastions of central planning. It governs by dictating five-year
plans. From a single capital, it attempts to impose its demands across time
zones, continents, oceans and beyond. With brutal consistency, it stifles
free thought and crushes new ideas. It disrupts the defense of the United
States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk.
Perhaps this adversary sounds like the former Soviet Union, but that enemy
is gone: our foes are more subtle and implacable today. You may think I'm
describing one of the last decrepit dictators of the world. But their day,
too, is almost past, and they cannot match the strength and size of this
adversary.
The adversary's closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy. Not the
people, but the processes. Not the civilians, but the systems. Not the men
and women in uniform, but the uniformity of thought and action that we too
often impose on them.
In this building, despite this era of scarce resources taxed by mounting
threats, money disappears into duplicative duties and bloated
bureaucracy-not because of greed, but gridlock. Innovation is stifled-not by
ill intent but by institutional inertia.
Just as we must transform America's military capability to meet changing
threats, we must transform the way the Department works and what it works
on. We must build a Department where each of the dedicated people here can
apply their immense talents to defend America, where they have the
resources, information and freedom to perform.
Our challenge is to transform not just the way we deter and defend, but the
way we conduct our daily business. Let's make no mistake: The modernization
of the Department of Defense is a matter of some urgency. In fact, it could
be said that it's a matter of life and death, ultimately, every American's.
A new idea ignored may be the next threat overlooked. A person employed in a
redundant task is one who could be countering terrorism or nuclear
proliferation. Every dollar squandered on waste is one denied to the
warfighter. That's why we're here today challenging us all to wage an
all-out campaign to shift Pentagon's resources from bureaucracy to the
battlefield, from tail to the tooth.
We know the adversary. We know the threat. And with the same firmness of
purpose that any effort against a determined adversary demands, we must get
at it and stay at it.
Some might ask, how in the world could the Secretary of Defense attack the
Pentagon in front of its people?
To them I reply, I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate
it. We need to save it from itself.
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