Newt and the Military

by Monte Paulsen

Ever since he was elected in 1978, Gingrich has spent an extraordinary amount of time touring war colleges and military think tanks. He often calls politics "war without bloodshed."

Over the past several years, Gingrich has dispatched several squadrons of Republican lawmakers and their staffs to Fort Monroe in nearby Virginia.

Fort Monroe is a Training and Doctrine command, where officers are instructed in the art of instructing troops. Standing near the site of the famous Civil War naval battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac, the U.S. Army base bills itself as a place "where tomorrow's victories begin."

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), of Holland, has made at least two trips to Fort Monroe, according to reports in the Capitol Hill biweekly Roll Call. The taxpayers picked up the whole tab for the Republican training sessions: meals, lodging and travel by Blackhawk helicopter. Hoekstra reportedly drew on his lessons in "the operational art of war" to draft a GOP handbook, entitled "House Republican Strategic Framework."

"The speaker has sought to adapt the Army's war-fighting concepts to his own political battles," wrote Damon Chappie, the Roll Call reporter who has tenaciously followed Gingrich's military obsession, "from Gingrich's early days at GOPAC, his Republican training center, to his command these past two years of House Republicans during victories on welfare reform and spending cuts and a decisive defeat in the balanced budget battle."

Gingrich is also putting together his own spy agency. In last year's armed forces appropriations bill, Gingrich received $3 million to fund the creation of a vague "21st Century Information Security Strategy Study Group." The super-secret agency would consist of a handful of military analysts who would be given unprecedented access to any file at any government agency -- classified or not -- under the pretext of identifying threats to national security.

Gingrich is the stepson of a career infantry officer, with whom he reportedly had a strained relationship. While his stepfather was away in Korea and Vietnam, Gingrich's childhood was shaped, he has said, by John Wayne's Sands of Iwo Jima. Likewise, he has often said that his decision to go into politics began during a tour of the World War I battlefield at Verdun, which he took with his stepfather.

But the speaker has never served in the armed forces, nor has he sat on any defense-related committees. And when questions of war have spilled onto the floor of the House of Representatives -- as they did during the explosive debate preceding the House vote on the Gulf War resolution -- Gingrich was uncharacteristically silent. He literally contributed nothing to the debate.