U.S. military leaders saw their dreams come true Wednesday night when Secretary of Defense Les Aspin resigned.
Now they might be sorry they ever wished the rumpled former congressman would go.The military never liked Aspin when he was a Wisconsin congressman and a frequent, occasionally irresponsible critic. It liked him less when he took over the Pentagon, not so much because of his policies but because of the lack of them.
Aspin's problem wasn't that he was too liberal for the conservative brass; in fact he is quite conservative on defense issues and protected the military budget from those in his own party and the administration.
Aspin's real problem was making a decision. He likes nothing better than to kick around policy proposals, and he tends to exercise what Clinton called a "razor-sharp mind" with his mouth open. In Congress, where everyone talks all the time, that was an asset. But at the Pentagon, with lives in the balance and vital decisions that need to be made every day, it was a weakness.
For example, when Aspin first spoke publicly about Clinton's plan to allow gays in the military, the new secretary of defense managed to be for it, against it and not sure what to do, all in the same five-minute television interview. The military took home the message that it could fight Clinton's proposal. It did, and it prevailed.
On Somalia, Aspin wanted to protect U.S. forces, but he was afraid that sending them additional armor would "send the wrong signal" and upset Congress and the public. When American soldiers were killed in a bloody firefight, Aspin had to take part of the blame.
Then there were problems of style and personality. On one of his first trips overseas as secretary, Aspin took his girlfriend for a vacation in Venice, at a cost of thousands of dollars to taxpayers.
When he was given U.S. government-issued, secure communications gear so he could work at home, Aspin was told by the intelligence experts who installed it that the equipment would be damaged if he didn't fix the roof in his Georgetown home. He had the roof fixed, and billed the taxpayers.
Recently, the military was cheered by Aspin's performance in Haiti. The brass never wanted to get involved and were relieved when Aspin got the president to order back a ship carrying lightly armed engineers bound for Haiti.
There also was the hope that he was getting the hang of it. Now Clinton must choose a new defense secretary, just when the budget for fiscal 1995 is being worked and pressures are enormous to take money from the military for social programs.
Aspin was skilled at dealing with Congress and keeping the doves at bay. He understands defense issues better than most, certainly better than most in Congress and anyone else in the Clinton administration. He might not have what you'd call military bearing, but he wasn't going to allow the force to be gutted after the Cold War.