Tarawa Participates in Bright Star 2005
Story Number: NNS051004-04
Release Date: 10/4/2005 4:00:00 PM



By Journalist 3rd Class David Perea, USS Tarawa Public Affairs

MUBARAK MILITARY CITY, Egypt (NNS) -- USS Tarawa (LHA 1), along with 16,000 boots on the ground, several ships at sea and the flags of 12 nations flying over Egypt, operated off the coast of Egypt for exercise Bright Star 2005 Sept. 10-Oct. 3.

The largest coalition exercise conducted by U.S. Central Command, Bright Star 2005 is designed to strengthen regional stability and improve inter-military cooperation, as well as cooperation among participating nations.

"It's important to demonstrate cooperation in this part of the world and the ability to fight when we have to," said Gen. John Abizaid, commander, U.S. Central Command.

Tarawa, the Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) 1 flagship, participated by projecting its assets on land, at sea and in the air during the operation Sept. 10-28.

Embarked aboard the amphibious assault ship, the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), Special Operations Capable (SOC), worked closely with U.S. and other participating nations’ ground forces in and around Mubarak Military City conducting training exercises, as well as an amphibious landing demonstration.

Tarawa’s deck department played a major role in executing precision well deck operations for the embarked Utility Landing Craft (LCU), assaulting a soft sandy beach during the opening phase of the exercise Sept. 15.

“If it wasn't for us (Deck Dept.) launching and bringing in the LCUs, the mission wouldn’t get done, so I think every one of us plays an important role,” said Seaman Jennifer Barksdale, who assisted in launching the LCUs.

Warriors from the 13th MEU (SOC), alongside Egyptian, Greek and Jordanian amphibious landing forces, demonstrated their skills while being observed by coalition commanders and honored guests, including the Egyptian Minister of Defense.

“Today was a clear demonstration of the power ESG 1 can bring to the table,” Rear Adm. Michael LeFever, commander, ESG 1 said in reference to the amphibious landing demonstration.

While the multinational ground forces train and acquaint each other with tactics and equipment to improve international military cooperation for the region, ships from ESG 1 trained with coalition maritime forces to protect the sea lanes and secure the safety of international waters. In addition, ESG 1 is also training to engage international terrorists as it conducted Visit, Board, Search and Seizure (VBSS) events, which were intended to detect, deter and deny international terrorist organizations use of the maritime environment.

Along with the United States, other participating countries included, France Germany, Greece, Italy, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

“For the participant, Bright Star provides a good opportunity to get acquainted with each other’s equipment, tactics and training,” said Egyptian Maj. Gen. Ahmed Mokhtar, chief of Egypt’s armed forces exercise authority.

The six-ship strike group, based on the west coast includes the amphibious assault ship Tarawa, the amphibious transport dock ship USS Cleveland (LPD 7), the dock landing ship USS Pearl Harbor (LSD 52), the guided-missile cruiser USS Chosin (CG 65), the fast-attack submarine USS Santa Fe (SSN 763) and the frigate USS Ingraham (FFG 61).

For more news from around the fleet, visit www.navy.mil.

CNO Thanks Sixth Fleet Sailors for 'Keeping the Enemy On The Run'
Story Number: NNS021016-09
Release Date: 10/17/2002


By Chief Journalist (AW) Monica Hallman, USS La Salle Public Affairs

GAETA, Italy (NNS) -- Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Vern Clark praised Sixth Fleet Sailors for their service in the Mediterranean during an all-hands visit onboard USS La Salle Oct. 14.

Clark addressed Sailors from USS La Salle (AGF 3), Naval Support Activity, Gaeta and Sixth Fleet staff, telling them that they are helping the President fight the war on terrorism by providing a mobile power base.

"Projecting sovereignty and giving the President of the United States options, that's what it's about for La Salle and that's what it's about for every ship in the Med," Clark said. He explained that ships such as La Salle assist the President in "taking credible combat power to the far ends of the earth," by being in place and ready to deploy when needed.

Clark presented La Salle with the Meritorious Unit Commendation, earned by the ship for its role in Maritime Interception Operations over the past year, as well as the successful completion of key inspections that extended the service life of the 38-year-old flagship. He also presented several Sailors with their Enlisted Surface Warfare Specialist pins.

Clark commended all the Sailors, saying they've "committed their lives to serving, and understand the lifestyle of service." He told them, "The challenges are great today, but it is a great time to represent your country."

For related news, visit the USS La Salle (AGF 3) Navy NewsStand page at www.news.navy.mil/local/agf3.

NAVAIR Director to be Honored at College Football Hall of Fame
Story Number: NNS030610-20
Release Date: 6/10/2003 9:17:00 AM


By Vicky Falcón, Naval Air Systems Command Public Affairs

PATUXENT RIVER, Md. (NNS) -- Dwayne Nix has one photo of himself from college – a photo that is much in demand these days.

In 1968, the fall before he graduated from Texas A&I University (now Texas A&M-Kingsville) in Kingsville, Texas, Nix became the second person ever to be voted an Associated Press three-time All American football player (1966-1968).

This summer, his football accomplishments will be recognized again as he is inducted into the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame for 2003. The prestigious event includes players and coaches from NCAA Divisions I, I-AA, II, III and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA).

As director of the Washington Liaison Office for the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), Nix hadn’t thought much about his college football days – the demands of his NAVAIR job, as well as his temporary duties in the Marine Corps Reserve taking much of his time. Nix, a Marine Corps colonel, serves as assistant deputy director, operations division in the plans, programs and operations department at Marine Corps Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

“I always considered being voted three times as an All American was big enough. Now all this, 35 years later,” said Nix, speaking of the attention. “It’s remarkable.”

And when the request for memorabilia came from event organizers, Nix had to scramble to come up with his one photo.

“Most of my (college) stuff I left at my parent’s home when I went into the Marine Corps,” said Nix. “When their house burned down, I lost all of it.”

A south Texas native, Nix had planned to stay home and work on his family’s farm until football gave him an opportunity to go to college. Though he was recruited as a tight-end, Nix won all three of his All America honors as a wide receiver.

His college education opened doors for Nix to become a naval aviator and an officer in the Marine Corps following graduation. After five years flying helicopter gun ships in the Marine Corps, including a tour in Vietnam, Nix got out of the military and took a job with Bell Helicopter in Iran.

While in Iran, Nix left Bell to work for NAVAIR as the in-country logistics officer for the program office that oversaw the Iranian F-14A and Phoenix missile program. But he and his family had to be evacuated from the country in 1979 when the Islamic revolutionary government took over.

After returning to the United States, Nix attended the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, Calif., where he received a Master of Science in Administration. Returning to NAVAIR in Washington, D.C., in 1981, he was re-commissioned in the Marine Corps Reserves and joined a Marine CH-46 squadron at Naval Air Station Norfolk, Va.

In 1990, his squadron was activated for Operation Desert Storm for six months, deploying to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Later in his Reserve career, he was assigned to Headquarters Marine Corps, and was activated twice – first following the events of Sept. 11 and again for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

During his civilian career with NAVAIR, Nix has been the deputy program manager for five different program offices, including those overseeing the CH-53 Super Stallion helicopter, the AH-1W helicopter gunship, the T-45A Goshawk advanced training jet and the AV-8B Harrier.

“I feel most fortunate that I can not only participate in the Reserves,” said Nix, “but I know that every day I get out of bed and go to work at NAVAIR, I continue to support the fleet.”

And the August 8-9 football tribute he will receive during the ceremonies in South Bend, Ind., is just icing on the cake to him.

“I am not as honored that my accomplishments will be recognized, as I am in awe of the people I am included with,” he said. “It really is unbelievable to be recognized at the same time with such greats as Reggie White, Dan Marino and Ronnie Lott.”

For related news, visit the NAVAIR - Naval Air Systems Command Navy NewsStand page at www.news.navy.mil/local/navair.

Information Warriors on USS Tarawa Win Hearts, Minds in Iraq
Story Number: NNS030425-12
Release Date: 4/27/2003 9:17:00 PM



By Journalist Seaman Apprentice David Perea, USS Tarawa Public Affairs

ABOARD USS TARAWA, In The Arabian Gulf (NNS) -- Imagine you’re an Iraqi soldier with limited resources and confronted with the military of a super power.

Leaflets rain down from the sky and broadcasts flood the airwaves -- if you’re fortunate enough to have a radio -- preemptively informing you of proper surrendering procedures. How willing would you be to fight for the falling regime?

There was an unseen battle fought amidst the clashing ground forces of the war in Iraq.

The information battle of Psychological Warfare Operations, or PSYOPS, directly supported U.S. ground forces with an arsenal of broadcasts and leaflets, bombarding the Iraqi forces in an effort to “win their hearts and minds and bend the will,” said Electronics Warfare Technician 1st Class Eric Laursen.

Laursen, a member of the information warfare team of Commander, Task Force 51 embarked on USS Tarawa (LHA 1), contributed to this psychological battle by transmitting broadcasts to Iraq. The broadcasts informed the Iraqi community of safe and unsafe areas, as well as ensured that humanitarian aide was forthcoming.

Laursen and his teammates are part of a vast community of information warfare warriors that includes electronic warfare technicians, intelligence specialists and cryptologic technicians across the fleet.

During Operation Iraqi Freedom, they, as part of Task Force 51, reported to the Combined Information Warfare Command, embarked aboard USS Constellation (CV 64).

In a combined effort, this information warfare powerhouse got the message out everyday to the Iraqi community that “we are here, we are going to stay and finish the job,” said Chief Electronics Warfare Technician Daniel Bess. According to Bess, the broadcasts and leaflets encouraged surrendering vice fighting, and contained instructions on how to surrender.

PSYOPS broadcasts and leaflets helped combat the enemy’s propaganda machine, which delivers misinformation to their people, according to Chief Warrant Officer Johnny Overstreet.

“We try to counter that and get the truth out there to the people to show progress is being made,” he said.

Overstreet said the feedback to their work was positive, and that the enemy was listening and had reservations about what they were doing. “Just turn on the television and see how many people surrendered and followed the instructions on the leaflets to a “T”…and that will tell you how good we are doing,” noted Overstreet.

For related news, visit the USS Tarawa (LHA 1) Navy NewsStand page at www.news.navy.mil/local/lha1.

California paper adds 2nd MAW pilot to list of '2005 Military Women of Merit'
Submitted by: 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing
Story Identification #: 2005104112847
Story by Cpl. James D. Hamel



AL ASAD, Iraq (Oct. 4, 2005) -- Capt. Jessica M. Moore is one of a handful of female AH-1 Cobra pilots. As the daughter of a Navy radar intercept officer, Moore had never planned to join the military, and even if she had, the Marine Corps seemed the least likely option.

“My dad wanted me to join the Navy or the Air Force,” she said. “But, I was always impressed with the Marine Corps, and when I decided to join the military, the Marine Corps was the only branch I wanted to join.”

Perhaps it was the choice to join the Marine Corps, or maybe it was a successful deployment to Afghanistan and a successful first month in Iraq. Regardless of reasons, the North County Times, a large San Diego area newspaper named Moore one of its 2005 Military Women of Merit, an award recognizing outstanding female service members.

Moore was notified of her award in mid-September, and though the Poway, Calif., native is proud, she’s not the type of Marine to brag.

“I’ve kind of kept it on the down low,” she said. “It’s one of those things, you don’t want to highlight yourself.”

Moore’s low-key personality is evident in the way she conducts herself around the squadron. She’s not condescending when dealing with junior Marines. Neither is she arrogant when dealing with her superiors.

“She’s kind of quiet, very focused and hard working,” said Lt. Col. Lawrence E. Killmeier, the commanding officer of Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 167, the unit Moore belongs to. “She wanted to keep this under the radar because she said she was just doing her job.”

Killmeier took command of the squadron a short time before the deployment. In that time, he’s realized that in a squadron of elite pilots and officers, Moore holds her own.

“A slightly above average officer falls behind the pack in HML/A-167,” he said. “With my pilots, we don’t care about male or female. They perform well and do their job.”

For Moore, the award is as much about her parents as it is about her. Because she was deployed, her parents accepted the award at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif. For her mother and father to accept the award in her stead is a quiet tribute to the two people who have had the greatest impact on her life.

“I’m really lucky to have such good relations with my family,” she said. “They are my inspiration.”

Though she would have enjoyed receiving her recognition in person, Moore said the real honor is being able to perform the tasks that won her recognition in the first place.

“I’m glad I’m here,” she said. “We train really hard to do our job and it’s good to support the guys on the ground.”




http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...B1?opendocument

Former Marine earns Bronze Star, Purple Heart as Soldier in Iraq
Submitted by: Headquarters Marine Corps
Story Identification #: 200426801
Story by Army Staff Sgt. Nate Orme



BAGHDAD, Iraq (Jan. 29, 2004) -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shakes the hand of Army Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Meyerhoff.

Meyerhoff, a former Marine rifleman in Vietnam from '68 to '69, was wounded in an ambush in Iraq. He and two other soldiers are nominated for the Bronze Star for their actions during that ambush.

The soldiers are with the 461st Personnel Services Battalion, a Reserve unit from Decatur, Ga.


http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...light=2,vietnam

Marine from former Russian Republic fights for freedom in Iraq
Submitted by: 2nd Marine Division
Story Identification #: 2005855221
Story by Cpl. Ken Melton



HIT, Iraq (August 5, 2005) -- “To know what freedom really is, you have to defend it,” said the soft-spoken machine gunner from Company K, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment. “I’m here doing my part because I know what it’s like to not have the freedom many take for granted.”

Twenty-four-year-old Cpl. Andrei V. Chernyshev was born in Alma-aty, Kazakhstan in the former Soviet Union were he and his family was denied freedom to practice their faith as Christians, under communist rule.

Despite this fact, Chernyshev remembers having a good childhood before moving to the United States with his family at age 12 when the government collapsed.

He learned how to speak English over the next few years while adjusting to his new life style as an immigrant in America.

“They had a better educational system here and we weren’t not discriminated against because of our beliefs,” the State College, Penn., native and 1999 State College Area High School graduate. “The idea of free thought, free speech was something new to me and I was happy to be a part of it.”

Throughout his school years, he met other students from different countries, who shared similar stories with him.

He joined the Marine Corps Reserve after graduating from high school with hopes of traveling after he earned his associate’s degree. He got his chance when his unit deployed to Iraq last March.

As he patrols the streets here, some citizens seem intimidated by his size of 6 feet 6 inches tall, but after speaking with him, they see he is not as imposing as he seems.

“When people find out I’m Russian they seem to be more relaxed around me,” the 2004 South Hills Business School graduate said. “They know that in the past Russia was friendly with their country and they see now that some from there is trying to help them.”

One way Chernyshev helps his unit and the community is by using his language skills to identify weaponry and explosives from Russia so they can be properly disposed.

Chernyshev knows that by helping the people of Iraq he is providing security for his new home, America, which he became citizen of two years ago.

“I don’t understand why some Americans protest the war and the military and so many immigrants support it,” Chernyshev said in his distinctive Russian accent. “I guess it’s because we know what it is to be deprived and to have dangerous men tearing our country apart.

“I don’t want anyone to have to experience that, and I will not let anyone do that to my America.”


http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...light=2,freedom

Greyhawks make an Operation Iraqi Freedom three-peat
Submitted by: 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing
Story Identification #: 200582313621
Story by Cpl. C. Alex Herron



AL ASAD, Iraq (Aug. 23, 2005) -- The Greyhawks of Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 161 first deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. This deployment marks the third occasion ‘161 has deployed in support of OIF. The squadron deployed here Aug. 11 and is ramped up to provide casualty evacuation and logistics transport.

At the end of their 2004 deployment the squadron had flown more than 750 missions transporting more than 2,900 passengers, 116,000 pounds of cargo and 300 casualties to urgent care facilities throughout Iraq.

“This squadron started the CASEVAC mission last year during its second deployment to Iraq,” said Lt. Col. Mike Brassaw, the Greyhawks commanding officer and Cape Coral, Fla., native “We plan to continue the success we had.”

The Greyhawks are a very seasoned squadron that knows what is expected of them. They have served in Iraq before and are ready to continue their tradition of excellence in combat.

“We have Marines who are serving for a third time in Iraq,” Brassaw said. “We have a wealth of experience in this squadron that will lead the rest of the unit to success.”

The unit has been preparing for this deployment since their return from Iraq 11 months ago. They transported new CH-46s here and have worked long hours to ensure the aircraft are operational. They are set for the move to a forward operating base from which they will conduct missions.

“We brought aircraft in last year and then left them behind for future units to use,” Brassaw said. “Now those CH-46s have been in Iraq for more than 18 months and been used under very strenuous conditions by three different squadrons. We are bringing in aircraft that have been completely re-modified and ready for the mission.”

Over the past two weeks the Greyhawks have put their aircraft back together after traveling across the world in Air Force cargo planes. They have spent their days checking systems and going on test flights, ensuring everything is ready for combat.

“Our Marines are anxious to begin the mission,” said Sgt. Maj. William Fitzgerald, a Big Rapids, Mich., native.

“We’re ready to get to work,” said Sgt. Jason Hernandez, a mechanic and aerial observer and Orange Park, Fla., native. “We want to get to our base and get into a routine and do our part again.”

Along with a wealth of experience in the squadron, the Greyhawks also have a number of young Marines who are deploying for the first time. The Marines who are serving for their second and third time in country have been preparing the younger Marines.

“I’m a little nervous,” said Lance Cpl. Michael Kubbeler, a crew chief from Toledo, Ohio. “I guess I’m just experiencing the normal emotions for someone who is deploying to a combat zone for the first time, but mainly I’m excited to be here. This is a great opportunity and I’m ready for it.”

“We stress training and learning everything you can as soon as someone new walks in the door,” said Cpl. Nicholas Moreno, a crew chief and Sulphur, La., native. “These younger guys are prepared a lot better than we were last year. They have been able to learn from our lessons learned from our previous deployments.”

The Marines expect nothing less than the excellence they started two years ago. Keeping in mind the importance of their job helps the Marines stay focused while preparing for each mission.

“We are expecting the same good things that have been the trademark of this unit for the past two combat deployments,” said Hernandez, who is serving for his third time in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. “We have a good core of experience and leadership that will make this deployment better than the rest.”

The Greyhawks understand that providing casualty evacuation is vital to the success of the forward deployed Marine force. The squadron has an experienced crew ready to do all they can to ensure the safety and health of their passengers throughout Iraq. Their mission is to maintain the wellbeing of each member of the unit, and do their part so the people of Iraq live in a free society.


*For more information about this story please e-mail Cpl. Alex Herron at herronca@acemnf-wiraq.usmc.mil*


http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...light=2,freedom

Corps loses wisdom as another in a vanishing breed retires
Submitted by: MCB Camp Pendleton
Story Identification #: 2001125101117
Story by PFC Anthony R. Blanco



MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON (January 25, 2001) -- Master GySgt. Joe Maher brought knowledge, experience and the wisdom that only comes after many years of accumulating both to the Marine Corps.

His retirement Jan. 11 further dwindled the vanishing ranks of Vietnam veterans still serving on active duty.

His memories of the old days include not needing to cash a paycheck, nervously walking a perimeter in Vietnam and how the nation's lack of support for the war hurt troop morale.

In many ways, the Vietnam War was like World War II, Korea and other U.S. war efforts. The biggest difference was in how veterans were received when they returned, he said.

"I've always said, we didn't see anything different than our fathers or grandfathers saw in World War II or Korea, the scarred veterans of Vietnam are because the United States didn't support us fully, not because of what happened in Vietnam," Maher said.


Influenced at a young age by his brother and father, who both joined the Marine Corps, he decided joining the Marines was the right thing to do.
Maher, retired January 11, and is one of the many fading active-duty Vietnam veterans.

"Back then, the Corps had a different mentality because America was involved in the Vietnam War," Maher said.

Maher enlisted in the delayed entry program May 14, 1964. In January the next year, he began his long-lasting relationship with the Marine Corps.

"When I first came into the Corps, we were still getting paid by cash. We had a petty officer, and he would count the money for us. We stood in front of the petty officer, and said 'Reporting to petty officer as ordered sir.' The petty officer would take a quick look at us and see if we needed a haircut. If we needed a haircut, he told us not to come back until we got a haircut. And we would say, 'sir, I don't have money to get a haircut.' And they would say, do you want to get paid or not Marine?" Maher said.

"Back in the 60's, when the United States was involved in the Vietnam conflict, Marines had to be the best of the best," Maher said.

Vietnam was one the most difficult wars to fight, especially with the unfavorable sentiment at home, Maher said.

"Just being in Vietnam was scary enough," Maher said.

"I remember my first night in Vietnam. I was 20 years old and put on perimeter watch. I heard a large explosion in the distance and thought we were under attack. At the time, I couldn't tell the difference between incoming or outgoing fire," Maher said.

"Naturally, I started to dig a foxhole with the butt of my weapon, only to realize the fire was outgoing.

"After being in Vietnam for two weeks, I heard fire along the perimeter and was trying to get a peek at what was going on. I thought I got shot, but a corporal hit me with a rock and told me to get down. I guess that shows the nerves after just two weeks in Vietnam," Maher said.

In Vietnam, some people excelled in becoming a leader and others just followed orders.

Maher, a corporal then began showing his leadership qualities.

Maher recalled the time when he was promoted to corporal. He made an unexpected visit to his squad to find out what they were doing. His squad was fooling around, throwing dirt clods, and leaving their weapons unattened.

"I called the senior lance corporal over to see what the hell was going on. He said, 'Joe, I thought we were friends?' I looked at him hard and said, 'So did I?' I expect more of my friends, not less of them," Maher said.

After two tours in Vietnam, Maher decided to get out of the Marines as a sergeant. Five years later, he re-enlisted into the Corps as a private first class.

"It was a humbling experience for me coming back as a 30-year-old PFC. I'll always remember where I came from, and I think that enhanced my career," Maher said.
This time Vietnam was over, America was in a time of peace and Maher had a chance to travel all over the world.

During Maher's last deployment, he recalls getting in an argument with an officer. The officer said, 'your days of the Corps are over with, this is the new Corps.'

Maher's response was, "I sure hope you're right sir, because one day we're going to forget about the soldier who sits on a hill, with his rifle, and says this land is ours."

Technology can only take us so far in war, it's the soldiers that will make the difference, Maher said.

Maher with all of his time in the Corps, got to experience the time when Marines needed to rely on each other and not technology.

"The best compliment I've ever received, is the Marines who have worked for me said they want to work for me again," Maher said.
It always feels good to influence junior Marines to strive to be the very best, Maher said.

"I recall one junior Marine, who was in a lot of trouble, and was about to be thrown out of the Marine Corps. I thought he could be saved, and the commanding officer agreed. Today, that Marine is a master sergeant," Maher said.
Maher still helps his junior Marines by giving classes on drug and alcohol abuse at the professional military academies here and volunteering at the hospital.
Maher is one Marine who can still share his wisdom with anyone.

"I have no fears about retiring from the Marine Corps, however being a Marine is the only thing I've ever wanted to be," Maher said.

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...light=2,vietnam

The New Warrior Class
RALPH PETERS


The soldiers of the United States Army are brilliantly prepared to defeat other soldiers. Unfortunately, the enemies we are likely to face through the rest of this decade and beyond will not be "soldiers," with the disciplined modernity that term conveys in Euro-America, but "warriors"--erratic primitives of shifting allegiance, habituated to violence, with no stake in civil order. Unlike soldiers, warriors do not play by our rules, do not respect treaties, and do not obey orders they do not like. Warriors have always been around, but with the rise of professional soldieries their importance was eclipsed. Now, thanks to a unique confluence of breaking empire, overcultivated Western consciences, and a worldwide cultural crisis,[1] the warrior is back, as brutal as ever and distinctly better-armed.

The primary function of any civilization is to restrain human excess, and even Slavic socialism served a civilizing mission in this regard. But as the restraints of contemporary civilization recede and noncompetitive cultures fracture, victim-states often do not have the forces, and the self-emasculated West does not possess the will, to control the new warrior class arising in so many disparate parts of the world. We have entered an age in which entire nations are subject to dispossession, starvation, rape, and murder on a scale approaching genocide--not at the hands of a conquering foreign power but under the guns of their neighbors. Paramilitary warriors--thugs whose talent for violence blossoms in civil war--defy legitimate governments and increasingly end up leading governments they have overturned. This is a new age of warlords, from Somalia to Myanmar/Burma, from Afghanistan to Yugoslavia. In Georgia an ex-convict has become a kingmaker, and in Azerbaijan a warlord who marched on the capitol with a handful of wheezing armored vehicles became prime minister. In Chechnya, on the northern slopes of the Caucasus, a renegade general carved out the world's first state run entirely by gangsters--not the figurative gangsters of high Stalinism, but genuine black marketeers, murderers, drug dealers, and pimps.[2] Their warriors are the source of power for these chieftains, and the will of the populace, enervated and fickle, matters little when it matters at all.

This article will briefly consider who these new warriors are in terms of their social and psychological origins, and will examine the environment in which they operate. The objective is to provide an intellectual passport into the warrior's sullen world for US military officers and defense analysts, who, given their cultural and professional conditioning, would much rather deal with more conventional threats. This is an alert message from a very dark place.

Most warriors emerge from four social pools which exist in some form in all significant cultures. These pools produce warriors who differ in their individual implacability and redeemability. This differentiation is key to understanding warriors--who outwardly may appear identical to one another--and helps identify human centers of gravity within warrior bands or movements.

THE SOLDIER
THE WARRIOR

Sacrifice Spoils
Disciplined Semi or undisciplined
Organizational orientation Individualist
Skills focus on defeating other soldiers Skills focus directly on violence
Allegiance to state Allegiance to charismatic figure, cause, or paymaster
Recognized legal status Outside the law
"Restorer of order" "Destroyer of order"
Figure 1. Where the soldier and the warrior diverge--the traits that define them.

First-pool warriors come, as they always have, from the underclass (although their leaders often have fallen from the upper registers of society). The archetype of the new warrior class is a male who has no stake in peace, a loser with little education, no legal earning power, no abiding attractiveness to women,[3] and no future. With gun in hand and the spittle of nationalist ideology dripping from his mouth, today's warrior murders those who once slighted him, seizes the women who avoided him, and plunders that which he would never otherwise have possessed. Initially, the totemic effect of a uniform, however shabby and incomplete,[4] and the half-understood rhetoric of a cause lend him a notion of personal dignity he never sensed before, but his dedication to the cause is rarely as enduring as his taste for spoils. He will, however, cling to his empowering military garb. For the new warrior class, many of whose members possess no skills marketable in peace, the end of fighting means the end of the good times.

The longer the fighting continues, the more irredeemable this warrior becomes. And as society's preparatory structures such as schools, formal worship systems, communities, and families are disrupted, young males who might otherwise have led productive lives are drawn into the warrior milieu. These form a second pool. For these boys and young men, deprived of education and orientation, the company of warriors provides a powerful behavioral framework. Although some second-pool warriors can ultimately be gathered back into society, the average warrior who takes up a Kalashnikov at age 13 is probably not going to settle down to finish out his secondary school education ten years later without a powerful incentive.

The third pool of warriordom consists of the patriots. These may be men who fight out of strong belief, either in ethnic, religious, or national superiority or endangerment, or those who have suffered a personal loss in the course of a conflict that motivates them to take up arms. Although these warriors are the easiest to reintegrate into civil structures--especially if their experience of violence is relatively brief--some of these men, too, will develop a taste for blood and war's profits. These warriors are the most individualized psychologically, and their redeemability will depend on character, cultural context, and the depth of any personal loss, as well as on standard characteristics such as goal achievement in their conflict and perceived postwar opportunities for jobs and other societal rewards.

Dispossessed, cashiered, or otherwise failed military men form the fourth and most dangerous pool of warriors. Officers, NCOs, or just charismatic privates who could not function in a traditional military environment, these men bring other warriors the rudiments of the military art--just enough to inspire faith and encourage folly in many cases, although the fittest of these men become the warrior chieftains or warlords with whom we must finally cope. The greatest, although not the only, contemporary source of military men who have degenerated into warriors is the former Soviet Union. Whether veterans of Afghanistan or simply officers who lost their positions in post-collapse cutbacks, Russian and other former-Soviet military men currently serve as mercenaries or volunteers (often one and the same thing) in the moral wasteland of Yugoslavia and on multiple sides in conflicts throughout the former Soviet Union. These warriors are especially dangerous not only because their skills heighten the level of bloodshed, but also because they provide a nucleus of internationally available mercenaries for future conflicts. Given that most civil wars begin with the actions of a small fraction of the population (as little as one percent might actively participate in or support the initial violence),[5] any rabid assembly of militants with cash will be able to recruit mercenary forces with ease and spark "tribal" strife that will make the brutality of Africa in the 1960s seem like some sort of Quaker peaceable kingdom.

Paradoxically, while the warrior seeks to hold society out of equilibrium for his own profit, he thus prevents society from offering him any alternative to the warrior life. In our century of massive postwar demobilizations, most receiving governments retained sufficient structure to absorb and assist their ex-soldiers. Helpfully, the soldiers of the great armies of the West rarely tasted war's spoils as does the warrior; rather, soldiers experienced war's sacrificial side. But the broken states in which warriors currently control the balance of power do not have the infrastructure to receive veterans and help them rebuild their lives. In many cases, the warrior's roots have been torn up and, since he is talented only at violence, his loyalty has focused on his warlord, his band of fellow warriors, or, simply, on himself.[6] Even should the miracle of peace descend on the ruins of Yugoslavia, the survivor states will be unable to constructively absorb all of the warriors who have fallen away from civilized norms--and the warriors themselves often will have no real interest in being absorbed. In the Caucasus and Afghanistan, in Nicaragua and Haiti, warriors without wars will create problems for a generation.

In the centuries before the rise of modern professional armies, the European world often faced the problem of the warrior deprived of war. In the 16th century--another age of shattered belief systems--disbanded imperial armies spread syphilis and banditry across the continent, and the next century's Thirty Years War--waged largely by warriors and not by soldiers as we know them--saw the constant disbanding and reformation of armies, with the Soldateska growing ever more vicious, unruly, and merciless.[7] Arguably modern Europe's greatest trauma, the Thirty Years War formally ended in 1648, but its warriors continued to disrupt the continent until they found other wars in which to die, were hacked to death by vengeful peasants, or were hunted down like beasts by authorities who finally had caught their breath. Today's warriors have a tremendous advantage over their antique brethren in the struggle for survival, however: the West's pathetic, if endearing, concern for human life, even when that life belongs to a murderer of epic achievement.

For the US soldier, vaccinated with moral and behavioral codes, the warrior is a formidable enemy. Euro-American soldiers in general learn a highly stylized, ritualized form of warfare, with both written and customary rules. We are at our best fighting organized soldieries who attempt a symmetrical response. But warriors respond asymmetrically, leaving us in the role of redcoats marching into an Indian-dominated wilderness. Despite the valiant and skilled performance of the US Army Rangers, our most significant combat encounter in Mogadishu looks just like Braddock's defeat--and Russian regulars were recently "Little Big Horned" in Tajikistan by tribesmen who slipped across the Afghan border.

While the US Army could rapidly devastate any band of warriors on a battlefield, few warlords will be foolish enough to accept such a challenge. Warriors usually stand and fight only when they know or believe they have an overwhelming advantage. Instead, they snipe, ambush, mislead, and betray, attempting to fool the constrained soldiers confronting them into alienating the local population or allies, while otherwise simply hunkering down and trying to outlast the organized military forces pitted against them. US soldiers are unprepared for the absolute mercilessness of which modern warriors are capable, and are discouraged or forbidden by their civilian masters and their own customs from taking the kind of measures that might be effective against members of the warrior class.

The US experience with warriors in Somalia has not been a happy one, but the disastrous UN experience in Yugoslavia has been worse.[8] Imagining they can negotiate with governments to control warrior excesses, the United Nations and other well-intentioned organizations plead with the men-in-suits in Belgrade, Zagreb, and Sarajevo to come to terms with one another. But the war in Bosnia and adjacent regions already has degenerated to a point where many local commanders obey only orders which flatter them. Should a peace treaty ever come to signature, the only way to make it work will be for those forces loyal to the central authorities to hunt down, disarm, and if necessary kill their former comrades-in-arms who refuse to comply with the peace terms. Even then, "freedom fighters," bandits, and terrorists will haunt the mountain passes and the urban alleys for years to come.

On the West Bank of the Jordan and in Gaza, the newly legitimized Palestinian authorities face formidable problems with two lost generations, unskilled or de-skilled, whose heroes answer offers of dialog with terror and for whom compromise appears equivalent to prostitution. Without the Intifada, many Palestinians, from teenagers to the chronologically mature, have no core rationale for their lives. At a virtually immeasurable cultural remove, Irish Republican Army terrorists are heroes only until the counties of Northern Ireland find peace. In Sri Lanka, many Tamil rebels will never be able to return to productive lives in a settled society--nor will many of the Khmer Rouge, Philippine communists, Angola's UNITA rebels, or any of Africa's other clan-based warriors masquerading behind the rank and trappings of true soldiers.[9] Even in the United States, urban gang members exhibit warrior traits and may be equally impossible to reconcile to civilized order as it is generally valued in Euro-America. For the warrior, peace is the least-desirable state of affairs, and he is inclined to fight on in the absence of a direct, credible threat to his life. As long as the warrior believes he can survive on the outside of any new peace, he will view a continuation of warfare through criminal means as the most attractive alternative. And there is good reason for the warrior to decline to lay down his arms--the most persistent and ruthless warriors ultimately receive the best terms from struggling governments. Indeed, they sometimes manage to overthrow those governments and seize power when the governments tumble into crisis after failing to deliver fundamental welfare and security to the population.[10]

In addition to those warriors whose educations--however rudimentary--were interrupted, men who fall into the warrior class in adulthood often find their new situation far more pleasant than the manual labor for subsistence wages or chronic unemployment to which peace had condemned them. The warrior milieu allows pathetic misfits to lead lives of waking fantasy and remarkable liberties. Unlike organized militaries, paramilitary bands do not adhere to rigorous training schedules, and when they need privies, they simply roust out the locals at gunpoint and tell them where to dig. In the Yugoslav ruins, for instance, many of the patriotic volunteers (identical, whether Serb, Croat, or Bosnian Muslim) find that war gives them leisure, choice, and recognition, as well as a camaraderie they never knew in the past. The unemployed Lumpenproletarier from Mostar or Belgrade can suddenly identify with the action-video heroes he and his comrades admire between raids on villages where only women, children, and old men remain.

In Armenia, during a period of crisis for Nagorno-Karabakh, I encountered a local volunteer who had dyed his uniform black and who proudly wore a large homemade swastika on his breast pocket, even though his people had suffered this century's first genocide.[11] The Russian mercenaries who rent out their resentment over failed lives almost invariably seek to pattern themselves after Hollywood heroes, and even Somalia's warlords adorn themselves with Anglo nicknames such as "Jess" or "Morgan."[12] This transfer of misunderstood totems between cultures has a vastly more powerful negative effect on our world than the accepted logic of human behavior allows. But, then, we have entered an age of passion and illogic, an era of the rejection of "scientific" order. That is exactly what the pandemic of nationalism and fundamentalism is about. We are in an instinctive, intuitive phase of history, and such times demand common symbols that lend identity and reduce the need for more intellectualized forms of communication. Once, warriors wore runic marks or crosses on their tunics--today, they wear T-shirts with Madonna's image (it is almost too obvious to observe that one madonna seems to be as good as another for humanity). If there are two cultural artifacts in any given bunker in the Bosnian hills, they are likely to be a blond nude tear-out and a picture of Sylvester Stallone as Rambo.[13] Many warriors, guilty of unspeakable crimes, develop such a histrionic self-image that they will drop just about any task to pose for a journalist's camera--the photograph is a totem of immortality in the warrior's belief system, which is why warriors will sometimes take the apparently illogical step of allowing snapshots of their atrocities. In Renaissance Europe (and Europe may soon find itself in need of another renaissance), the typical Landsknecht wanted money, loot, women, and drink. His modern counterpart also wants to be a star.[14]

Worldwide, the new warrior class already numbers in the millions.[15] If the current trend toward national dissolution continues, by the end of the century there may be more of these warriors than soldiers in armies worthy of the name. While exact figures will never be available, and statistics-junkies can quibble endlessly as to how many warriors are really out there, the forest looks dark and ominous enough without counting each last tree. And perhaps the worst news comes right out of Macbeth: the trees are moving.

Warrior-mercenaries always moved. Irishmen fought for France, Scots for Sweden, and the Germans sold their unwashed swordarms to everyone from Palermo to Poland. But today's improved travel means allow warriors deprived of "their" war to fly or drive to the next promising misfortune. Mujahedeen from Afghanistan, recently adored by Americans, have turned up in Azerbaijan,[16] and Russian brawlers with military educations are fighting in Bosnia, Croatia, Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Tajikistan, and as enforcers for the internationalizing Russian mafia. One of the most intriguing characters I've met in the Caucasus was an ethnic-Armenian citizen of Lebanon who had been trained by the PLO in the Bekaa Valley to fight Turkic Azeris in Karabagh. The Azeri warriors he faced have been trained by entrepreneurial Russians, exasperated Turks, and reportedly by Iranians and Israelis.[17] In Bosnia, mustered out Warsaw Pact soldiers serve in the same loosely organized units as adventure-seeking Germans and Frenchmen.[18] In this regard, it might be in the interests of surrounding countries to let the fighting in Bosnia stew on: when that pot cools there is going to be a lot of unattractive spillage. Yugoslavia and the wars on Russia's crumpled frontiers are vast training grounds for the warriors who will not be content without a conflict somewhere. While most warriors will attempt to maintain their privileges of violence on their own territory, within their own linguistic groups, the overall number of warriors is growing so quickly that even a small percentage migrating from trouble spot to trouble spot could present a destabilizing factor with which we have yet to reckon.

The US Army will fight warriors far more often than it fights soldiers in the future. This does not mean the Army should not train to fight other organized militaries--they remain the most lethal, although not the most frequent, threat. But it would be foolish not to recognize and study the nasty little men who will haunt the brutal little wars we will be called upon to fight within the career spans of virtually every officer reading this text.[19]

There are quite a few realistic steps we might take to gain a better grasp on these inevitable, if unwanted, opponents. First, we should begin to build an aggregate data base that is not rigidly compartmented by country and region. We may deploy to the country where Warlord X has carved out his fief, or we may meet him or his warriors on the soil of a third-party state.[20] The future may create allegiances and alliances which will confound us, but if we start now to identify likely players, that drab, laborious, critical labor may pay significant dividends one day. As a minimum, if we start files on warrior chieftains now, we will have richer background files on a number of eventual heads of state. Such a data base will be a tough sell in a time of shrinking staffs and disappearing budgets, and analysts, accustomed to the luxury of intellectual routine, will rebel against its challenge and uncertainty. But in practical terms, studying potential opponents of this nature now will pay off on two counts: first, when we fight we will be more likely to know whom we're fighting; second, the process of compiling such a data base will build human expertise in this largely neglected field.[21]

We also need to struggle against our American tendency to focus on hardware and bean-counting to attack the more difficult and subtle problems posed by human behavior and regional history. For instance, to begin to identify the many fuses under the Caucasus powderkeg, you have to understand that Christian Armenians, Muslim (and other) Kurds, and Arabs ally together because of their mutual legacy of hatred toward Turks. The Israelis support Turkic peoples because Arabs support the Christians (and because the Israelis are drawn to Caspian oil). The Iranians see the Armenians as allies against the Turks, but are torn because Azeri Turks are Shi'a Muslims.[22] And the Russians want everybody out who doesn't "belong." Many of these alignments surprise US planners and leaders because we don't study the hard stuff. If electronic collection means can't acquire it, we pretend we don't need it--until we find ourselves in downtown Mogadishu with everybody shooting at us.

We need to commit more of our training time to warrior threats. But first we need to ask ourselves some difficult questions. Do we have the strength of will, as a military and as a nation, to defeat an enemy who has nothing to lose? When we face warriors, we will often face men who have acquired a taste for killing, who do not behave rationally according to our definition of rationality, who are capable of atrocities that challenge the descriptive powers of language, and who will sacrifice their own kind in order to survive. We will face opponents for whom treachery is routine, and they will not be impressed by tepid shows of force with restrictive rules of engagement. Are we able to engage in and sustain the level of sheer violence it can take to eradicate this kind of threat? To date, the Somalia experience says "No."

Although there are nearly infinite variations, this type of threat generally requires a two-track approach--an active campaign to win over the populace coupled with irresistible violence directed against the warlord(s) and the warriors. You cannot bargain or compromise with warriors. You cannot "teach them a lesson" (unless you believe that Saddam Hussein or General Aideed have learned anything worthwhile from our fecklessness in the clinch). You either win or you lose. This kind of warfare is a zero-sum game. And it takes guts to play.

Combatting warriors will force us to ask fundamental questions about ourselves as well as about our national and individual identities and values. But the kind of warfare we are witnessing now and will see increasingly in the future raises even more basic issues, challenging many of the assumptions in which liberal Western culture indulges. Yugoslavia alone raises issues that have challenged philosophers and college freshmen since the first professor faced a student. What is man's nature? Are we really the children of Rousseau and of Benetton ads, waiting only for evil governments to collapse so that our peaceable, cotton-candy natures can reveal themselves? Or are we killing animals self-organized into the disciplinary structures of civilization because the alternative is mutual, anarchic annihilation? What of all that self-hobbling rhetoric about the moral equivalency of all cultures? Isn't it possible that a culture (or religion or form of government) that provides a functional combination of individual and collective security with personal liberties really does deserve to be taken more seriously than and emulated above a culture that glorifies corruption, persecutes nonbelievers, lets gunmen rule, and enslaves its women? Is all human life truly sacred, no matter what crimes the individual or his collective may commit?

Until we are able to answer such questions confidently, the members of the new warrior class will simply laugh at us and keep on killing.



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NOTES

1. See Samuel P. Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations," Foreign Affairs, 72 (Summer 1993), 22-49, for a brilliant, courageous analysis of this metastasizing cultural crisis. Huntington was subsequently attacked in print by whole tribes of pygmies, none of whom made a dent in his thesis. See also my article, "Vanity and the Bonfires of the 'isms," Parameters, 23 (Autumn 1993), 39-50.

2. For background on the Chechens, see Marie Bennigsen Broxup, ed., The North Caucasus Barrier (London: Hurst and Company, 1992), or, for a fascinating historical perspective, Sh. V. Megrelidze, Zakavkaze v Russko-Turetskoy Voine (Tbilisi: Metsniyereba, 1972). In fairness, it must be noted that the peoples of the North Caucasus generally view Djokar Dudayev's Grosny government in a markedly positive light, crediting him as a patriot and capable organizer, as was brought home to me by Dr. Zaur Dydymov, the energetic and talented Head of the Juridical Department of the Daghestan Republic Council of Ministers.

3. As a draft of this article circulated, nothing excited so much comment as this phrase. In general, the otherwise positive puritanism of the US officer corps and Foreign Service cripples our ability to understand some starkly fundamental human motivations. We fear the hurricane of biology nearly as much as we distrust intuition, barricade ourselves behind the quantifiable, and practice Jomini even as we quote poor translations of Clausewitz (US officers have no sense of Clausewitz's Promethean Romanticism but sense that there's nonetheless some sort of uncomfortable darkness about the guy). Confronted with "rape cultures," such as those of Slavic Orthodoxy or Sub-Saharan Africa, we recoil to concentrate on the local traits that bear a reassuring resemblance to our own behavioral structures--not on the crucial differences.

4. The government of Croatia chose the US Battle Dress Uniform for its military, not least for its evocative associations. A visit to the provisional military museum in downtown Zagreb provides a wealth of stimulating images, among them the World War II Croatian military's aping of Wehrmacht uniforms (Bundeswehr dress uniforms are still in vogue), and the 1990s look for front line and COMMZ, the all-American BDU. The reasons for such choices and tendential shifts are worth another article, at least.

5. For a classic study of how the bold, ruthless few drive the many, see Joachim C. Fest, Hitler, Volume One, Der Aufsteig (Frankfurt/M: Verlag Ullstein, 1973). Also, the various writings of Sebastian Haffner on the rise and appeal of National Socialism; Elias Canetti, Masse und Macht; any serious work on the 1917 Bolshevik coup. Sociopolitical earthquakes, from the Reformation to the American Revolution, rarely have the active support of even one percent of the population in their germinal phases. The majority of military coups in the non-competitive world also involve far less than one percent of the population in their mechanisms. For nonpolitical, nonmilitary examples of the tyranny of tiny, self-absorbed minorities over the mass, consider the impoundment of own cultural upper register by various activist groups. Intriguingly, current research in the field of complexity offers a scientific demonstration of how the activity of seemingly inconsequential variables can spark immeasurably disproportionate reactions.

6. Especially for US Army officers and diplomats, this century's great forgotten revolution and civil war--the Mexican experience--merits study. An entry-level work is Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, The Great Rebellion, Mexico, 1905-1924 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980). For a superb group portrait of "warriors," read Mariano Azuela's out-of-print novel, The Underdogs, which provides remarkable insights into how Mexico's revolutionary warriors degenerated.

7. Ricarda Huch, Der Dreissigjaehrige Krieg (Frankfurt/M: Insel Verlag, 1912, 1914). Although Huch--the only major German historian to defy Hitler--is stylistically out of fashion, this monumental work presents the richest picture ever encountered by this author of how extended wars infected with a religious (read also "nationalist or ethnic") bias can annihilate moral and social orders. No one who has read this work could fail to be haunted by its images. Also, Golo Mann, Wallenstein (Frankfurt/M: S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, 1971), or, for English-only readers, the classic, and classically restrained, study by C. V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War (London: Johnathan Cape, 1938). A study of the Thirty Years War is essential to understanding modern continental Europe, why Euro-Americans make war in such a stylized fashion, and why we are so nonplussed by events in former Yugoslavia.

8. Personal conversations with UNPROFOR and UNHCR officers in Croatia, January-February 1994.

9. For a striking, highly readable, and provocative account, see Robert D. Kaplan, "The Coming Anarchy," The Atlantic Monthly, February 1994. Kaplan is willing to take physical and intellectual risks most American journalists shun. His book, Balkan Ghosts, offers a fine, quick introduction to a region we will still fail to understand after US troops have been there for a decade or two.

10. This happened in 1993, in Azerbaijan, with the Huseinov coup, although the primary coupmaker has been marginalized for now.

11. Many Armenian Fidayeen militiamen wear black uniforms with white Armenian crosses--a very different matter.

12. For the best reporting that came out of the US intervention in Somalia, see the series of articles by Sean Naylor, then by Katherine McIntire, in Army Times, between January and March 1993. These two reporters avoided the Mogadishu trap and went down-country to get the story the remainder of the media missed. Their work represents remarkable journalism from an often-overlooked source.

13. See the extensive 1992 and 1993 reporting by Der Spiegel, with its frequent character studies of the participants in the latest Balkan War.

14. Again, this is the sort of motivational issue with which US officers and analysts are ill-prepared to cope. Prisoners of rationalism at its most pedestrian, we are simply not alert to the "irrational" cultures and individuals covering most of this planet.

15. A country-by-country assessment of extant and potential warriors yields round numbers well into the millions--at the most conservative count. Not only are many African military establishments filled with warriors and not soldiers as we know them (see Kaplan again), but the pools of potential warriors in the former Soviet empire and in China reach into the tens of millions.

16. See Hurriyet, Istanbul, 23 December 1993, "Turkey to lift the arms embargo against Azerbaijan." Also, from the Armenian side, SNARK reports of 16 December 1993; Radio Yerevan (Azeri broadcast), 31 January 1994; Aragil Electronic News Bulletin, 10 February 1994, all Yerevan.

17. Multiple reports, Russian, Azeri, Armenian, and Turkish press.

18. Der Spiegel, as above.

19. For an incisive survey of the historical dimensions of the problem, see Great Powers And Little Wars, ed. A. Hamish Ion and E. J. Errington (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993).

20. A daintily ignored aspect of this is that ethnic cleansing works as a solution to ethno-national competition. For all the attendant misery, the expulsion of ethnic Germans from East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, and Czechoslovakia after 1945 brought regional stability, as did the post-World War I expulsion of the Greeks from Anatolia. From the dispersion of the Jewish people by Roman legionnaires to the near-extermination of the Plains Indians, history is swollen with examples of brutal ethnic cleansing that ultimately accomplished its purpose--making the world safe for ethnocracy. Just because something is loathsome doesn't mean it isn't effective.

21. Given the fluid nature of the warrior problem, this may appear to be an impossible mission--yet, there is no practical alternative.

22. Magda Neiman, Armyanye (St. Petersburg: 1898); S. T. Zolyan and G. K. Mirzoyan, Nagorney Karabakh i Vokryg Nyevo (Yerevan: 1991); Artem Ohandjanian, Armenien (Wien: Boehlau, 1989); the classic Deutschland und Armenien, 1914-1918, Samlung Diplomatischer Aktenstuecke, assembled by Dr. Johannes Lepsius (Potsdam: Tempelverlag, 1919); W. E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, Caucasian Battlefields (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1953); Christopher J. Walker, Armenia (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980); Ronald Grigor Suny, Looking Toward Ararat (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1993); Christopher J. Walker, ed., Armenia and Karabagh (London: Minority Rights Publications, 1991); Audrey L. Altstadt, The Azerbaijani Turks, (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Press, 1992). After all of the scholarly studies, this aspect of the Trans-Caucasian problem was best brought home to me by an Iranian diplomat who gave me a lift into Yerevan from the airport at one in the morning in the summer of 1992. He needed help carrying his diplomatic pouches. Delighted to speak with a US citizen, he repeatedly stressed the importance of "telling the Armenian story" in the West. In so much of the world, the political situation is vastly more complex than the vanity of the Department of State allows.



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Major Ralph Peters is assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, where he is responsible for evaluating emerging threats. Prior to becoming a Foreign Area Officer for Eurasia, he served exclusively at the tactical level. He is a graduate of the US Army Command and General Staff College and holds a master's degree in international relations. Over the past several years, his professional and personal research travels have taken Major Peters to Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Ossetia, Abkhazia, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Turkey, as well as various West European countries. He has published five books, as well as dozens of articles and essays on military and international concerns. This is his third article for Parameters.



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http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Paramet...1994/peters.htm

US Military Doctrine and the Revolution in Military Affairs
DAVID JABLONSKY



Change resonates for the American military today as it seeks to come to grips with what the Soviet Union once called the Military Technological Revolution (MTR) and what is now considered a broader Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). "We are in the midst of a dramatic change in the relationship between technology and the nature of warfare," General William Odom has pointed out in this regard while concluding that no one fully understands that relationship. "Strategists must think about it, however, and try to uncover its inchoate ramifications . . . if they are to design an effective military doctrine and appropriate military capabilities for the coming decades."[1] That, of course, is easier said than done. Throughout history, the interaction of technology and war has been as much the result of the arbitrary and the accidental as the inevitable and the necessary.

What can help in all this is the knowledge that with change, there is usually continuity due to what Robert Heilbroner calls the "inertia of history." Inertia in this sense does not just mean resistance to change, but also what Heilbroner refers to as the "viscosity" of history--the tendency of people to repeat and continue their way of doing things as long as possible. Thus, despite the fact that the "normal" condition of man has been sufficient to warrant revolution, such occurrences are remarkable in history not for their frequency, but for their rarity.[2]

Nevertheless, "revolution" has been the key word in the wake of the Gulf War as a host of officials and analysts have attempted to explain the victorious outcome of that conflict. The war, former Secretary of Defense Cheney concluded in the official after-action report, "demonstrated dramatically the new possibilities of what has been called the `military-technological revolution in warfare.'"[3] This was matched by a study of the war conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which contained a chapter entitled "The Revolution in Warfare" that was almost rhapsodic as it contemplated a future of sophisticated battle management systems, space stations, and unmanned aerial vehicles.

In sum, the nature of warfare is changing. Although the revolution in warfare is still underway, its outlines have become clear. The effects of technology--in precision guided weapons, in stealthy delivery systems, in advanced sensor and targeting systems, in battle management platforms--is transforming and in fact already has demonstrably transformed the way in which armed forces conduct their operations.[4]

In 1993, the CSIS devoted an entire report to the revolution, "a fundamental advance in technology, doctrine or organization that renders existing methods of conducting warfare obsolete."[5]

The most enthusiastic response to the revolutionary aspects of the Gulf conflict has come from Alvin and Heidi Toffler, who see it as ushering in what they term Third Wave warfare. The First or agrarian wave was launched by the agriculture revolution 10,000 years ago; the Second or industrial wave, in the last 300 years by a combination of the Newtonian and industrial revolutions. The Third or post-industrial wave coexists with the other two waves, creating a trisected world, in which the First Wave sector supplies agricultural and mineral resources and the Second Wave cheap labor for mass production, while the Third Wave rises rapidly to dominance based on the creation and exploitation of knowledge.[6]

In this milieu, the Tofflers see the addition of a Third Wave war form as increasing the potential for heterogeneity in the wars the United States must prevent or fight. In other words, older warfare forms don't entirely disappear when newer ones arise, just as Second Wave mass production has not disappeared with the advent of customized Third Wave products. As a consequence, there are today approximately 20 countries with regionally significant Second Wave armies. And some of these as well as a few First Wave countries are attempting to gain Third Wave technology. The result is a wide range of military operations. At one end are the small, essentially First Wave civil wars and violent conflicts in poor or low-tech countries accompanied by sporadic terrorism and drug wars. At the other end is the Third Wave warfare presaged, in part, by the Gulf War. Somewhere in between and lapping at the successive wave, as it did in Kuwait, is the very strong residue of the large-scale Second Wave warfare.[7]

It is this combination of change and continuity that holds the key for the US military as it deals with the current revolution in military affairs. The major force for change in that revolution is technology. The major reason why the US military, and particularly the US Army, is prepared to deal with this force is the mix of continuity and change in the current doctrinal framework that will carry it well and effectively into the vortex of the RMA.

Doctrinal Change and Continuity

Clausewitz defined strategy as the use of engagements to achieve policy objectives--a definition that can be depicted as a vertical continuum of war (Figure 1). The Prussian philosopher's observations were based on Napoleon's revolutionary use of time and space which, nonetheless, still focused on the intra-battle maneuver of classical strategy. In the American Civil War, however, the dimensions of these two variables were stretched and rendered more complex by the interaction of technology with the elements of what Clausewitz had referred to as the "remarkable trinity": the military, the government, and the people.

Figure 1.

That interaction, as Grant illustrated in his use of operationally durable armies scattered throughout the eastern United States in 1864-65, could result in inter-battle maneuvers and thus in decisive operations and campaigns distributed in extended time and space. The result was something that went beyond the adjustment of activities to one another, which is the essence of coordination. It was in fact a process in which pressure in one area might result in simultaneous or successive results elsewhere. Over a century later it would be described as synchronization, a concept that could involve activities far removed from each other in time or space, or both, "if their combined consequences are felt at the decisive time and place."[8] That process was captured in a letter to Grant in 1864. "I think our campaign of the last month," Sherman wrote from Savannah, "as well as every step I take from this point northward, is as much a direct attack upon Lee's army as though we were operating within the sound of his artillery."[9] The larger lesson of the century, however, was captured by Paul Kennedy:

All these wars--whether fought in the Tennessee Valley or the Bohemian plain, in the Crimean Peninsula or the field of Lorraine--pointed to one general conclusion: the powers which were defeated were those that had failed to adapt to the `military revolution' of the mid-nineteenth century, the acquisition of new weapons, the mobilizing and equipping of large armies, the use of improved communications offered by the railway, the steamship and the telegraph, and a productive industrial base to sustain the armed forces.[10]

These doctrinal lessons were lost in subsequent years; and World War I would reveal the inadequacies of classical strategy to deal with the intricacies of modern warfare. It was that complexity, augmented by the lack of decisiveness at the tactical level, that after 1914 impeded the vertical continuum of war outlined in Clausewitz's definition of strategy. Only when the continuum was enlarged, as the Great War demonstrated, was it possible to restore warfighting coherence to modern combat. And that, in turn, required the classical concept of strategy to be positioned at a midpoint, an operational level, designed to integrate individual tactical engagements and battles in order to achieve strategic results (Figure 2). A military strategic level was added as another way station on the vertical road to the fulfillment of policy objectives. This left the concept of strategy, as it had been understood since the time of Clausewitz, transformed into:

the level of war at which campaigns and major operations are planned, conducted and sustained to accomplish strategic objectives. . . . Activities at this level link tactics and strategy. . . . These activities imply a broader dimension of time or space than do tactics; they provide the means by which tactical successes are exploited to achieve strategic objectives.[11]

Figure 2.

The Return to Basics

In the wake of Vietnam, the US Army returned to its traditional focus on Europe. During the previous decade, the Warsaw Pact had added impressive qualitative improvements to its already crushing numerical preponderance--a trend only magnified by new analytical and gaming techniques which emphasized the quantifiable components of combat power. Added to this was the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the violence and lethality of which came as a shock to an officer corps conditioned by years of low-intensity warfare in Southeast Asia. At the same time, an already demoralized army found itself without a peacetime draft and on the receiving end of a decade-long deficit in equipment modernization as well as a large manpower reduction. The result was "Active Defense," promulgated in the 1976 edition of FM 100-5, Operations--a doctrine that made a tactical virtue of what was perceived as a strategic necessity by translating NATO's politically driven requirement of forward defense into operational method.[12]

The criticism of Active Defense began even before the final result was published. The doctrine was attacked for a lack of offensive spirit and the loss of all the tactical imponderables like initiative and morale that accompanied such a spirit; for what was perceived as an overemphasis on firepower to the detriment of maneuver; and for the submergence of tactical creativity in a wave of attrition calculations. But the most telling criticism was that there was no operational content in the new doctrine, which promised at best, its critics charged, to defer defeat without any possibility of operational success. "In seeking to fulfill its doctrinal commitment to winning the first battle,'" Richard Sinnreich has pointed out, "the Army was accused of becoming so preoccupied with fighting the first battle that it forgot all about winning the last. For an Army traumatized by ten years of tactical success culminating in operational failure, no critique could have been more devastating."[13]

At the same time, there was renewed focus on Soviet doctrine, particularly the use of follow-on forces which were tailored-made, critics pointed out, against an Active Defense that was dependent on lateral reinforcement from less threatened areas in lieu of retaining major reserves. This impetus to extend the battlefield, however, required technology that could only be provided by the Air Force--an operative imperative that meant that a battle extended in time and space would have to be an AirLand Battle (ALB). The result was the promulgation of ALB doctrine in the 1982 FM 100-5, which brought the Army full circle back to the three levels of war as a doctrinal framework for "securing or retaining the initiative and exercising it aggressively to defeat the enemy."[14] As a consequence, there was nothing new in the motivation for creating combat coherence throughout the vertical continuum of war in that framework. It was simply the age-old combination of technology and doctrine as a means to return to basics--a return to the business of winning by an Army that was unwilling, in Sinnreich's words, "to stomach indefinitely a . . . doctrine which appeared to enshrine the draw as the objective of military operations."[15]

The 1986 FM 100-5 continued the focus of 1982, adding operational art as the method for working the operational level of war while continuing to emphasize the absolute dominance of the strategic level in the vertical continuum. It is an emphasis that has been renewed in the current manual:

Since wars are fought for strategic purposes, the doctrine addresses the strategic context of the application of force. Since battle is translated into strategic objectives by operational art, a major portion of the manual addresses the operational level of war. And since all operations must be based on sound tactics, a major portion of the text covers tactics.[16]

The other armed forces have followed the Army lead in terms of using the vertical levels of war as a basic doctrinal framework--so much so that the current JCS basic doctrinal publication bears more than a little resemblance to the 1986 Army manual.

The operational level links the tactical employment of forces to strategic objectives. The focus at this level is on operational art--the use of military forces to achieve strategic goals through the design, organization, and execution of campaigns and major operations. Operational art helps commanders use resources efficiently and effectively to achieve strategic objectives. It provides a framework to assist commanders in ordering their thoughts when designing campaigns and major operations. Operational art helps commanders understand the conditions for victory before seeking battle, thus avoiding unnecessary battles. Without operational art, war would be a set of disconnected engagements, with relative attrition the only measure of success or failure.[17]

The new Army doctrine has other strong ties to the past, retaining, for example, the orientation on offensive actions and the familiar tenets of agility, initiative, depth, and synchronization. To this, in response to the changing international environment, has been added "versatility," which "denotes the ability to perform in many roles and environments during war and operations other than war."[18] Operations other than war, or OOTW, can involve combat missions ranging from strikes and raids to peace enforcement as well as non-combat missions that could include disaster relief and civil support both at home and abroad. Force projections in such an environment might include entirely different successive missions for a unit, involving non-combat operations in wartime or actual combat in OOTW. The flexibility involved goes far beyond agility, which emphasizes faster physical and mental reaction than the enemy. That tenet, the manual concludes, applies to a boxer; versatility describes the decathlete. The US Army, like the decathlete, is capable of rapid realignment and refocus on widely divergent missions because of discipline and training.[19]

In all this, the vertical continuum of war remains as the doctrinal construct. The manual draws upon the 1986 contention that the levels in that continuum are not concerned so much with the level of command or the size of the unit as with the planned outcome. "The intended purpose," the current manual points out, "determines whether an Army unit functions at the operational level."[20] From this position, the expansiveness of missions under "full dimensional operations" poses no doctrinal problems for the underlying framework. "The levels of war apply not only to war but also to operations other than war."[21]

The Altered Framework

The framework provided by the vertical continuum of war is changing. The Gulf War demonstrated the coalition's ability to use new technology to strike simultaneously at all three levels of war with what were normally considered strategic capabilities. For Iraq, these attacks across the entire nation paralyzed its military effort, with Iraqi forces compelled to operate throughout the country as if they were within visual range of the coalition military, without any of the normal distinctions between rear, deep, and close operations. "All of this means," one analysis concludes, "that in future conflict the three levels of war, as separate and distinct loci of command and functional responsibilities, will be spaced and timed out of existence."[22] The CSIS report on the revolution in military affairs agrees that the revolution "clearly holds the potential to blur or permanently erase the distinction between tactical, theater, and strategic war."[23] But the JCS Doctrine for Joint Operations is more cautious, preferring a balance of change and continuity.

Advances in technology, information-age media reporting, and the compression of time-space relationships contribute to the growing interrelationships between the levels of war. The levels of war help commanders visualize a logical flow of operations, allocate resources, and assign tasks to the appropriate command. However, commanders at every level must be aware that in a world of constant, immediate communications, any single event may cut across the three levels.[24]

Figure 3.Figure 4.

Figure 3 is the familiar depiction of the vertical continuum of war, with the darkened center area representing the operational art required to ensure that the tactical events in area 1 form the military conditions at the operational level that will achieve strategic objectives in area 2. Figure 4 depicts the more balanced approach to the future reflected in the JCS description. The expansion and overlap represent a trend that began earlier this century with the advent of mechanization, the radio, and air forces. The checkered area demonstrates the future blurring of all three levels of war--the zone of integration and simultaneity. Finally, the darkened section is the traditional area of operational art focused on conducting events in area 1 to achieve the objectives of area 2. The increased sizes of areas 1 and 2 represent the larger operational interaction with both strategy and tactics made possible by technological advances. But at the same time, the diminishment of the darkened section's size also represents the technologically compressed decision cycle of the operational commander working at magnified tempo in extended space. That commander will be faced with a much more complex job: recognizing those simultaneous strategic and tactical events that directly influence strategy, and integrating them at the operational level into the full synchronization calculation that traditionally determined what tactical battles and engagements to join or forego.

The problems of the operational commander notwithstanding, the compression of the three levels has the potential to increase decisiveness in the vertical military continuum from the tactical to the national military strategic level, certainly against a technologically inferior opponent. But that decisiveness can be affected, as the JCS description also implies, by the communication-information revolution that has gathered speed in recent decades. The technology that has streamlined and compressed the vertical continuum also has added a horizontal dimension (Figure 5) that provides the potential for the military at any level of war to influence national strategy directly. In the age of CNN, future wars and OOTW will occur in real time for both the American people and their policymakers. That this development can have positive results against an enemy was illustrated by the Gulf War. But the more pernicious results in terms of less favorable events up and down that continuum has a long history, whether it be the dismissal of Churchill from the Asquith government after the operational defeat at Gallipoli, the decision of LBJ not to run for reelection as a result of Tet, or the effects of the tactical loss of US Army Rangers in Somalia on the tenure of former Secretary of Defense Aspin.

Figure 5.

All this means a growing complexity with shorter decision time for the operational commander. At the same time, the mid- and high-intensity war of the future will help to empty the battlefield even as that field expands in spatial and intellectual terms. At the tactical level, the individual soldier will be able to have a greater effect on events in this expanded battle space because of increased weapons lethality and an increased ability to direct accurately long-range precision fires. This, in turn, will offer more opportunities for the operational commander by increasing the connection between the tactical battle space and the operational area, whether it be the theater of war or the theater of operations. The result is a new JCS-approved approach to deep operations with a focus on functions, not forces.[25] Previously, air theorists tended to limit land attack to the area of actual combat between committed forces, with anything beyond the range of organic Army weapons belonging to the air commander. Now that tactical commanders may pursue battle objectives by using either deep or close combat operations as the main effort, battles and engagements far beyond the forward line of friendly forces can decide major operations and campaigns.

There is, of course, nothing new in the role that technology will play in terms of communications up and down the compressed continuum of war. "From Plato to NATO," Martin van Creveld has pointed out in this regard, "the history of command in war consists essentially of an endless quest for certainty."[26] But that certainty is not necessarily enhanced by the quantum leap in technology which may now inflict Clausewitz's "fog of war" on the compressed continuum. Shorter decision times occasioned by that compression and electronically gathered information mean less time to discover ambiguities or to analyze those ambiguities that are already apparent. Already in the Gulf War, the flood of new information from the battlefield caused air commanders to switch one-fifth of all missions in the time between the printing of centralized air tasking orders and actual aircraft takeoff. Moreover, there is also the danger that the military in the future will become overly dependent on the type of detailed and accurate information provided in training that just may not be possible in the melee of war. With the verisimilitude of computer simulators and war games increasing, the paradox is that soldiers in the future may find themselves all the more at a loss when reality differs sharply from a familiar cyberworld.[27]

Such communication trends in the vertical continuum also have implications for the national military strategy of US-based force projection. If, for example, US forces in the future require theater ballistic missile support in Southwest Asia, why send such missiles when ICBMs with conventional warheads that will soon approach accuracies of near zero circular error probable can do the job without tying up strategic lift? Moreover, if theater-based intelligence assets, command centers, and battle management platforms become vulnerable to opponents, one solution may be the establishment of such assets in the United States with real-time linkages to theater forces.[28] Such linkages were already in evidence in the Gulf War where communications technology subverted hierarchies up and down the continuum, even between the theater and the United States. That such developments could be inevitable as well as desirable was demonstrated by the NORAD staff in Colorado which relayed warnings of Scud launchings to both Riyadh and Tel Aviv. And in the same conflict, thanks to instant communications, much of the basis for CENTAF targeting came from the Air Force staff in the Pentagon, which kept up a flow of targeting information and proposals to the theater. This arrangement worked well for the undermanned and overworked air staff working for the CINC in Riyadh.[29]

All of this suggests even broader implications not only for such time-honored military principles as unity of command and delegation of authority, but for the shibboleth of jointness as well. It would not be the first technological influence on jointness. In ancient times, for example, the galley ship operating in sight of land in the Mediterranean was a joint extension of land operations that ended with the development of sails and other concomitant ocean-going capabilities. And the increasing overlap of functions among the services on the extended battlefield of the compressed continuum of war has an antecedent in the invention of the stirrup, which allowed the mounted warrior to use weapons and wear equipment heretofore associated exclusively with the foot soldier.[30] On a more modern note the image of service staffs providing input directly to a CINC's staff does subvert the intent of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act to make the warfighting theater CINCs semiautonomous, guided by only the broadest direction from the national military strategic level. On the other hand, as Eliot Cohen has observed, there should be some room in the future within the altered levels of war for the operational commander to deal directly with the individual services, "each of which can pool a great deal of operational expertise along with a common world view and an esprit de corps difficult to find among a mélange of officers."[31]

The instantaneous flow of information up the vertical continuum also means that flag officers at the theater strategic and even the national military strategic levels may have access to the same information, or even more, as the forward-deployed operational and tactical commanders. The temptation to move down that continuum will grow dramatically, particularly if augmented by the pressure of policymakers, already feeling the force of much of that information on the horizontal axis (Figure 5) exerted through the public. Direct political involvement in military affairs at all levels of war, of course, is not new. Clausewitz even advocated such involvement, pointing out that political leaders in the cabinet must become more knowledgeable concerning technical military affairs. And both Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler regularly descended to the operational and tactical levels in World War II. Finally, there was the insistence of the White House during the Vietnam conflict on reviewing, often choosing, and approving air strikes on a daily basis.[32]

At the same time, as the Army Chief of Staff has pointed out, the integrative technology on the post-industrial battlefield will increase the tempo of action-reaction-counteraction and thus continue the necessity for initiative at lower command levels and for the concomitant decentralization of decisionmaking.[33] Many studies agree, foreseeing that combat units will become, if anything, more autonomous and self-sustaining, and that in the Third Wave military, like the Third Wave corporation, "decisional authority is being pushed to the lowest level possible."[34] If so, the picture of the small unit leader operating independently under a commander's intent in the nirvana of pure Auftragstaktik still will not be easy to create. Other images intrude: General Guderian ceasing to transmit by radio during the 1940 invasion of France in order to forestall interference by higher headquarters; helicopters containing battalion, brigade, and even division commanders and their staffs stacked in the air above a company-level fire-fight in Vietnam. All in all, as General Odom has observed, enhanced communication throughout the compressed levels of war is "an advantage that can just as easily introduce confusion and become a liability."[35]

Warfighting vs. OOTW

The technological compression of the three vertical levels applies to OOTW as well as war, the former primarily due to the types of missions and advances in communications, the latter to advances in weapons and equipment as well as in communications. Thus, a former high-level UN official could point out that in peacekeeping and peace enforcement operations, "you require political direction every time you move a sentry post."[36] It is this strategic dominance that allows the vertical framework to work as a doctrinal basis in both arenas. Actions at the operational level of war, James McDonough concludes in this regard, "are more likely these days to occur across the spectrum of peace, crisis, and war. Their commonality and their place in operational art is fixed by their focused pursuit of strategic objectives."[37]

The US military is currently producing a host of doctrinal manuals dealing with all categories of OOTW. This focus on OOTW is a direct result of the end of the Cold War--the long twilight conflict that kept attention on the core relationship between the superpowers and only occasionally on the periphery in the so-called Third World, a categorization of nation-states that even owed its origins to the bipolar nature of the international system. In that world, the absence of superpower war was not synonymous with global peace; nor was the absence of system transformation through war translated into global stability. Instead, recurrent violence in an unstable "peripheral" system occurred alongside a stable "central" system, with an estimated 127 wars and 21 million war-related deaths occurring in the developing world during the Cold War. Now, the United States and other Western industrialized democracies, comprising less than 13 percent of the global population, have turned their attention to that developing world, substantial parts of which are likely to be chaotic for the foreseeable future. As a result, the principal post-Cold War preoccupation of the United States in terms of OOTW has been peace operations despite the many other types of operations included in the OOTW category by current US military doctrine.[38]

Peace operations in that doctrine encompass three types of activities: diplomacy, peacekeeping, and peace enforcement.[39] Classical peacekeeping was a Cold War expedient that overcame some of the disabling aspects of the bipolar rivalry by relying on a token UN presence and the consent of opposing parties rather than on military effectiveness. This traditional capability was firmly grounded in Chapter VI of the UN Charter, which focused on pacific settlements of disputes. Where such settlements failed, the enforcement mechanisms under Chapter VII were designed to marshal the use of collective force among the global powers--all reminiscent of World War II. But the Security Council could not agree during the Cold War on any aspect of collective enforcement; peacekeeping thus evolved as an expedient, less powerful instrument which could be used within the zero-sum environment of the superpowers. This meant in turn that peacekeeping had limitations that proscribed its wider use--that forces acting under its charter, unlike combat units, could very seldom create the conditions for their own success. Those limitations, evolving from practical experience in the Cold War and now enshrined in current US military doctrine, include the use of force only in self-defense and, most important, the consent of all local belligerents. Peacekeeping forces, one analysis concluded, are like a referee whose success is dependent "on the consent of the players and their understanding of the rules of the game but never on the pugilistic skills of the referee himself."[40]

Since the end of the Cold War, a "second generation" of UN military operations has emerged under a rejuvenated category of peace enforcement which can include the protection of humanitarian assistance, the guarantee of sanctions, and the forcible separation of belligerents. In this environment, consent is not likely and there is an increasing need for more military power, effectiveness, and capability to exercise a wide range of military responses. Unfortunately, peacekeeping during the Cold War elicited a price for the United Nations' institutional competence in this regard. Consent in that era meant that there were no enemies, and with no enemies there was little pressure on the UN to be militarily effective. And with the stalemate in the Security Council, there was no incentive on the part of the member states to improve military competence. As a result, the Military Staff Committee was stillborn, and ad-hocracy in the absence of "lessons learned" became the order of the day for UN operations.[41]

For the US military, the goal is to modify and create technologies and force structures within the overarching doctrinal framework that add to warfighting effectiveness, while enhancing, or at the very least not diminishing, OOTW capabilities. Certainly in the conventional sense, for example, there is much to be learned in terms of strategic mobility and organizational effectiveness from humanitarian operations such as Provide Comfort in northern Iraq or Sea Angel in Bangladesh. The crossover becomes more explicit as the potential level of violence rises. "Since operations other than war do not necessarily exclude combat," the TRADOC commander has pointed out, "how to think about planning and executing those operations builds on the skills, toughness, and teamwork gained from the primary focus of our doctrine--warfighting."[42]

The value of this overarching framework was evident in the Somalia operation. At the tactical level, the American forces primarily dealt with their mission-essential and battle tasks, which included operations ranging from air assaults, patrolling, cordon and searches, and security operations, to those oriented on infrastructure repairs, civil affairs, and PSYOP. The operations were "synchronized," in the US division commander's description, at an operational level which "tended to be complex, with numerous players (joint, combined, political, and NGOs) involved and great uncertainty as to who the `good guys' were."[43] That notwithstanding, he remained sanguine about the crossover ability within the doctrinal framework: "Well-trained, combat-ready, disciplined soldiers can easily adapt to peacekeeping or peace enforcement missions. Train them for war; they adapt quickly and easily to Somalia-type operations."[44]

In such operations, technologies from the RMA will certainly play a role. Those contributing to information dominance will be particularly important, since a major challenge in many forms of OOTW is to identify the enemy. Some technologies may emerge in the areas of arms control verification and space-based communications; others may range from sensors to non-lethal and robotic weapons. The total effect of such potential trends suggests to the Tofflers "that the new, Third Wave war form may in time prove to be just as powerful against guerrillas and small-scale opponents waging First Wave war as against Iraq-style Second Wave armies."[45]

Technology, however, cannot completely bridge the gap between warfighting and OOTW in a period of declining resources. Stripping a division of major units to participate in a Somali-type operation is bound to have serious readiness repercussions. Even the long-standing Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) requirement in the Sinai requires extensive preparation for the mission and retraining upon completion. Moreover, there are still the questions concerning the psychological effects of prolonged peacekeeping operations on the warfighter's determination to kill and to win.[46] In the end, the rationale returns full circle to the tenet of "versatility" and the doctrinal priority based upon the primary national military strategic focus on regional conflict. "A professional, highly trained military with the human and industrial capital needed to remain ready for regional wars will be better able to gear up for a larger conflict than a military designed to fight lower-intensity wars."[47]

In all this, US military doctrine has attempted to accommodate change. For the Army, the "versatile" decathlete of FM 100-5, the major problem is not to harm agility in one event by overtraining in another. In the decathlon, this is avoided by judicious scheduling of events: the shot put, for instance, would not immediately precede or follow the javelin throw. No such scheduling is possible for the Army in the current environment, in which warfighting and myriad forms of OOTW can often make simultaneous demands across a blurred continuum of peace, crisis, and war. Still, it is a situation that, in varied form, the US military and in fact most militaries have faced in their histories. "We have to make war as we must," Lord Kitchener once commented, "and not as we should like to."[48]

The Way Ahead

When thinking in time, the key for the future is to recognize in the present those departures from the past--those changes--which divert or have the potential to divert familiar flows from accustomed channels. The pace of technological change is, of course, a departure from the past that has such a potential for warfare. For the military, which has little room for any illusions about the stakes, this is particularly important. "If you have lost a battle," G. K. Chesterton once noted, "you cannot believe you have won it."[49] There is thus a need for a constant comparison between the present and past coupled with a sensitivity to prospective breaks in the continuity that will allow change to be expedited or limited, countered or accepted--at the very least guided. That comparison indicates that military doctrine and its organizational concomitant will play a key role in such an effort concerning technological change. This is the essence of what has come to be called the Revolution in Military Affairs.

In this revolution, the US military must be versatile and flexible in dealing as much with political and social change as with that occasioned by technology. This adaptability will prevent the development of a hunkering-down mentality as defender of the status quo. But it requires facing the issues of change and continuity head-on. In a similar period of complexity, medieval chivalry transformed itself into the disciplined professional cavalry that played a key role in European wars for 200 years. And the army of Frederick the Great reemerged at the hands of the great Prussian reformers from the disastrous encounters with Napoleon's revolutionary army to become one of the greatest war machines in military history. The efforts of the US military in the wake of the Vietnam conflict were no less momentous.

The 1993 FM 100-5 clearly evokes this theme of renewal in change and continuity, the essence of doctrine which "captures the lessons of past wars, reflects the nature of war and conflict in its own time, and anticipates the intellectual and technological developments that will bring victory now and in the future."[50] This interaction provides, in turn, a dynamic environment--"a context," the Chief of Staff of the Army points out, "within which the debate over evolving doctrine can continue."[51] The framework for that debate is the vertical continuum of war, a dynamic entity that "must be reflective of constantly changing strategic and tactical environments, and the operational art, whose job is to connect the two, must be responsive to all changes."[52] The debate will help ensure in the future against the doctrinal equivalent of what has been called "the dead hand of Napoleon," a reference to the persistence of Napoleonic tactics and strategy long after they were rendered obsolete by changes in weapons technology.[53] The debate will also keep the strands of change and continuity in balance as the Army prepares for missions in peace and crises as well as war.

The key to the Army approach is the retention of the three-level vertical framework of war, spawned as the result of an earlier revolution in military affairs that emptied the battlefield while it expanded the concepts of time and space. This doctrinal continuity maintains the focus on the primacy of the strategic level--all the more important because of the sociopolitical as well as technological changes that will accompany the RMA. In addition, there is a great deal of flexibility provided by the divorce of the framework from any particular size force and by its recognition that all power elements can play a role in the complex process of operational synchronization. It is a framework, in short, that accommodates OOTW as well as warfighting. And in fact, the increasingly compressed nature of the vertical continuum for warfighting is the normal state for many OOTW missions, in which it is almost a cliché that the actions of a soldier on point can have strategic and political results.

The flexibility in the doctrinal framework also provides room to examine the constantly shifting organizational tensions between coherence and dissonance, jointness and independence, and centralization and decentralization--particularly as they apply to the current Goldwater-Nichols structure, a rational organization designed for immediate response to a well-defined threat. Equally important, this flexibility allows for innovative give-and-take in the relationship of technology and doctrine. Too rigid a doctrine, as the French demonstrated prior to World War I, can impede an appreciation of military-technological changes. It is also important, however, that technology focused on immediate or near-term potential threats not hold back long-term operational concepts or R&D concerning technology focused further in the future. In the interwar years, for instance, the US armed forces developed new concepts of operation that were to prove successful against future peer competitors, despite the fact that national policy and sentiment rejected such efforts because there were no obvious threats to vital interests. For the Navy, the result was innovative doctrine on carrier task force operations and amphibious landings. Equally significant, all this took place at the Naval War College in an environment free from the tyranny of the "in box," and at a time when Japan was not a US enemy, when the budget for all the services together comprised less than one percent of GNP, and when the force structure for such concepts was nonexistent.[54]

Within the doctrinal framework, technology will cause warfare to become more, not less, Clausewitzian. To begin with, any society or group, whether trinitarian or non-trinitarian, has identifiable pressure points that a trinitarian state can reach and target without resorting to a First Wave response. Moreover, these Second or even Third Wave responses are normally applied as part of the larger employment of all elements of power, defined in terms of the trinitarian national state.

It is in this state-centric world that the technologically induced compression of the vertical doctrinal framework only shortens, and thereby strengthens the link of war to policy. With time compressed over extended space and with that immense space rendered comprehensible by a technological coup d'oeil, an entire theater can become a simultaneous battlefield where events, as in the days of Napoleon, may determine national destinies. In addition, the horizontal, real-time communication link to the vertical continuum of war only reinforces the interaction of the people with the other two thirds of the Clausewitzian trinity.

In the end, this horizontal aspect combines with the flexibility of the vertical doctrinal framework to complement, reinforce, and balance the political-military relationship at the highest level of the US government with the demands of American societal values. It is this relationship that has mitigated the natural tendency of the military to preserve its institutional values solely in terms of warfighting. Without that balance, the leavening influence of the public would not affect the process. And without the structure of the vertical continuum of war leading ultimately to the highest and most dominant political level of strategy, there could be no overarching doctrinal coherence.

How serious the adverse synergism of deficits in balance and the vertical continuum can be was illustrated by the Nazi Wehrmacht, which perceived that without swift decisive victory, other non-military factors would intrude, threatening the position of war as the autonomous domain of the military elite. This was the ultimate rationale for Blitzkrieg, which in fact was the opposite of doctrine, since success rather than design determined the priority of actions. That type of opportunism caused impromptu operations based on the belief that technology (Guderian) or superior war-fighting command capabilities (von Manstein) would make the ultimate difference in conflict. But cut off from the public and deprived of anything approaching a coherent strategic level of war, there could be no sense of operational purposefulness for the military other than to pursue its institutional goals almost exclusively. "We still failed to find any satisfaction in their achievements," von Manstein wrote of German tactical victories in 1941, "for no one was clear any longer . . . [about] what higher purpose all these battles were supposed to serve."[55]


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NOTES

1. William E. Odom, America's Military Revolution: Strategy and Structure After the Cold War (Washington: American Univ. Press, 1993), p. 47. "I believe we are in a revolution in methods of commanding soldiers and units in battle similar to the one that took place in the 1920s with the wireless radio and track-laying technology." Frederick M. Franks, "Full Dimensional Operations: A Doctrine For an Era of Change," Military Review, 73 (December 1993), 6.

2. Robert L. Heilbroner, The Future as History (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), pp. 193-97.

3. Department of Defense, Conduct of the Persian Gulf War, Final Report to Congress (Washington: GPO, April 1992), p. 164.

4. James Blackwell, Michael J. Mazarr, and Don M. Snider, The Gulf War: Military Lessons Learned (Washington: CSIS, July 1991), p. 21.

5. Original emphasis. Michael Mazarr, et al., The Military Technical Revolution. A Structural Framework (Washington: CSIS, March 1993), p. 16.

6. Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st Century (New York: Little, Brown & Company, 1993), p. 22.

7. Ibid., pp. 83-84.

8. Original emphasis. FM 100-5, Operations (Washington: GPO, 5 May 1986), p. 2-11.

9. Bruce Catton, This Hallowed Ground (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1956), p. 362.

10. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987), pp. 181-82.

11. JCS Pub 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (Washington: GPO, 1 December 1989), p. 264.

12. FM 100-5, Operations (Washington: GPO, 14 June 1993), p. v. See also Paul H. Herbert, "Deciding What Has to be Done: General William E. DePuy and the 1976 Edition of FM 100-5, Operations," Leavenworth Papers, No. 16 (Ft. Leavenworth, Kans.: Combat Studies Institute, 1988).

13. Richard Hart Sinnreich, "Strategic Implications of Doctrinal Change: A Case Analysis," in Military Strategy in Transition: Defense and Deterrence in the 1980s, ed. Keith A. Dunn and William O. Staudenmaier (Carlisle, Pa.: Strategic Studies Institute, 1983), p. 46. See also Alex Roland, "Technology, Ground Warfare, and Strategy: The Paradox of American Experience," The Journal of Military History, 55 (October 1991), 462-63.

14. FM 100-5, Operations (Washington: GPO, 20 August 1982), p. 2-1.

15. Sinnreich, p. 49.

16. FM 100-5, 1993, p. v.

17. Emphasis added. Joint Pub. 3.0, Doctrine for Joint Operations (Washington: GPO, September 1993), p. II-3.

18. FM 100-5, 1993, p. 2-9.

19. Ibid., p. 2-9. See Figure 2-1, ibid., p. 2-1. "Versatility is a prerequisite for a strategic Army, one that can move anywhere on short notice, whose units can pick up a mission previously absent from their mission-essential task list, as well as one they have trained for and perfected their abilities in over time, and bring home a victory." James McDonough, "Versatility: The Fifth Tenet," Military Review, 73 (December 1993), 14.

20. FM 100-5, 1993, p. 6-2. "The operational level is the vital link between nation--and theater--strategic arms and the tactical employment of forces on the battlefield." Ibid. See also ibid., p. 6-1.

21. Ibid., p. 1-3; see also JCS Pub. 3-0, p. II-2: "The levels of war . . . apply to war and to operations other than war."

22. Douglas A. MacGregor, "Future Battle: The Merging Levels of War," Parameters, 22 (Winter 1992-93), 42. See also ibid., pp. 38-40.

23. Mazarr, p. 27. See also ibid., pp. 19, 26.

24. Joint Pub. 3-0, p. II-2.

25. L. D. Holder, "Offensive Tactical Operations," Military Review, 73 (December 1993), 52.

26. Martin van Creveld, Command in War, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1985), p. 264.

27. Eliot Cohen, "The Mystique of Air Power," Foreign Affairs, 73 (January-February 1994), 115.

28. Odom, pp. 51, 53; and Mazarr, p. 27.

29. Cohen, pp. 117-18.

30. John Keegan, A History of Warfare (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), p. 286.

31. Cohen, p. 118.

32. Gordon A. Craig, "The Political Leader as a Strategist," in Makers of Modern Strategy, from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 481-509.

33. Gordon R. Sullivan and James M. Dubik, Land Warfare in the 21st Century (Carlisle, Pa.: Strategic Studies Institute, 1993), p. 19. See also Cohen, p. 115.

34. Toffler, p. 78. See also Alvin H. Bernstein, Director, Project 2025 (Washington: Institute for National Strategic Studies, 6 November 1991), p. 75.

35. Odom, p. 48. See also van Creveld, pp. 255-56.

36. Major General Indar Jit Rikhye lecture to the USAWC Advanced Course on Collective Security and Peacekeeping, 4 February 1994.

37. James McDonough, "The Operational Art: Quo Vadis?" in Maneuver Warfare: An Anthology, ed. Richard D. Hooker, Jr. (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1994), p. 106.

38. Ruth Leger Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures 1989 (Washington: World Priorities, 1989). See also Charles W. Kegley, Jr., "Explaining Great-Power Peace: The Sources of Prolonged Postwar Stability," The Long Postwar Peace: Contending Explanations and Projections, ed. Charles W. Kegley, Jr. (New York: Harper Collins, 1990), p. 8; Michael Brecher and Jonathan Wilkenfeld, "International Crisis and Global Instability: The Myth of the `Long Peace,'" ibid.; and Eliot Cohen, "Distant Battles: Modern War in the Third World," International Security, 10 (Spring 1986), 186.

39. Draft FM 100-23, Peace Operations, Version #6, January 1994, p. 1-1.

40. John MacKinlay and Jarat Chopra, "Second Generation Multinational Operations," The Washington Quarterly, 15 (Summer 1992), pp. 114-15. See also FM 100-23, 1993, p. 1-2. For the original criteria, see Brian Urquhart, "Beyond the Sheriffs Posse," Survival, 32 (May-June 1990), 198.

41. Mackinlay and Chopra, p. 116, see a continuum between peacekeeping and peace enforcement. The draft military doctrine on peace operations does not. "Because both are part of peace operations, it is often incorrectly assumed that they are part of operations. They take place under vastly different circumstances involving consent and force. Commanders must recognize these differences and develop different planning approaches for each of these operations." Draft FM 100-23, p. 1-3.

42. Franks, p. 10.

43. S. L. Arnold, "Somalia: An Operation Other Than War," Military Review, 73 (December 1993), 31-32.

44. Ibid., p. 35.

45. Toffler, p. 181. Mazarr, p. 53. But see ibid., p. 54: "The MTR can make only a limited contribution to irregular operations"; p. 10: "Clearly more work is needed on how to make MTR capabilities more relevant to irregular operations"; and pp. 54-55: "This study has argued that technologies, doctrines, and organizations designed to fight a high-intensity MTR war will have only limited application to most kinds of irregular operations." See also Joseph F. Pilat and Paul C. White, "Technology and Strategy in a Changing World," The Washington Quarterly, 13 (Spring 1990), 84.

46. Rikhye lecture, 4 February 1994, and Charles C. Moskos, Peace Soldiers: The Sociology of a United Nations Military Force (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1976). On the MFO, Lieutenant Colonel(P) William Martinez, USAWC 1994, and Lieutenant Colonel(P) Craig Pearson, USAWC, 1994, 2 March 1994.

47. Mazarr, p. 9.

48. Michael Glover, The Velvet Glove: The Decline and Fall of Moderation in War (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1982), p. 43.

49. Richard Neustadt and Ernest May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers (New York: The Free Press, 1986), pp. 255-56.

50. FM 100-5, 1993, p. v. "There are some major departures from the previous doctrine, but great continuity as well." Franks, p. 7.

51. Gordon R. Sullivan, "From the Editor," Introduction to Military Review, 73 (December 1993), 1. "History, after all, has proved that learning organizations are winning organizations." Ibid.

52. McDonough, "Operational Art," p. 109.

53. James J. Schneider, "Vulcan's Anvil: The American Civil War and the Emergence of Operational Art," Theoretical Paper No. 4 (Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: SAMS, 16 June 1991), p. 22.

54. Paul Bracken, "The Military After Next," The Washington Quarterly, 16 (Autumn 1993), 172.

55. Erich von Manstein, Lost Victories (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1982), p. 202. See also A. J. Bacevich, "New Rules: Modern War and Military Professionalism," Parameters, 20 (December 1990), 16-17; Michael Geyer, "German Strategy in the Age of Machine Warfare, 1914-1945," Makers of Modern Strategy, pp. 528-81, 585; Dennis E. Showalter, "A Dubious Heritage: The Military Legacy of the Russo-German War," Air University Review, 36 (March-April 1985), 7, who concludes that in response to this strategic-operational disconnect, Hitler's field commanders responded "like short-money players in a table stakes poker game, concentrating on winning battlefield victories to demonstrate their virtu and avert the end as long as possible"; and Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain and Germany Between the World Wars (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1984), whose thesis is that military organizations will attempt to keep maximum independence from civilian leaders by structuring doctrine in such a way as to make it immune from political interference.


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Dr. David Jablonsky (Colonel, USA Ret.) is Professor of National Security in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the US Army War College. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College, has an M.A. from Boston University in international relations, and holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in European history from Kansas University. He is a graduate of the Army Command and General Staff College and the Army War College. Dr. Jablonsky has held the Elihu Root Chair of Strategy and currently occupies the George C. Marshall Chair of Military Studies at the War College. His most recent book is Churchill, The Great Game and Total War (1991). His next book, Churchill and Hitler, Selected Essays on the Political-Military Direction of Total War, is scheduled to appear this year.


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http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Paramet...94/jablonsk.htm

Reflections on Courage
HENRY G. GOLE

Dictionaries, even my Random House two-tonner, fail to get at the essence of courage. They tell us that courage is facing danger, difficulty, or pain without fear. Lord Moran writes in The Anatomy of Courage: "The mysterious quality we call courage is will-power, self-sacrifice, call it what you will, that inspires men to hold their ground when every instinct calls upon them to run away." Courage is victory over fear, not the absence of fear. Moran's book grows out of his experience as a medical doctor in World War I with an infantry battalion that took its regular turn in the trenches, "when my feelings as a man were at white heat"; his subsequent reflection employed "the cold scrutiny of an eye trained in measurement, behind which the scientific way of life, with its passion for exactitude, pruned and purged." As both actor and scientific observer, he brings a unique combination of emotion and intellect to his characterization of courage.

He also asserts that:

There is a limit to the number of good men any race can furnish. . . . The morale of all armies broke sooner or later. . . . A few men had the stuff of leadership in them, they were like rafts to which all the rest of humanity clung for support and hope . . . . All the fine things in war as in peace are the work of a few men . . . . The honor of our race is in the keeping of but a fraction of her people.

This observation hardly surprises, coming from the man who was for 25 years Winston Churchill's personal physician, who also has written of the great prime minister in his finest hours. Social Darwinism, the sun never setting on the British Empire, the thin red line, and the white man's burden--in brief, chauvinism, racism, and elitism--was the stuff of Moran's youth. But observations in the trenches taught him that duty's victory over fear is not the exclusive property of elites. Tommy and Jock, often semi-literate and sometimes larcenous, are also sometimes noble.

Lord Moran opines that courage can be used up. "A man's courage is his capital and he is always spending. . . . I affirm that men wear out in war like clothes." This was a departure from the prevailing notion that veteran troops are reliable and can be trusted, that green troops panic and need to be steadied if they were not to run. We have rediscovered in each war since 1918 that even our best warriors "wear out" and need to relax in a safe place to recuperate.

Only one of Lord Moran's observations collides with experience. He says, "A man of character in peace is a man of courage in war." As much as one prefers to believe that assertion, combat experience suggests otherwise. Some exemplars of virtue collapse under the stress of combat while some unsavory types, not ready for the salon now or ever, demonstrate both masterful military skills and readiness to lay down their lives for their friends. So, brave asocial types also emerge--to puzzle combat leaders and outrage moralists.

Lord Moran's reflections instruct us that measuring courage on a crude scale from coward to hero misses a critical point. Shell shock, battle fatigue, or post traumatic stress disorder--psychic damage whatever the current jargon--can be produced in most of us if sufficiently stressed over enough time. Modern war insures deep and sustained stress; a wounded or exhausted mind can be as debilitating as physical wounds. Every man has a breaking point.

For two brilliant commentaries on these propositions, see Pat Barker's novel Regeneration and Jonathan Shay's Achilles in Vietnam, the latter an analysis by a psychiatrist that chastises political and military leaders for how much they have forgotten about warriors since Homer wrote The Iliad. Barker blends her creative imagination and psychological insights with representations of historical figures of the Great War: Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen, and Dr. W. H. R. Rivers. Her intellectually honest and beautifully crafted novel reveals the ethical dilemma of the physician as he recognizes that he makes sick men healthy to return them to duty and the bedlam of the trenches.

Respect for the Enemy

Admiring courage gives more pleasure to most of us than lamenting its absence. Literature provides spokesmen of "advanced" civilizations saluting qualities in a foe's barbarian warriors. Tacitus, a Roman patrician, wrote admiringly in 98 A.D. of uncorrupted barbarians in a manner suggesting incipient Roman degeneracy:

On the field of battle it is a disgrace to a chief to be surpassed in courage by his followers, and to the followers not to equal the courage of their chief. And to leave a battle alive after their chief has fallen means lifelong infamy and shame. To defend and protect him, and to let him get the credit for their own acts of heroism, are the most solemn obligations of their allegiance. The chiefs fight for victory, the followers for their chief. . . . A German is not so easily prevailed upon to plough the land and wait patiently for harvest as to challenge a foe and earn wounds for his reward. He thinks it tame and spiritless to accumulate slowly by the sweat of his brow what can be got quickly by the loss of a little blood.

More recently Rudyard Kipling captured Tommy admiring Fuzzy-Wuzzy. Reviewing the British experience in fighting "The Paythan an' the Zulu an' Burmese," Tommy concludes that Fuzzy-Wuzzy deserves special tribute for accomplishing with sword and spear (and a big heart and strong legs) what the others--indeed, what Napoleon with the best of European technology--could not: he "bruk" the British square. And further:

E's the on'y thing that doesn't care a damn
For the Regiment o' British Infantree.
So 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your 'ome in the Sowdan;
You're a pore benighted 'eathen but a first-class fightin' man;
An' 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, with your 'ayrick 'ead of 'air
You big black boundin' beggar--for you bruk a British square.

The Zulus also "bruk a British square" at Isandhlwana on 22 January 1879. More than 2000 Zulus died in overrunning the defenders; only 55 of 950 Europeans survived, and some 550 of the 850 Natal Kaffirs led by European officers died in close combat. The battle is described in detail in The Washing of the Spears by Donald R. Morris, as is the subsequent battle of Rorke's Drift. Readers may recall from the beautiful and powerful film Zulu! that a relative handful of British troops held off thousands of attacking warriors in that action, which produced an unprecedented 11 Victoria Crosses. In the film, the defeated Zulus salute the British defenders by banging their short spears, the assegai, on their shields before withdrawing. Courage abounded among the Zulus and the British at Isandhlwana and Rorke's Drift.

Models of Courage

Certainly in the Western tradition we associate courage with martial courage, particularly with mano a mano combat found in the various national epics--Beowulf, The Song of Roland, El Cid--from the biblical account of David defeating Goliath, and perhaps from The Red Badge of Courage and books like it that were popular 50 years ago. Beowulf takes it upon himself to pursue the bullying monster Grendel through murky depths and to defeat him in his lair. Roland fights a delaying action knowing that he will die to save the withdrawing main body. El Cid leads the liberation of his country from centuries of foreign domination. One hundred years ago British boys thrilled to George Alfred Henty's books focused on the ideal of manly virtue. Courage in the service of some noble cause gratifies--standing up to the bully, protecting the weak, sacrificing self for the tribe, and each of us has favorites, some widely shared, some idiosyncratic.

The inspiring words of the king on the night before the battle of Agincourt in Shakespeare's Henry V enjoy a special place. His "band of brothers" defines the bond among brave men prepared to die for a common cause. It appears most recently as the title of a combat gem, Band of Brothers, in which Stephen E. Ambrose captures the essence of an American airborne rifle company in combat, as he had for a British glider company in Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944, and most recently with Undaunted Courage, remarkable accomplishments for this gifted and prolific writer.

Small acts disguise courage. The tender, magical, short classic by Paul Gallico, The Snow Goose, depicts the good man quietly and naturally responding to the call of duty. The courage to accept one's destiny emerges from the words of those who already count themselves dead in The Last Letters from Stalingrad. In James A. Michener's The Bridges at Toko-ri, professionalism and brotherhood demand that the helicopter pilot die for his friend, an event from the war in Korea often--even routinely--reenacted in Vietnam by aviators who would not pull away to save themselves while comrades remained in extremis on the ground. David Donovan (a pseudonym) in Once a Warrior King reveals an aspect of courage motivated by compassion for the least among us while serving as a soldier-missionary in Vietnam before resuming his preparation for a civilian career. The villagers he protects, the members of his small advisory team, and his reaction to his personal demons as he reenters an ungrateful American society in 1970 ("It was the fashion on college campuses to be outraged about the war, whether one really knew anything about it or not"), find a controlled voice that gets to the places where truth resides.

The hypothesis that courage is a manifestation of love rather than some martial impulse is rudely contradicted by E. B. Sledge in With the Old Breed. Sledge describes the murderous hatred for the enemy shared by Japanese and American infantry that "resulted in savage, ferocious fighting with no holds barred" and that caused both sides to decline taking prisoners and to defile corpses. Courage was required simply to lift one's exhausted body from a wet foxhole, to put one foot after the other, to endure one more day in some of the most brutal combat man has ever experienced. Rage, too, produces courage.

The Lonely Sea

Between 1 September 1939 and 8 May 1945, Germany lost 87 percent of its submarines that became operational--753 of 963 (Karl Doenitz, Memoirs). The chilling statistic is powerfully amplified by visits to two museums, each a few kilometers from the city of Kiel. One of them, the German navy's war memorial, is at the fingertip of an embracing right arm that reaches into the Baltic and contains Kiel Bay. The memorial contains large panels depicting friendly and enemy losses by year in the longest campaign of the Second World War. A Maltese cross signifies the loss of a German submarine; a red ship's fantail denotes a sunk Allied ship. (In the course of the war German submarines sank a confirmed 2759 merchantmen [14,119,413 tons] and 148 warships.) Two facts leap from the 1943 panel and the next two. First, the Battle of the Atlantic had reached its crescendo, and second, for the last two years of the war going to sea in a German submarine was tantamount to suicide.

On the drive back to the city of Kiel one could easily fail to notice the small sign and the secondary road leading to the modest submarine memorial. Somber stones form the memorial. One enters a room in which there is a visitors' book and emerges on the far side blinking in the daylight within walls creating the feel of a submarine. Left and right are bronze rectangles, each listing ten U-boats. The lower numbers start on the left. At the end of the aisle one turns right returning to the entrance to find the higher numbers of the newer boats of 1944 and 1945. Next to each boat sunk one notes its killer: Canadian corvette, British destroyer, American Liberator. Late in the war one or two of ten--or none--return. Reflection sobers. Imagination chills. Young men in those iron coffins felt the icy waters of the North Atlantic rush into the submerged boat as clanging steel compartment doors literally sealed their fate: death by drowning or suffocation. Of 39,000 men who crewed German submarines, 28,000 perished.

Herbert Werner's first-person account of his 1939-1945 experience in U-boats, Iron Coffins, ultimately as skipper of his own boat, should be read with Lothar Guenther Buchheim's novel, The Boat. Both succeed in suspending reality as the reader readily adopts the participant's perspective, joins the hunt, cringes in fear under depth charge and aerial attack, and enjoys some free time ashore between patrols. Buchheim's book is the basis of the excellent film of the same name that showed how cramped, stinking, and terrifying daily life on a German sub was. The austerity of German U-boats compared to American subs in the Second World War is striking, since in the Great War Allied troops admired the German trenches both for their relative comfort and superior fighting positions. See also Buchheim's excellent pictorial history, U-Boat War.

Serious scholars will want to compare the Doenitz Memoirs, written from the top of the German naval hierarchy, to the Buchheim and Werner accounts to note the degree to which perspective shades interpretation of the same events. For example, Werner regards the provision of constant mid-ocean Allied air cover to convoys by accompanying small aircraft carriers as being the beginning of the end of the German submarine offensive threat in May 1943. Doenitz, when he was informed in 1974 that the British had broken the German "Enigma" cipher and decrypted signal traffic between his headquarters and his U-boats, said, "Well, now you historians will have to start right at the beginning again!" Until then he had credited British radar and sonar for Allied success in hunting down his U-boats, particularly from 1943 until the end of the war. Revision continues.

A new book, Clay Blair's Hitler's U-Boat War, The Hunters, 1939-1942, challenges the general acceptance of Winston Churchill's contention that the Battle of the Atlantic was a near-run thing. Churchill said: "The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril. . . . The Admiralty, with whom I lived in the closest amity and contact, shared these fears." The distinguished university professor at Temple University and authority on World War II, Russell F. Weigley, credits Blair in this book and in the second, due to be published in 1997, subtitled The Hunted, 1942-1945, with demolishing "myths that have been with us for many years." The first volume "explodes the theory that the U-boats ever created a severe crisis for the Allies or a serious likelihood of British defeat."

Submarine warfare in the Pacific lacks the tragic dimension one finds in the Atlantic. Essentially the American submarine offensive gathered momentum against the Japanese after addressing two problems: torpedoes and tactics. The Japanese started the war with torpedoes that worked; they sank ships. US subs deployed thousands of miles, skippers risked all to close with the enemy, and American torpedoes failed to kill targets. The torpedoes improved in the course of the war, but even in 1945 sure kills became misses as torpedoes passed under their targets. (Note that Admiral Doenitz in a memo of 9 February 1942 also remarks on German torpedo failures, specifically noting that they passed under targets six to nine feet too deep, a problem that began in 1936.) American tactics improved as younger officers replaced conservative elders. Essentially the younger men fought on the surface unless in immediate danger.

Three accounts present a clear picture of their war in the Pacific in the Second World War: a novel, a memoir, and a historical evaluation. Since its publication, Edward L. Beach's novel, Run Silent, Run Deep, has been the standard against which American submarine books have been measured. The barely disguised memoir begins in the waters of Long Island Sound days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and ends in September 1945. Beach keeps us reading and soaking up service lore. His pride in his service--and this applies to all the submarine books, German and American--comes shining through. He probably spoke for countless thousands in his reference to "that brave period between 1941 and 1945 when so many of us unwittingly realized our highest purpose in life." This is not the place to debate "The Good War" thesis, but a student of World War II is struck by the almost theological ring of "our highest purpose in life," phrasing that captures the essence of America's messianic mood. Many of those who lived World War II regretted never again sharing that sense of national purpose; for them it would forever be "the war."

A companion piece, and arguably a superior work, is Eugene B. Fluckey's Thunder Below! The subtitle tells us what the book is about: The USS Barb Revolutionizes Submarine Warfare in World War II. It is a compelling record of the courage, leadership, initiative, and skill of the author and the competence of his admirable crew. In crisp prose, Fluckey takes us through five combat patrols from 28 April 1944 to 7 August 1945, during which he was the Commanding Officer of the USS Barb. A 1935 graduate of the United States Naval Academy who retired a Rear Admiral, Fluckey earned the Medal of Honor and four Navy Crosses on those five patrols, honors unequaled by any American warrior. He departed from the methods of older submariners conditioned by peacetime restrictions, particularly their practice of remaining submerged for much of their patrols. His daring was matched by his technical and tactical skills, and his decency is revealed when he says that he is proudest of not losing a single man. Landlubbers will note that the Navy Cross is the equivalent of the Distinguished Service Cross. The man writes almost as well as he fights.

Before his last patrol, Fluckey gets home to Annapolis and takes the 13 women of the Submarine Wives' Club to the North Severn Officers' Club for dinner and dancing. Five of the women knew they were widows. Fluckey remarks:

I knew four others were widows, but they had not yet been notified. Damn the war! Already over half my submarine school classmates were buried in steel coffins at the bottom of the ocean. The horror those women had yet to face brought tears to my eyes as they danced with their eyes closed, dreaming of dancing with their husbands. I was struck with the thought that I was dancing on skeletons. I bit my lip and listened to their loving babble.

A backdrop to these personal accounts is provided in Clay Blair's Silent Victory, a two-volume history whose subtitle states the subject: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan. It is particularly strong in putting the issues that mattered to the warriors, such as the grossly defective US torpedoes and questions of tactics, in the context of strategy. The maps, photos, appendices, and index are useful to general readers and scholars. Finally, to place submarine warfare within the context of America's total maritime effort, see Samuel Eliot Morison's very readable The Two Ocean War, A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War, a tight summary of a much longer work of interest to scholars, his 15-volume History of United States Naval Operations in World War II.

Of the many World War II accounts of surface combat at sea, two novels stand out. The Cruel Sea, by Nicholas Monsarrat, captures the essence of the convoy system from the perspective of the shepherds, the destroyers and corvettes charged with the responsibility of escorting their flocks through the U-boat wolfpacks in the raging North Atlantic in the first half of the war. The Ship, by C. S. Forester, dramatizes an important event--a fleet action in which an outgunned British fleet in the Mediterranean puts itself between an essential Allied convoy and a superior Italian fleet--that unfolds in a single plot within a day. Suspense builds as ship and crew respond as parts of a single body guided by a single mind. The battle reflects great credit upon the Royal Navy of 1940 and reminds the reader of Britain's 400-year debt to the senior service, which had made it possible for the island nation first to maintain its distance from the Continent and later to sustain a worldwide empire. Hard men conditioned to discipline and pride characterized the Royal Navy; readiness to die distinguished it.

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines

A sample of five books by four authors captures the feel of the war in the sky over Vietnam. The perspectives are those of the helicopter pilot who became the general purpose deliverer of goods, services, firepower, and people, thereby supplanting the famous "deuce-and-a-half"--the two-and-a-half-ton truck--of World War II and Korea; and the forward air controller, FAC, who in his low- and slow-flying bird was the link between the grunt under the dense triple canopy and the driver of the fast mover whose speed made it difficult to see what was happening on the ground, or even to sort out friend from foe. Then there is the pilot of the high-performance, high-speed bird who did two difficult and dangerous jobs: provide close and personal support of infantry in contact in South Vietnam, and conduct long-range strike missions in North Vietnam in an air defense environment that made the missions near-suicidal.

Robert Mason, author of Chickenhawk, was a newly minted Warrant Officer and helicopter pilot at 22--ripe maturity among the chopper hot-rodders, some still in their teens. Mason went to Vietnam with the 1st Cavalry Division in 1965, flew over 1000 combat missions, and served as an instructor pilot at Fort Wolters, Texas, before leaving the Army in 1968, in his own words, "a failure." Bad memories became bad dreams and led to too much booze and too many drugs. In 1981 he was charged with smuggling marijuana, sentenced to four years in prison, and released in 1983 on appeal.

Chickenhawk is one of the best books to come out of Vietnam, for at least two reasons. Mason gets to the heart of the matter by showing clearly what it was like to be in the middle of the evolving helicopter tactics and techniques, in which fragile machines put grunts right on their targets and hauled away their broken bodies, often under direct enemy fire. Great risk characterized all aspects of helicopter operations--combat assaults, medical evacuations, gunship support--and Mason did it all. Besides getting the combat story right, Mason serves fellow veterans by honestly reporting his struggle with personal demons that never learned the war was over: "I hope that these recollections of my experiences will encourage other veterans to talk."

Two extraordinary books by US Air Force forward air controllers came out of the war: Vietnam Above the Trees by John F. Flanagan, and A Lonely Kind of War by Marshall Harrison. Then-Lieutenant Flanagan (he would retire as a brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve) flew the 0-1 Bird Dog (the uninitiated often call it a Piper Cub) in support of the Korean Tiger Division and the American troops of the 1st Cavalry and 101st Airborne Divisions in l965 and 1966. The highlight of his tour was flying for Project Delta, a Special Forces unit that conducted extremely hazardous reconnaissance missions in Vietnam. Small teams, usually three Americans and three Vietnamese, were inserted into likely areas of enemy activity, meaning that the teams typically found themselves by design in the midst of the enemy and totally reliant upon aviation for insertion, for fixing their location in dense jungle and difficult terrain, for engaging locally superior forces with air or artillery fires, and for extraction--often under hostile fire. Courage is contagious. Flanagan's admiration for the recon men of Delta compelled him to take great risks for men who became his brothers. His personal code allowed no alternative to putting it all on the line; his religious convictions were reinforced by the values of the US Air Force Academy and capped by the example of dedicated Delta men who went all the way every time. Identification with brave soldiers affected his appreciation of his profession, arousing in him a contempt for military bureaucrats who get in the way: rear-echelon commandos, assorted feather merchants unfamiliar with the smell of cordite, and bumblers cluttering up an otherwise perfectly good battlefield. There is a Candide-like discovery of how the world works as he joins Bill Mauldin's Willy and Joe and all combat soldiers who have found themselves unable to communicate with others wearing the same uniform.

Similarly, then-Major Harrison, who served three combat tours in Vietnam, bonded with the hard-core soldiers of the MACV Studies and Observation Group (SOG) who conducted cross-border operations "over the fence" in Cambodia and Laos. He should have known better. "I had been on the intelligence staff at Headquarters, USAF. I came complete with a wife, three children, and a well-mortgaged home in the Virginia suburbs." Despite the appurtenances of middle-class respectability, Harrison was as susceptible as young Flanagan to the magnetism of the brothers in arms. He flew an OV-10 Bronco--an improvement over the Bird Dog, but a light bird vulnerable to ground fire--from a tropical paradise complete "with sagging tents and rain-rotted hootches . . . a strong miasma of burning feces . . . hordes of mosquitoes" and mud that was "on you and in you." But the soldiers "whipped up sharp salutes as if they were doing it because it was their idea, not because they had to." And when he entered the SOG operations center staffed by Special Forces sergeants, "You could almost smell the excess testosterone they generated." He liked the primal accounting so unforgiving in its scorekeeping, so much so that he did dumb things like making an unscheduled landing on a dirt road under fire deep in Cambodia without air cover--not a FAC's job--for a simple reason: he would get the recon men out or die with them. He was hooked.

To understand "the excess testosterone," see also the justifiable paean, SOG: The Secret Wars of America's Commandos in Vietnam by John L. Plaster, who served three tours with SOG in Vietnam. Plaster is another fighter-writer capable of creating in the reader the heightened awareness that characterizes intense close combat, falling off mountains, and jumping out of perfectly good aircraft.

Be it known that your scribe loves FACs and the fast-mover jocks they controlled as much as Harrison and Flanagan loved Delta and SOG men. On 5 November 1966 a chubby little grandfather, whose combat flying went back to World War II, put himself in a cone of enemy ground fire, the more effectively to direct fighter bombers on an NVA regiment ill-disposed to me and my American and Montagnard playmates making a single rope river crossing. There is no doubt the FAC risked his life to save ours. He survived, and so did most of us.

Finally to high-performance aircraft--in this case the "Thud," the F-105 Thunderchief--and Jack Broughton, who drove the Thud "Downtown" and has written two books that make America proud of her warriors and writers envious of his skill: Thud Ridge and Going Downtown: The War Against Hanoi and Washington. Narrative skill, technical knowledge, professionalism, and concern for his men pervade both books. In Thud Ridge the fire-breathing, true-believing, lemme-at-'em fighter jock is prepared to go anyplace, anytime, to do anything the American people and their President want done. His narrative takes us with him and his tigers who flew out of Thailand to risk all over North Vietnam. Broughton takes the non-aviator into the cockpit with him to feel the complexity of driving the sophisticated bird, the danger from literally all sides, and the growing frustration of a commander losing friends to enemy fire and to American stupidity. In Going Downtown the enemy becomes American political and military leadership rather than the foe in Hanoi.

In his introduction to Thud Ridge, Hanson Baldwin says of the men who flew north, "They risked their lives to the enemy, their careers to the politicians." The political decision not to destroy the Haiphong docks and a key bridge over the Red River at Hanoi early on ensured that friendly air and ground forces would have a difficult and dangerous time locating relatively small packets of enemy war materials hidden in difficult terrain or wending their way south through Laos dispersed under triple canopy jungle. Essential war materials--food, fuel oil, trucks, bulk materials, ammunition, weapons, and heavy equipment--could have been destroyed while stacked in the open or in dockside storage. The decision for incrementalism or gradualism led to pilot and aircraft losses as Russia and China provided massive aid and Moscow helped Hanoi "to establish the most sophisticated air defense system ever tested in war." As the United States upped the ante, the foe had already scurried to prepare successfully for the next level of intensity. Brave pilots paid the price with their lives, by being tortured in the Hanoi Hilton, or both.

Colonel Broughton's scathing criticism of political leadership and military bureaucracy might be written off as the usual warrior resentment of all but his band of brothers. Certainly he does not get high marks for political correctness: "The civilian bean counters with the shiny loafers didn't even know where Downtown was . . . . Those in control would not listen to those who were doing the fighting . . . . His ass really did belong to Uncle, and in this one, Uncle wasn't very concerned about it . . . . Gradualism robbed air power of its effectiveness by violating the principles of concentration and surprise. . . . American air losses over North Vietnam were astronomical and unacceptable." And he names names.

The West Point graduate--a veteran of 25 years of dedicated service; former commander of the Thunderbirds, the elite US Air Force demonstration team; graduate of the prep school for generals, the National War College; survivor of 216 combat missions, 102 of them over North Vietnam and the rest over Korea early in that war--is very angry with political authority. But far more painful and intense is his conviction that he and his comrades were betrayed by his beloved Air Force, whose birth he had witnessed. He asserted that has-beens or toadies dictated operational techniques; Air Force leadership failed to tell political leadership that two-bit targets were not worth the risk of multimillion-dollar birds and crews; pilots who had flown desks too long were malassigned to the Thuds, and those lacking the courage to go Downtown were allowed to opt out of combat while keeping their wings; a multitude of headquarters overlapped, and paper-shufflers vastly outnumbered shooters. And loyalty had become a one-way street.

Had "management" displaced "leadership" in the 1950s as the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies replaced Horatio at the bridge as the model of the modern Major General? Had the evangelists of airpower oversold that arm? Did the Strategic Air Command's focus on the Soviet Union leave the US Air Force ill-prepared for the mission in North Vietnam? Didn't the United States fight a limited war against an enemy engaged in total war? Was the United States confused at the policy, strategic, operational, and tactical levels? One hesitates to shrug off Broughton's broadside as warrior rage.

Broughton set out to tell us what it was like to go Downtown, but his operational account spills over to the big picture. Recently released papers of Lyndon Johnson record his doubt about what to do in Vietnam. His most trusted advisor was Robert McNamara, whose published mea culpa, after 30 years of silence on the subject, reminds the graybeards among us of McNamara's arrogance in the 1960s as he reveled in humbling the generals and admirals and substituted efficiency for effectiveness. By his own admission, he sent tens of thousands of young Americans--and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese of all ages--to their deaths for years after he realized that the war could not be won. He lacked the courage to tell his President the truth.

The dead and maimed of the war in Vietnam had no King Henry to say to McNamara what Shakespeare had Henry say to the disgraced Falstaff, who behaved dishonorably in combat (Henry IV, Part II, Act V, Scene V):

I know thee not, old man . . . .
. . . I banish thee, on pain of death--
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,--
Not to come near our person by ten mile.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ambrose, Stephen E. Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992; Touchstone edition, 1993.

________. Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985; Touchstone edition, 1988.

________. Undaunted Courage. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

Barker, Pat. Regeneration. New York: Dutton, 1992; Plume, 1993.

Beach, Edward L. Run Silent, Run Deep. New York: Henry Holt, 1955.

Blair, Clay. Hitler's U-Boat War, The Hunters, 1939-1942. New York: Random House, 1996.

________. Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1975.

Broughton, Jack. Going Downtown: The War Against Hanoi and Washington. New York: Orion Books, 1988.

________. Thud Ridge. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1969; New York: Bantam Books, 1985.

Buchheim, Lothar Guenther. The Boat. Trans. Denver and Helen Lindley. New York: Knopf, 1975; Bantam Books, 1975; Das Boot in the original German, R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1973.

________. U-Boat War. Trans. Gudie Lawaetz. New York: Knopf, 1978.

Doenitz, Karl. Memoirs. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1990; original German, AthenaeumVerlag Junker und Duennhaupt, K.G., 1958.

Donovan, David (pseud.). Once a Warrior King: Memories of an Officer in Vietnam. New York: McGraw-Hill, Ballantine Books, 1985.

Flanagan, John F. Vietnam Above the Treetops: A Forward Air Controller Reports. New York: Praeger, 1992.

Fluckey, Eugene B. Thunder Below! The USS Barb Revolutionizes Submarine Warfare in World War II. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992.

Forester, C. S. The Ship. Boston: Little, Brown, 1944; New York: Bantam Books, 1954, 1964.

Gallico, Paul. The Snow Goose. New York: Knopf, 1941.

Harrison, Marshall. A Lonely Kind of War: Forward Air Controller, Vietnam. Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1989; New York: Pocket Books, 1990.

Kipling, Rudyard. Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses. London: Methuen, 1894

Mason, Robert. Chickenhawk. New York: Viking Press, 1983; Penguin Books, 1984.

McNamara, Robert S., with Brian VanDeMark. In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. New York: Times Books, 1995.

Michener, James A. The Bridges at Toko-ri. New York: Random House, 1953; Fawcett Crest, 1991.

Monsarrat, Nicholas. The Cruel Sea. New York: Knopf, 1951.

Moran, Charles McMoran Wilson. The Anatomy of Courage. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967; London: Constable, 1945.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. 15 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1947-1962.

________. The Two Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War. Boston: Little, Brown, 1963.

Morris, Donald R. The Washing of the Spears; A History of the Rise of the Zulu Nation Under Shaka and Its Fall in the Zulu War of 1879. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965.

Plaster, John L. SOG: The Secret Wars of America's Commandos in Vietnam. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Schneider, Franz, and Charles Gullans, trans., Last Letters from Stalingrad (New York: Morrow, 1962; Signet, 1965; originally published by C. Bertelsmann Verlag, now Sigbert Mohn Verlag, in 1954 as Letzte Briefe aus Stalingrad.

Shay, Jonathan. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1991; Athenaeum, 1994; Scribner, 1995.

Sledge, E. B. With the Old Breed, at Peleliu and Okinawa. Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1981; Bantam Books, 1983; Oxford Univ. Press, 1990.

Tacitus, Cornelius. The Agricola and the Germania. New York: Penguin Books, 1975.

Werner, Herbert. Iron Coffins: A Personal Account of the German U-Boat Battles of World War II. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1969.

The Reviewer: Colonel Henry G. Gole, USA Ret., served two tours in Vietnam with the 5th Special Forces Group, one of them with MACVSOG, and was an enlisted infantry soldier in Korea during the Korean War. He later taught at the US Military Academy and the US Army War College. He is a graduate of Hofstra University; holds master's degrees from Hofstra, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and Stanford University; and earned a Ph.D. at Temple University.


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Review Essay
On CD-ROM: 20th-Century Military History
FRANK J. STECH
© 1997 Frank J. Stech
To paraphrase Forrest Gump, multimedia CD-ROMs are like a box of chocolates; you never know what's inside until you bite into one. All multimedia CD-ROMs (Compact Disc, Read-Only Memory) are hybrids: in differing degree they show a family resemblance to books, encyclopedias, documentary films, plays, news broadcasts, museum visits, and computer games. CD-ROMs tell their story with a mix of text, photos, art, video, animation, sound and music, and interactive control.

Some CD-ROMs are "random access," like an encyclopedia or a smorgasbord, to be dipped into to find and explore a particular topic or favorite items. Others are "linear," like a book or a banquet, to be experienced from a defined start through to the finish, with perhaps an occasional diversion along the way. Others are for "grazing" and encourage random, leisurely sampling, browsing, and wandering, like an inviting museum or a street of restaurants in a city. Still others are "interactive," like a video game; they go nowhere until the viewer takes the controls and becomes involved.

Most CD-ROMs are index-friendly, so that searching and cross-referencing are a snap and oceans of text information can be trawled efficiently. They have to be that accessible; CD-ROMs store over 600MB (megabytes) of data--think of holding all 15 volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary in the palm of your hand. Photos, art, sounds, and video are less easily indexed and searched than is text.

The technological tidal wave sweeps this hybrid of multimedia style even further. Many CD-ROMs (although none of those reviewed here) now integrate World Wide Web links to Internet sites that provide related information. A CD-ROM item on strategy, for example, could be only a mouse click away from the Army War College's home page on the Web.

A CD-ROM can be very different from a book, museum, documentary, broadcast, or teleplay, which, as traditional media, are basically linear experiences. CD-ROMs can be multidimensional, non-linear, and deeply layered. Just as a battlefield terrain walk provides the visceral feel of the ground, a CD-ROM--perhaps encompassing interactive visual and audio displays of World War I trench systems--can provide an emotional and intellectual sense of the shape of historical times, places, and events. CD-ROMs offer a multimedia opportunity to understand at several levels, to experience opposing perspectives, to see things against varied backgrounds.

The armchair strategist or military historian can now pursue his or her interests with the aid of multimedia CD-ROMs on a growing list of topics. This essay reviews seven titles dealing with 20th-century warfare. One looks at the great generals. Another addresses World War I. Three treat Word War II--one from a worldwide perspective, the others from the perspectives of the Pacific and European theaters. The last two of the CDs cover the D-Day invasion of Europe in 1944. The cost of the CD-ROMs reviewed here ranges from $10 to $15 each, remarkably inexpensive considering the sheer volume of material each contains.

• The Great Generals of the 20th Century. This and the next three titles, produced by FlagTower Multimedia, provide a standard for other CDs to match. Sold separately or as a set, these four titles offer an outstanding introduction to the potential of multimedia for military subjects. They also provide useful audio and visual historical materials for research. Their lack of full-text indexing and their nonstandard file formats make them less useful for reference. Overall, as aids to making the personal computer a tool for learning and teaching, the series offers extraordinary value for the price.

The greatest strengths of the FlagTower CDs are their well-designed interfaces, outstanding narrative content, and superb production qualities. Each CD--FlagTower calls them "interactive documentaries"--can be viewed as a self-running documentary video, offering graphics, film clips, and first-rate narration to tell the story. The viewer can interrupt the narrative to view text, maps, graphic displays, more images, and video. The CDs all begin with an overview of the interface, introducing and explaining all the controls. The interface controls are highly creative, but standard; once you understand the controls for one disc, the others work exactly the same, but each CD has a unique stylistic theme (The Great Generals CD, for example, uses a compass, maps, and medals as icons for the controls).

There are shortcomings: the impressive interface demands careful installation; 8MB of RAM (Random Access Memory) are required, and your video driver may need to be updated. Sources for the history texts are not detailed, and there are few citations. The text cannot be copied (except as a graphic) so extra search capability cannot be added through use of a separate software program that could index the CD's text content. Few photos and videos are captioned, although all audio clips seem to be identified, if not completely sourced. The well-designed user manuals are slightly too large to fit inside the CD "jewel" cases.

The FlagTower production values are superb, comparable to the quality of the Battlefield documentary series seen on many Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television stations. Musical backgrounds and sound effects enhance the drama. Still images are panned and zoomed in video mode, providing outstanding visual appeal (a technique familiar to viewers of Ken Burns' outstanding historical television documentaries). Three-dimensional graphic models of trench defenses or armor tactics are used like interactive museum displays. The pace, timing, and transitions of the narratives reflect the best cinematic techniques.

The narrative content of the FlagTower titles reveals careful and detailed research on each subject and outstanding organization. For example, the generals who are the subjects of this CD are described individually, with a resume, battle experience, pressures of command, broadcasts, and the general's "public face." Behind each of these topics are deeper layers of information. During the narratives, interactive buttons appear, offering details on the general's biography, technology's effect on warfare and the general's story, battle visuals providing graphic explanations of the general's operations or tactics, personalities important to the general's story, battlefield narrations from a soldier's perspective, and fact sheets covering key events. This outline is followed for 15 generals: for World War I--Haig, Hindenberg, Foch, and Allenby; for World War II--Guderian, Rommel, Montgomery, Zhukov, Eisenhower, Patton, MacArthur, and Slim; for the postwar era--Giap, Sharon, and Schwarzkopf. In addition, four mini-documentaries deal with common themes regarding generalship: the life of a general, behavior in combat, reactions under pressure, and the dealings of generals with the media. Each of these essays is outstanding. All officers would do well to view the essay on generalship and the media, a key, if sometimes unsettling, relationship throughout this century and one likely to be just as vital in the next. Each of four titles in the FlagTower series on War in the Twentieth Century includes extensive material on the role of the media.

Taken by themselves, the narratives describing each general seem too brief (uninterrupted, the voice tracks average about ten minutes for each general). To get the full benefit, one must stop the flow with the control buttons and take the interactive excursions. In participating, an impression grows of the significant strategic role each general played, the influences on him, his thinking and sensitivities, and the intricacies of his personality. The details are in the detours, and insights come with these excursions. Of course, one can fault specifics in each general's history. Patton's ivory revolver handles, for example, are mislabeled as pearl. With 15 generals to cover, none of the treatments has the depth of a good biography or memoir. In its way, however, the CD experience is better than simply reading. The viewer who opts to take the excursions controls the depth of his study and can choose to delve into details. The viewer reassembles text, image, and voice, actively participating in reconstructing each general's portrait. It feels like perusing a very good intelligence file while being briefed on an opponent commander. Even as complex a figure as Douglas MacArthur takes shape as the contents of file and brief spread across the screen.

For any course on 20th-century military leadership, this CD is a captivating aid for students, an outstanding tool for instructors. The CD will add enjoyment to the reading of a memoir or biography of these figures. One hopes the military academies give this CD, rather than a marshal's baton, to every cadet to carry in his or her knapsack.

• World War I. FlagTower's disc on "the war to end all wars" compares favorably to the recent six-hour PBS documentary on The Great War, offering far more details and background material. Like the television series, World War I has footage of elderly survivors (one yearns for these old soldiers' names) describing life waist-deep in mud, amidst corpses. With black humor warriors treated skeletons as old friends (as indeed, they were). Siegfried Sassoon's poetic descriptions provide captions for the ghastly scenes from the trenches. The survivors capture our sympathies while the images confirm the horror of this macabre conflict, a nightmare for modern soldiers schooled in mobility and Liddell Hart's indirect approach. Themes covered in the main narratives (each about 25 minutes, if uninterrupted), in addition to the compelling "soldier's life," include an introduction to the conflict, accounts of battles, technologies and tactics, the home fronts, and conclusion. Behind the main narratives are interviews with eminent historians on the five principal belligerent countries. Icons provide paths into a portrait gallery, key personalities, a map room, and "the armory"--data and displays on major weapons.

There are surprising and enlightening details beneath World War I's buttons and icons. How effective, for example, was the first widespread use of battlefield psychological operations? Under these horrific conditions, very. At Caporetto on the Italian Front, German propaganda induced more desertions than the Italians suffered in casualties. Germany, which defines armored warfare in the Second World War, cannot produce a workable tank in the first. How could soldiers living in mud holes withstand weeks of heavy shelling, then gas and tanks? Three-dimensional schematics show how effective elaborate trench killing zones became.

The CD displays the abundant ironies of the war. In 1914 Europe was, despite four decades of stability, ready to explode, as Moltke predicted, "over some dumbkopfig business in the Balkans." A dreadnought naval race helps cause a war in which surface fleets play but a minor role, while submarines outweigh battlewagons in the scales of naval strategy. Fears of the offense generate thoughtless, near-instantaneous war declarations, followed by years of defensive stalemate. The depth of hatreds, both personal and continental, among nations whose leaders are blood relatives, still stuns after 80 years. Toward the end, as World War I shows dramatically, alienation from the inescapable presence of death in "No Man's Land" ruined all but the British and American armies. Mutinies in over 50 divisions brought the French army to its knees. Uprisings among the Russian troops fueled Lenin's revolution. Revolt on the home front ended German will to fight on in trenches that were over one hundred miles from Germany's borders at the Armistice. Europe's nations, having committed to murder each other, turned warriors into cynics, fascists, and revolutionaries. Rather than a war to end all war, this war became causus belli for the next war, and nearly a war to end all sanity. War's madness is shown memorably in World War I.

• World War II. The two-disc World War II is by far the most ambitious and impressive of the titles reviewed. An introduction and a general account of the war provide two of the five main menu selections. "Theaters of War," another menu, offers accounts of western and eastern Europe; the Atlantic, Pacific, and Mediterranean theaters; and Asia. Other menus deal with themes (such as the Holocaust) and the well-designed index. These main selections can be browsed by topics, or by using a timeline to scan events grouped by a particular period. Supplementary screens appear during these narratives for topics including air, land, and sea weapons; art and propaganda; famous broadcasts; eyewitness accounts; medical problems and advances; profiles of key figures; descriptions of key military units; the role of technological breakthroughs; tactics and strategy; life on the home fronts; and miscellany. Well-known weapons are profiled in a format rather like baseball cards--performance data, photo, and description.

Interesting vignettes are nested among the main narratives; for example, the first specially-built aircraft carrier (Japanese, in 1922), the strides made in plastic surgery for Royal Air Force (RAF) crew injuries; the interwar evolution of a theory of bombing civilians; an interview with Oxford Professor Norman Stone on the origins of the war (Stone's conclusion: a world war was unlikely had Hitler not come to power).

Coverage of the military details of the war is basic but thorough. Operation Barbarossa (the German invasion of Russia) is described in detail, but not the deception operations that preceded it. Electronic warfare came into its own in this war, but is hardly mentioned. On the other hand, Special Operations also came into their own, and World War II covers many of the better-known raids: footage of the German glider-borne shaped-charge attack on the Belgian fortress Eben Emael is particularly valuable; Doolittle's raid on Japan is narrated; text panels deal with Bruneval, St. Naizaire, the raid on Rommel, and other classic SpecOps. Like most overview histories, the essential facts are here, but subtleties of real operational significance are sometimes overlooked. That Doolittle's raid tipped Japanese Admiral Yamamoto into the decisive battle of Midway is noted. The unintended consequences of other raids are missed. The airborne raid on Bruneval, for example, netted a German Würzburg radar set for the British Boffins to examine. The real victory was less obvious: the Germans reacted by doubling or tripling the barbed wire around all coastal radar sites, which British photo-interpreters immediately noted and added to the order of battle.

The basic framework of World War II is historical: what happened, why, and how, with what results. The CD smoothly integrates accounts of conflict that encompassed three-quarters of the earth. The narratives provide over ten hours of broad analysis, as well as details of the war's geopolitical and military dynamics. World War II would serve well on the syllabus for an undergraduate modern history course. The documentaries are as encompassing and dramatically produced as those of Battlefield or Victory at Sea. FlagTower's outstanding multimedia production does justice to the defining event of the century.

• War in the Pacific. This FlagTower disc provides more details on the Pacific theater than the overview provided in World War II. The main sections of War in the Pacific cover the inevitability of war, the conflict itself, technology of war, the media war, and reflections on war. Fact sheets provide maps, data on media figures and productions, equipment specifications, personnel, and miscellaneous dispatches.

The Japanese decision to initiate war and the US decision to use the atomic bomb to end it are described in documentary supplements to the section on "the conflict." Another supplement addresses the setting of strategic priorities and the Allies' decision to put "Europe First." Other sections address the victories of Japan and the United States.

New weapon technologies were essential to operating over the great distances of the Pacific, a story told in the "technology of war" section. Separate documentaries deal with the air war, carriers, amphibious forces, submarines, codebreaking, and the development of the atomic bomb through the Manhattan Project.

The "media war" section provides a detailed and engaging comparison of American and Japanese cinema treatments of the Pacific war, as both entertainment and propaganda. Separate documentaries explore US and Japanese censorship and the wartime cinema in both countries. Film excerpts underline the importance of using graphic, emotional media to support a total war. Film representing Doolittle's raid, for example, was used to portray the heinous Japanese treatment of the downed flyers. Japanese war film footage, rarely shown in postwar Japan, provides interesting insights into Tokyo's efforts to sustain mass support in the face of mounting evidence of imminent defeat. Westerners (and Japanese who emulated them) were shown as morally and spiritually corrupt--shades of propaganda from today's fundamentalist states.

• World War II Encyclopedia--The European Theater. As it provides a British view of World War II, this CD from Softkey International reflects the large role played by the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in its production. The CD reminded me of the multimedia displays in the IWM itself, and the CD experience is a little like a tour of the IWM collections and archives. While subtitled European Theater, the CD's graphic materials also cover British operations in the Pacific, Africa, and Mideast.

The CD's best features are its interactive multimedia timeline and the reproductions of the IWM's war art. One uses the timeline by sliding or clicking on a year scale to display events on a particular date in text, photos, videos, and historical audio clips (mostly BBC broadcasts) that explain the unfolding events of the war in Europe. The material has a decidedly British point of view; the war in Russia, for example, rates hardly a mention. Like the displays in the IWM itself, the material emphasizes how the war came about, including strategy in the broadest geopolitical sense, and how the war affected the average Briton on the home front as well as the battlefront. This "Briton's eye view" of the war is the CD's strongest perspective, and also one of its major shortcomings. There are five items on Rommel (whom the average Briton views as something of a demi-hero), but nothing on Guderian or Kesselring, far more significant military figures. In the middle of the treatment of the Western Desert one finds a photo and caption of the Home Guard, to reinforce the human perspective. The CD's presentations lack historical depth, but are strong on the human look of war. Treatments of military tactics and operational art are virtually absent.

The CD's integration of materials is outstanding. For example, the text describing British reaction to Pearl Harbor is accompanied by a Churchill broadcast and a photo of the PM (in his Royal Navy uniform) with Roosevelt. Stacked behind the display are more texts, audios, videos, and photos (indicated by icons) with detailed captions. The timeline display provides pointers to additional screens on subjects from that date. Simply following the timeline provides an engaging multimedia documentary of the war crafted entirely out of contemporaneous materials, rather like following the war in the daily papers and on the wireless. One can also use a detailed index to find other materials.

The text and graphic captions are searchable via key words. Authors and historical sources are not indicated, although archive codes suggest the materials are from IWM collections. Texts and captions are sometimes puzzlingly brief, confusing, or flat wrong. For example, captions describe, without explanation, the "German liberation [sic] of Poland," the "defeat [sic] of the Russians at Stalingrad," and "the [German] liberation [sic] of the territories." Brevity afflicts other items. Dennis Babbage describes the German Enigma coding machine operation, for example, but without diagrams or images the audio narrative is incomprehensible. There are only four maps, from German war diaries. This CD does not attempt to provide the military "big picture," but it excels in presenting the artist's view of war. The IWM collection of military art is outstanding, with reproductions of more than 300 paintings, drawings, and posters. One painting alone was worth the price of the CD: Keith Henderson's Air Gunner in Turret, a stunning and haunting graphic, magnificently evocative of RAF night combat.

The more than 800 photos include an extensive collection of propaganda materials from both sides and extremely high-quality photos of the war leaders. All the art and photos can be displayed full-screen with a mouse click, and their resolution is excellent. The lack of photos of military equipment, however, was disappointing. There seems to be almost an aversion to photos and diagrams of the war materials that are the IWM's most conspicuous holdings. The IWM's collections are outstanding (its air museums are unique) but there are precious few photos of any of this on the CD.

This CD provides only fragments of these fabulous collections and displays, a disappointingly abbreviated memento. But the CD is far less expensive than a trip to Great Britain to visit the museums, and it offers a variety of uniquely enlightening materials and perspectives.

• The Simon & Schuster D-Day Encyclopedia. The first of two D-Day CD-ROMs reviewed, the D-Day Encyclopedia blends well-written texts by world-class historians, engaging video clips of notable participants reminiscing, audio oral history clips, and splendid archival photos. The D-Day Encyclopedia is good enough to be an instruction aid for college students or junior officer instruction. Very much a quality production, the CD-ROM is worthy of its title "encyclopedia."

This CD's strongest feature is outstanding historical scholarship, reflected in the first instance in the credentials of its two editors: David G. Chandler and Brigadier General James Lawton Collins, Jr. Chandler, head of War Studies at Sandhurst, is president emeritus of the British Commission for Military History and the author of volumes on World War II and the Napoleonic Wars. General Collins landed on Utah Beach, commanding the 957th Field Artillery Battalion. He also served in Korea and Vietnam, and he headed the Defense Language Institute. A former Army Chief of Military History, he authored studies of the Vietnam War and edited The History of World War II.

The CD's histories and biographies were provided by 142 of the most notable historians of World War II; both the Allied and Axis sides are well represented. A sample of these world-class authors, less citations of their many well-known works, includes: Stephen E. Ambrose; Stephen Badsey, senior lecturer at Sandhurst; Martin Blumenson, historian at the Naval War College, the Citadel, and the Army War College; Alfred Price, RAF officer, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; Jürgen Rohwer, formerly a Kapitan in the Kriegsmarine, and Earl F. Ziemke, professor at the University of Georgia. The variety and quality of the D-Day Encyclopedia's writers add balance and objectivity to controversial subjects. For example, John Terraine's account of Normandy close-air support reflects the influence of British Field Marshal Montgomery, whose principles of air-ground coordination deserve a salute by American soldiers and airmen. The Field Marshal, never popular with Americans during the war, fully anticipated what we today call Air-Land Battle doctrine.

One expects a D-Day history to provide quality accounts of the amphibious, airborne, and ground operations, and they are here. But one can also find real depth on less obvious topics--for example, detailed biographies of hundreds of World War II leaders, or how strategic air power contributed throughout the buildup to the Normandy operations. The biography, for example, of Brigadier General Frederick L. Anderson, US Army Air Force (the original for the Gregory Peck figure in the film Twelve O'Clock High) reflects the air leadership shifting from strategic to operational tactics as Eisenhower orders the softening up of the invasion targets. There are full explanations of Operation Pointblank, the Oil Plan, the Transportation Plan, and other dynamics of the strategic air campaign. The writing throughout is excellent; each item identifies its author and sources.

Words, as military historians know well, are keys to strategy. The histories on this CD capture the nuances. For example, the USAAF's bombing strategy turned on one general's single phrase. Air Marshal Arthur "Bomber" Harris, head of Bomber Command, had persuaded Winston Churchill to ask Franklin Roosevelt at the Casablanca Conference to order the Eighth US Air Force to join the RAF in night operations and stop their costly daylight bombing. The Eighth's commander, Major General Ira Eaker, summoned to make the USAAF rebuttal, stressed "round-the-clock" bombing. Churchill, captivated by Eaker's phrase, withdrew his opposition to the Americans' daylight bombing. Eaker's Americans continued to fly days; Harris's RAF, the nights.

The same high quality applies to the video clips of D-Day participants recounting their memories of the campaign. Colonel Hans von Luck, then commander of the 125th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, 21st Panzer Division, recalls the G

Considerations for US Strategy in Post-Communist Eurasia
PAUL H. HERBERT


With the collapse of communist and Soviet power in Europe, the slow but steady political and economic reform of the 27 successor newly independent states (NIS), and the impending admission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) of new members, the United States has a real but fleeting opportunity to realize significant strategic gains in post-communist Eurasia in the years to come. Wise policy in pursuit of these opportunities requires recognition of the region's complexity.[1]

The United States has two overriding and closely related regional interests, one immediate, the other long-term. The immediate interest is that the former Soviet Union's weapons of mass destruction and related technologies not threaten the safety of the United States nor that of our allies. Any loss of control over those weapons and any proliferation of them to other states would constitute a potential threat. The longer-term interest is that the region's vast human, natural, and material resources not be dominated by a single power whose values and interests are inimical to ours. Both of these interests can be described in positive terms by stating that the United States has a long-term interest in the integration of all 27 NIS into the cooperative community of secure, free-market democracies.

A Region of Diversity and Change

Our policies in pursuit of these interests must be carried out in a region that is nothing if not diverse. The NIS can be regionally grouped as shown in Figure 1 below. While some such aggregation is necessary to preclude dealing at the strategic level with 27 discrete states, it is also conditional at best. At worst it can lead to false generalizations or assumptions that can undermine strategic analysis and policy. For example, Central European states whose national histories are centuries old might well object to the connotation of youthful inexperience in the term "newly independent." The Baltic states and Romania are determined to assert their identity as Central European. Despite its historical, cultural, and linguistic ties to Russia, Ukraine likewise seeks an independent identity as a neutral Central European state. Classifying Romania and Moldova as Balkan states is geographically inaccurate. It also might imply to some Moldovans an historical and cultural tie to Romania inconsistent with their strong desire for independence. But neither is Moldova Russian, or Ukrainian, or Caucasian.

Regions of Newly Independent States (Populations in Millions)
Central European (Total = 64.6)
Czech Republic (10.4)
Hungary (10.3)
Poland (38.5)
Slovakia (5.4) Old Russia (Total = 211)
Belarus (10.3)*
Russia (148.6)*
Ukraine (51.8)*
Baltic States (Total = 8.0)
Estonia (1.6)
Latvia (2.7)
Lithuania (3.7) The Caucasus (Total = 15.5)
Armenia (3.3)*
Azerbaijan (7.1)*
Georgia (5.4)*
Balkans (Total = 64.5)**
Albania (3.3)
Bosnia-Herzegovina (4.6)
Bulgaria (8.8)
Croatia (4.7)
FYROM (Macedonia) (2.7)
Moldova (4.5)*
Romania (23.2)
Serbia (10.7)
Slovenia (2.0) Central Asia (Total = 53)
Kazakhstan (17.2)*
Uzbekistan (22.1)*
Kyrgystan (4.4)*
Tajikistan (5.4)*
Turkmenistan (4.2)*
* Members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (see map at Figure 3).
** See map of Balkans at Figure 2.
Figure 1. Newly Independent States, Grouped by Region.

The populations of most of these states are also quite mixed by ethnicity, language, religion, and culture, compounding the difficulty of national cohesion within currently recognized borders. Many states (e.g., Georgia, Moldova, Romania, Tajikistan, Ukraine) have significant minorities whose ethnic, historical, and cultural identity is toward another neighboring state. The largest such minority is the ethnic Russians. The collapse of the Soviet Union left an estimated 22 to 25 million ethnic Russians living within the NIS, some of them third- and fourth-generation residents. Their status ranges from fairly thorough assimilation, as in Kazakhstan, to ostracism as an unwanted remnant of Soviet domination, as in the Baltic states. Their plight has deep resonance within Russian society. Russia has asserted a national interest in their welfare, which, in turn, its neighbors find threatening. Compounding these difficulties is the movement throughout the former Soviet space of what can be described as ethnic refugees, that is, persons of certain ethnic origins forcibly removed from their homelands by Joseph Stalin's regime who are now attempting to return. The number of such refugees has been estimated at nine million.[2]

If national identities are not entirely clear, neither are the borders themselves. The collapse of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe has reawakened historical disputes over borders that go back to the Congress of Vienna or earlier, while some successor states to the Soviet Union, especially in Central Asia, are bounded by administrative lines drawn specifically to divide powerful ethnic groups. Unsettled questions of territory, nationality, and citizenship have significant implications for political stability, economic development, and security, as recent and ongoing conflicts in Armenia, the Balkans, Chechnya, Georgia, and Tajikistan clearly illustrate.

The NIS also differ dramatically from each other in terms of the transitions they are making, and it is here that policymakers must be very careful to perceive important differences. There are at least five transitions taking place in each state. No two states are at the same point in all five, which makes each state's transition unique. The five transitions taking place are from communism to something else; from command to market economies; from underdevelopment to modernity; from domination to independence; and from global or regional power to a lesser status for the near term.

Political Change

The political change from communism to something else varies widely among the NIS. No two states began with the same experience under "communism," which varied significantly from country to country and from time to time. Hungary's "goulash communism" was significantly different from Nicolae Ceaucescu's cult of personality in neighboring Romania, for example. Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia steadfastly pursued his own brand of communism independent of the Kremlin, and Albania just as steadfastly maintained its brand independent of Tito. The Central Asian Soviet Socialist Republics accepted communist slogans and labels and Russian apparatchiki from Moscow, while maintaining some of their traditional ways of life, including the importance of clan relationships in local political arrangements.



Figure 2. The Balkan States (shown in white in original).

During the same period, we in the West so long equated "not communist" with "democratic" that we tended to perceive the collapse of communism as the prelude to the inevitable emergence of democracy. The simultaneous collapse of both communist and Soviet power has indeed opened the gates to Western and democratic influences. But it has also allowed other political values to emerge; meanwhile communism, as the Russian elections show, is by no means extinct. So exactly what kind of political structures will develop in any given state remains to be seen.[3]

Economic Development

In many countries, political development will parallel economic development, and here the variety is as great as the conditions are daunting. Because under communism products did not have to compete, every state inherited an outmoded and near-obsolete industrial plant. Soviet and satellite industry was heavily skewed toward defense and does not now easily convert to consumer or domestic production. For ideological and security reasons, central planners scattered industries widely. Thus the Slovak Republic is the heir to factories that built aircraft fuselages, while Poland built the wings, and Ukraine built the engines. No one satellite state built the entire aircraft. In Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Russia, the Soviet government built many medium-sized cities, each for the sole purpose of housing workers for a single defense enterprise that is now defunct. The workers and managers who emerged from communism brought with them little or no experience in free-market techniques. Under communism, there existed no body of business law to protect investors, owners, managers, workers, or customers, nor is there now a legal culture by which people expect fair treatment under known and impartially applied laws.

National responses to these conditions have not been uniform. Poland's "shock therapy" (by which the government rapidly divested itself of almost all state-owned enterprises while encouraging foreign investment and writing laws to protect business) caused massive dislocation and discontent, but now seems to be bearing the fruit of a rising gross domestic product and standard of living. By contrast, Bulgaria has yet to privatize its huge state enterprises and thus endures the triple disadvantage of low foreign investment, high government debt, and unemployment and worker discontent. The Czech Republic hopes to become a competitive producer through a strategy of privatization, modernization, and defense conversion. Less-developed states like Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan look to resource extraction as the engine of their developing economies, while still others, such as Georgia and the Baltic states, hope to benefit from the transshipment of goods through their territories.

These economic conditions have political and international repercussions. Privatization schemes in the absence of effective laws invite corruption and organized crime. Foreign investment brings with it highly visible hallmarks of foreign culture which is not always welcome. The image of foreign investors and local entrepreneurs enriching themselves through privileged acquisition of former state properties, service sector businesses, and mineral extraction--while once productive arms factories and their work forces lie idle--is ripe for exploitation by nationalist ideologues. Workers must work, and so governments are under intense pressure to pursue inflationary spending practices that inhibit development and foreign assistance, notably from the International Monetary Fund. Russian arms sales to China, India, Iraq, and Iran, and nuclear assistance to Iran and Cuba, can be seen in part as acts of economic desperation; by exporting what it can to the only people who will buy the product, Russia seeks to keep a hard-pressed sector of the economy afloat.

Underdevelopment to Modernity

A third dimension of change is from underdevelopment to modernity. It is fair to call nearly all the 27 NIS "underdeveloped." They all are characterized by a standard of living and quality of life far below what should have been possible given their potential. Despite impressive scientific, industrial, and military accomplishment due to concentrated government effort, and the provision for most citizens' very basic needs, the societies under communism did not prosper and advanced only fitfully and slowly.

The degree of initial underdevelopment and the degree of progress toward modernity since the collapse of communism vary greatly from country to country. Countries with a cohesive population, a nascent middle class of intellectuals, a relatively modern infrastructure, relative confidence in their security, and close proximity to developed sponsors have made great strides: Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Estonia are among this group of states. Countries without such good fortune--Slovakia, Georgia, Armenia, and Tajikistan--are much further down the scale. Whether the bulk of its people see modernization as exhilarating, threatening, or simply impossible depends largely upon a state's position on this difficult scale.

From Domination to Independence

A fourth important dimension of change is the transition from domination to independence. Here again, despite very general similarities, the transition is unique in every case. The collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the withdrawal of Soviet military forces from Central Europe did in fact grant to the non-Soviet and Baltic states their long-desired independence. These countries are able to hark back to a pre-World War II national existence against which their postwar experience can be seen as a long, painful, but temporary interruption. They are again nation-states, and they have embraced their national identities with gusto in a profusion of flags, symbols, slogans, and songs. Nevertheless, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania feel constrained by their Russian minorities, their proximity to Russia, and Russian rhetoric that implies only halfhearted acceptance of their independence.

For other countries the situation is more problematic. Clearly, the national identity and independence of the Balkan states is still very much an open question, with Slovenia alone having made the transition relatively peacefully and with no immediate threat currently visible. Belarus has no tradition of independence, nor does Ukraine. Despite considerable domestic opposition, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko openly seeks complete reintegration with Russia, while Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma just as vigorously pursues complete independence. Georgia, with a centuries-old national identity founded on religion and ethnicity, enjoys only de jure independence. Russian peacekeeping troops enforce the de facto separation of Abkhazia from Georgia, and several thousand more Russian soldiers occupy key points throughout the country and patrol Georgia's southern border with Turkey. Under the mantle of peacekeeping, Russian forces likewise patrol the separatist Transdniester region that splinters Moldova; they also play a direct role on the government side in what amounts to an ethnic civil war in Tajikistan.

For most of the former Soviet republics, the Baltic states excepted, the issue of true national independence poses a dilemma. They face both centrifugal and centripetal forces relative to the former capital in Moscow. On the one hand, they genuinely relish their independence. Their memory of the Soviet Union is painful on two counts, first, that it was communist and second that it was Russian. Communism required subservience to an all-powerful center in Moscow and to a stifling orthodoxy that stunted economic growth, repressed local tradition, culture, and religion, and enforced through terror a depressing and impersonal sameness on nearly everyone. Because of the central role played by Russia and Russians in this system, the non-Russian republics equate their sad experience with Russian domination and are therefore highly suspicious at best of Russian intentions toward their nations now.

On the other hand, these states cannot escape either their history or their geography. Their Soviet experience is not regarded as universally bad. In the minds of many, it provided a far greater degree of social justice than appears to be the case in capitalist countries. The states have strong economic, cultural, political, and security links with Russia and with each other. Russian is the one language spoken by nearly everyone throughout the region. Nearly all significant real property is of Russian manufacture. They are important trading partners for each other. They have common security interests with regard to China, India, and the Middle East. For all these reasons, many of these states seek close cooperation with each other. Some degree of regional reintegration is probably inevitable.

No institution illustrates these tendencies more than the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), formed in 1991 from the remnants of the Soviet Union and embracing 12 former socialist republics (see Figure 3). The member states have widely divergent notions of what the CIS should be. Russia takes the maximalist position that it should be a very strong organization that includes security, defense, and foreign policy dimensions, and the elimination of customs barriers. Russia tries to differentiate between CIS internal and external borders and claims an interest in helping member states patrol their external borders.



Figure 3. The Commonwealth of Independent States (shown in white in original).

With the probable exception of Belarus, no other member seeks such close integration. For every step toward integration, some members take a step back. Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgystan recently signed a treaty calling for greater economic cooperation and integration. But Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan almost immediately thereafter joined with Uzbekistan to create a combined peacekeeping battalion and offer it for use worldwide, significantly not under CIS control but only under United Nations auspices. Likewise, these Central Asian states have formed their own trade association and have invited Turkey to participate in their discussions. Nearly every former Soviet republic denounced the Russian Duma's non-binding vote in March 1996 to declare the dissolution of the Soviet Union illegal. Economic cooperation, but not political union or military alliance, seems to be the desire of most CIS members.

Energy is a central element in the related issues of economic development and national independence. Russia is the key supplier of oil, natural gas, and nuclear technology to almost all its neighbors, whether CIS members or not. The dependency of its neighbors is magnified by the depletion (as in Romania) or absence (as in Ukraine) of indigenous resources; the environmental drawbacks to coal, as in Poland; and the strong need for low-cost energy sources in each of the developing economies. As Western technology, investment, and business practices take hold, Russia will become a more important energy exporter, enjoying both the influence that comes with supplier status and the sorely needed foreign currency and credits that come with energy sales.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, several NIS are now potential competitors with Russia for the energy export market. Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan all hope to benefit directly from the exploitation of the Caspian Sea and other oil and natural gas fields. Iran, Turkey, Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Armenia are in competition for the pipeline routes that will carry those resources to ports and the international market. A pipeline through Kazakhstan to China is under consideration. With a growing economy and lacking easily accessible indigenous energy resources, China will be very interested in the energy potential of Central Asia. Thus far, these states have asserted their interests largely through diplomacy and the creation of international consortiums in which US and other Western companies have played a major part.

The stakes in this development are great indeed. In addition to the obvious economic benefits, energy suppliers have tremendous influence on the international scene. They can affect world markets. They have a powerful influence over energy-dependent customers. The possession of lucrative oil fields and pipelines can foster independence, domination, or both. A powerful neighbor may attempt to dominate a state whose energy resources it covets. Those same resources may provide to other powerful actors an interest in the state's continued independence, as the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War so aptly illustrates. This is not to say that the exploitation of energy resources in the former Soviet Union will necessarily lead to military conflict. No state in the region has the military capability, political will, or financial resources for such conflict at present. However, in the development of their energy resources, many of the NIS and other countries have important interests as well as rich opportunities for both cooperation and confrontation.

Changes in Relative Power

The fifth and final transition--changes in the relative power of the former Soviet states--has been most dramatic for Russia, where a sense of national humiliation attends both the loss of empire and the nearly universal rejection of an ideology widely associated with Russia. If there is a national longing for greatness in Russia, there is also an awareness that for the moment, Russia's power and influence are not great. In other former Soviet republics, elation at independence is balanced to some degree with a similar sense of loss. Ukrainians may wonder aloud whether the sacrifices made to give up their nuclear weapons have been appreciated and compensated as they consider French nuclear testing, the enlargement of NATO, and feeble international assistance with the Chernobyl cleanup. Kazakhstan may have similar misgivings, while Belarus's quirky president has tried to hold his 18 remaining SS-20s hostage against NATO enlargement. Yugoslavia stands almost universally condemned and isolated for her aggression in this century's fifth Balkan war.[4]

Because one pole of the bipolar world collapsed, too much emphasis can be placed on the apparent loss of power and prestige and its presumed psychological consequences. No successor state enjoys the power or prestige of the old Soviet empire. However, each successor state, with the possible exception of Russia, enjoys far more influence as an independent nation than it ever did as a mere part of the old empire. Russia, liberated from the crushing economic burden of maintaining that empire, is the sole heir of the empire's nuclear weapons and retains the old Soviet seat on the United Nations Security Council. Russia enjoys a certain degree of respect, so far not entirely eroded by the war in Chechnya, for its role in the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union. Russia's shaky transition to democracy captivates the world's attention and ensures continued Western assistance with economic recovery. As a member of the Council of Europe, Russia aspires to convert the G-7 into the G-8. Most important, Russia shares with the other successor states an unprecedented degree of engagement with the rest of the world.

Opportunities for the United States and for Europe

These widely varied conditions provide both opportunities and risks for the United States, and call for a well-balanced, flexible, and long-term strategy focused on three distant goals: democracy, development, and integration. The collapse of the Soviet threat in Europe was one of the most momentous geopolitical realignments of this century. It allowed the United States and its allies to shift attention and resources to domestic needs while consolidating democracy and stability in Europe and pursuing engagement in other parts of the globe where the need is great. A return to anything like the Cold War in Europe--for example, a "cold peace" between an enlarged NATO and a brooding, partially reintegrated, nuclear armed, and uncooperative Greater Russia--would be a tremendous strategic setback.

By contrast, there is an alternative future that goes well beyond the mere absence of the old Soviet threat. That future includes integration of the former communist states of Europe with the West; a working partnership with a secure, prosperous, and democratic Russia; and further integration of the remaining NIS through multiple international organizations.

An American policy that can foster such a future will rest on several fundamentals. First, Russia is key. That state will be a significant regional economic and military power within the next generation, one that aspires to "greatness," meaning an international role as well as a regional role. Russia has legitimate security interests in Europe, the Caucasus and Middle East, Southern Asia, Eastern Asia, and the Pacific. Russia's success in the transition to democracy and a free market, assurance of its own security through transparent defense cooperation with its neighbors, and engagement as an active partner of the West--all are of tremendous strategic importance to the United States.

Second, some degree of reintegration of the former Soviet republics is not only inevitable but probably in the best interests of some republics; the United States should not reflexively oppose such an evolution. The process of reintegration must be peaceful, voluntary, and democratic. Reintegration that respects sovereignty, fosters trade and development, reassures mutual security, and promotes democracy and international cooperation is not to be feared in the West. A CIS that really is a commonwealth and really has independent member states could be an important partner. Russia's greatest challenge is to show its neighbors that reintegration as described above is possible; it will likely be a long, hard sell. The United States and its Western allies, and Western security organizations which the United States does not lead, can meanwhile play an important, constructive role as trusted third parties, encouraging and assisting the normalization of international relations among the former Soviet republics, including reintegration where that is desired.

Third, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization remains central to American interests in Europe and must be preserved as a working organization of like-minded democratic states. Its intended enlargement presents considerable difficulties and will require extremely careful management. To deny NATO membership to those Central European states who earnestly seek it and who meet the requirements could alienate them for generations. It could well forestall their evolution to democracy and relegate them to a nonaligned buffer zone between Western Europe and Russia that would present a constant source of fear and instability. Although an enlarged Alliance would present significant challenges in terms of consensus decisionmaking and the viability of Article V guarantees, it is nonetheless politically imperative, especially now that it has been publicly and repeatedly proclaimed as policy.

The key to NATO enlargement is to achieve it without sacrificing future Russian partnership. To do so requires taking account of Russian domestic political realities and strategic considerations. Domestically, any Russian government must respond to the popular perception of NATO enlargement as "moving NATO tanks to our borders." Years of communist propaganda equated NATO with earlier and real threats to Russia from the West. The lingering suspicion is exploited by a variety of Russian politicians. It must be countered by clear and convincing evidence that an enlarged NATO does not pose a military threat to Russia. Strategically, Russians fear that an enlarged NATO will place a defensive shield over historical antagonists who then will be able to pursue hostile policies with impunity. The response here is engagement and cooperation between the Alliance and Russia on matters of mutual interest. Some progress has been made: management of the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty and Russian participation in the Implementation Force (IFOR) in Bosnia-Herzegovina are examples. As the new government stabilizes following the Russian elections and President Yeltsin's recovery from surgery, NATO could take a positive step forward by offering that government a formal structure of consultation with NATO as the Alliance evolves and enlargement takes place.

Fourth, the United States enjoys considerable influence at the moment and must use it constructively. The euphoria that attended the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War has given way to more sober assessments by all participants. Initially disappointed over the absence of a new Marshall Plan for post-communist Europe and frustrated with the early results of reform and the slow pace of integration, the 27 NIS are developing a more realistic determination to build their countries anew largely on their own.[5] There is little reflexive hostility to the West and considerable admiration. They look to the United States and the West for security and economic assistance and inspiration. The United States, while carefully prioritizing its commitments, must remain engaged and involved and meet these expectations to the best of its abilities. Nothing could be more damaging to the long-term prospects for a new community of cooperative democracies in Europe than the sense of abandonment that would attend any significant disengagement by the United States in the near term.

Finally, the United States must not be deterred by the appearance of temporary setbacks. The complexity of transitions taking place means that our goals are necessarily long-term. Democracy will not bloom overnight in any of the NIS, nor will peaceful or just solutions be found to every one of the region's manifold challenges. Each state has its own notions of its interests which are not always--or even necessarily--compatible with our own. However, not only is the Cold War over, but the end of the Cold War is over. The people of the former Soviet empire are now actively rebuilding their societies, for better or worse. The United States is not in the position of dominance that it enjoyed in the reconstruction of postwar Germany and Japan and so must pursue other, more conservative strategies. But our goal should be similar. A democratic, free-market, integrated, and cooperative community of nations embracing our former foes of the Cold War is possible and most assuredly in the security interests of the United States.



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NOTES

1. This article is based on the author's experience as the Senior Army Fellow to the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies at Garmisch, Germany, for academic year 1995-96. The Center's College of Security Studies and Defense Economics conducts two five-month courses annually, each for about 75 military and civilian officials of the post-communist NIS. The courses seek to demonstrate how the Western democracies manage security affairs and thereby to encourage democratic reform in the NIS. As a student and classmate in one course, and a faculty member for another, the author had a unique opportunity for extensive dialogue with important leaders from almost all 27 NIS. This experience was supplemented during his fellowship and since with travel to Albania, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

2. Francois Heisbourg, "Population Movements in Post-Cold War Europe," Survival, 33 (January-February 1991), 31-44.

3. For a provocative essay on the differences between democratization, modernization, and Westernization, see Samuel P. Huntington, "The West: Unique, not Universal," Foreign Affairs, 75 (November- December 1996), 28-46.

4. Yugoslavia here means the current federation by that name, comprising Serbia and Montenegro.

5. Recent elections across Central Europe emphasize this pragmatic trend: "Seven years after the fall of communism, millions looking for better lives across this region simply took advantage of an opportunity that democracy gave them. They voted for change." ("Across Eastern Europe, Voters Are Choosing Any Kind of Change," The Washington Post, 12 November 1996.)


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Colonel Paul Herbert (US Army) is Chief of the Strategic Concepts Branch, J-5, the Joint Staff, in Washington. An infantry officer and graduate of the US Army War College, he holds a Ph.D. in history from Ohio State University. He was the 1995-96 Senior Army Fellow to the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch, Germany.
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http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Paramet...ing/herbert.htm

August Tuesday 31st 2004 (00h33) :
LETTER FROM RET. MARINE CSM AND RET. MARINE MAJOR
74 comment(s).
As a military family with a combined total of 57 years of active service in the U. S. Army, myself, son, and daughter-in-law have accumulated over 80 combat medals, one or more of us have served in Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama, El Salvador, Kosovo, Bosnia, and three of us served together during Desert Storm. My son recently returned from the Iraq War, his third war, and, being fed up with Bush lies and back-to-back deployments, applied to be discharged from his "indefinite enlistment" status.

Six days later he was under investigation for making "disloyal comments" about George Bush...which amounted to saying in general conversation with other soldiers that "Bush should have never started the war" and "Bush is no military leader." He was charged under Article-15 and was denied an attorney and could not cross-examine the case against him. His 14 years of military service up to this point was flawless, he was an excellent soldier, and in spite of numerous superiors who testified in his favor, he was demoted and sentenced to 45 days of extra duty.

His crime involved nothing more than expressing his personal political opinion as guareeteed under the Bill of Rights, the very document that he had risked his life defending. Our government claims to be fighting for democracy, however those who risk their lives for democracy are being denied their basic rights of freedom of speech and opinion. My friends, the Bill of Rights and democracy are dead under the Bush Administration. This is only a sampling of what will happen if this administration is re-elected.

For generations we have been a loyal and faithful military family, however with this recent action taken against a member of our family, we will no longer encourage military service to our future generations. In other words, we are going to do the same thing that Bush, Cheney, Wolfovitz, and most members of congress do, WE AIN’T SERVING NO MORE!!

The Iraq War was based on lies and exaggerations, poor intelligence, a mass deception with no rhymne nor reason for invading Iraq. For those who still have kids and loved ones in this illegal war, our blessings and best wishes go out to you. We pray for their safe return. It is refreshing to see an organization like Military Families Speak Out because our active service members are silenced by the system and need all the voices that can be mustered.

Charlie C. Carlson II
Command Sergeant-Major USA Ret.
Dot Diehl-Carlson
[Ex-Major USA Vietnam Vet]

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=3117

Golly gee, if he had as much Military service as he says he does he should have known he would get his butt in a crack for saying something like that.

And if his Daddy was a Command Sergeant Major in the United States Army ought to know there ain't no such thing as free speech when it comes to bad mouthing your chain of command.

By the way ghost, he would have been charged with insubordination, I never heard of something called "disloyal comments".

Chief Master Sergeant Frances M. Arnold was born on 20 November 1928 in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. She enlisted in the United Stated Air Force in May 1952 where she served for six years.

While in the Air Force she became the Administrative Supervisor in her shop. This was during a time when women were a minority with little or no representation, but she was still able to attain the rank of Staff Sergeant. After her discharge from the Air Force, SSgt Arnold spent a short time in the Air Force Reserve and enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard in February 1969 as an Administrative Specialist.

During her long and distinguished Air National Guard career she accomplished many Texas “firsts”. Because of her innate ability to lead and influence people, she was appointed First Sergeant in Headquarters, Texas Air National Guard and then promoted to the rank of Chief Master Sergeant.

She was the first female Chief Master Sergeant in the Texas National Guard and Air Reserve Forces. Recognizing her leadership potential and management qualities she was then selected by the commander to be the first Senior Enlisted Advisor for the Air Guard in Texas – a first for a female. During her tenure as the Senior Enlisted Advisor, she fought many battles for all enlisted personnel.

In recognition of her dedicated service to the State and Nation, she was awarded the Air Force Good Conduct Medal, the Texas Outstanding Service Medal and many other state and federal awards. Chief Master Sergeant Frances Arnold stands out in the minds of many members of the Texas Air Guard as being a real-life legend in breaking ground for all enlisted personnel as well as for all females serving in the Texas National Guard.

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The Hall Of Honor
is sponsored and maintained
by Gary Butler

William N. Hensley was born on 14 August 1918 in Pasadena, California. He graduated as the valedictorian of his class at Cumberland University at age twenty. He taught at Cumberland until he was old enough to take the Texas bar exams in 1939, which he passed with the highest grade ever achieved.

He enlisted in the Army’s Enlisted Reserve Corps in 1937. He was commissioned in 1941 and received his pilot rating. He was called to active duty immediately after Pearl Harbor, and by 1944 was promoted to Major.

He was shipped to Guam where he commanded the 16th Bombardment Squadron and led bombing missions against Japan, flying 105 combat hours and receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal, numerous other awards and decorations and was credited with participating in four major campaigns. He was released from active duty in 1946.

On 1 January 1947 he became the District Attorney for Bexar County and the same year he helped to organize the 182nd Fighter Squadron as its commander.

His unit was called to active duty during the Korean Conflict and he underwent F-84E training at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia. While enroute back to Langley from San Antonio, his plane crashed and burned just north of Houston, Texas on 10 May 1951. His dedication to duty and faith was symbolized by a small Bible and Texas flag found in his pocket at the scene of the crash.

He was honored with the naming of the Hensley Hanger of the 149th Tactical Fighter Wing, Kelly Air Force Base, dedicated to his memory.

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The Hall Of Honor
is sponsored and maintained
by Gary Butler

Chief Master Sergeant James D. Johnston was born in Temple, Texas on 28 May 1930. He attended Alamo Heights High School in Alamo Heights, Texas, and in 1948 joined the Texas Air National Guard as a member of the 182nd Fighter Interceptor Squadron. He attended a 26 week technical training course at Fort Francis E. Warren, Wyoming, where he graduated with honors.

In 1956, he was assigned as an Automotive Mechanic in the 149th Fighter Group, Texas Air National Guard. In 1957, he was reassigned to the Ground Equipment shop, where he served as foreman from 1960 – 1979. In June 1979, he was reassigned as Transportation Foreman. On October 2, 1986, he became the aircraft mechanic general foreman, and shortly thereafter was promoted to grade of chief master sergeant. He retired from the Air technician Program after 32 years service in 1985. Thereafter, he served four years on the Senior Enlisted Advisory Council, TXANG and two years as the State Senior Enlisted Advisor.

Sergeant Johnston was a member of the Alamo RAMS serving as treasurer, vice president, and on the board of directors. He is a charter member of the Air Force Sergeants Association, as well as a member of Alamo Chapter of Air Force Association. He is also an active Life Member of National Guard Association of Texas and the Masonic Order. He has served on the board of directors for the Security Services Federal Credit Union for 17 years.

In recognition of his long and dedicated service, Sergeant Johnston was awarded the Lone Star Distinguished Service Medal, the Korean Service Medal and numerous other state and federal Awards. Among his civilian awards is the Minuteman Award from the National Guard Association of Texas.

Chief Master Sergeant Johnston is the epitome of a citizen soldier. His dedication to his community and his loyalty to his state and nation serve as a shining example for his fellow citizens and future Airmen of Texas Air National Guard.

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The Hall Of Honor
is sponsored and maintained
by Gary Butler

Chief Master Sergeant Mata was born in San Antonio, Texas on 29 October 1925. He attended Lanier High School, graduating in 1941, after which he began his military career in the U.S. Army on 6 January 1944.

He served in Central Europe and the Rhineland from 30 October 1944 to 10 June 1946. On 25 June 1946 he was released from active duty and continued to serve in the Enlisted Reserve Corps.

He enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard on 22 March 1948 and was assigned to Detachment C, 236th Air Service Group at Brooks Air Force Base. On 10 October 1950 his unit was mobilized for the Korean War. After serving in Japan and Korea, he was released from active duty and returned to serve with the 136th Supply Squadron at Brooks Air Force Base.

During his service with the Texas Air Guard, he played a key role in the modernization of his unit’s logistic program and in leading the unit to exceptional levels of achievement resulting in the Air Force Outstanding Unit Award with Oak Leaf Cluster and three awards of the Air Defense Command “A” Award. He was always a role model to his unit and was widely respected and admired as a leader of men. In addition to his accomplishments at unit level, he served on numerous National Guard Bureau logistics committees as well as a member of the Texas National Guard Association Board of Directors and Legislative Task Force. He retired 57 October 1985 as a member of the 149th Resource Management Squadron.

In recognition of his 37 years service to his state and nation spanning two wars, Chief Mata was awarded the Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, Good Conduct Medal, Air Reserve Forces Meritorious Service Medal with six Oak Leaf Clusters, the Lone Star Distinguished Service Medal and numerous other awards and decorations.

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The Hall Of Honor
is sponsored and maintained
by Gary Butler

30 years after war's end, U.S., Vietnam focusing on mutual interests
Submitted by: American Forces Press Service
Story Identification #: 200552111446
Story by Ms. Donna Miles



WASHINGTON (April 29, 2005) -- Thirty years ago, the last U.S. helicopter lifted off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, South Vietnam, marking the official end of the Vietnam War.

The decade-long conflict left 58,000 Americans and an estimated three million Vietnamese dead, and for the next two decades, relations between the United States and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam remained at an impasse.

But 30 years after the war's end, the two countries have reached an unprecedented level of cooperation, U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Michael Marine told participants at the March 17, Texas Tech 5th Triennial Vietnam Symposium in Lubbock, Texas.

This cooperation extends to security, trade and investment, health, education and culture.

Marine delivered his assessment two weeks before the frigate USS Gary arrived in Ho Chi Minh City for a five-day port call, the third Navy ship to visit Vietnam since the war's end.

The visit marked the 10th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries and a warming of military relations between the former foes.

"Now we must put aside the past, and I think we should look forward to the future," Vietnamese Col. Bui Van Nga told the Associated Press during the frigate's visit.

Marine said the United States and Vietnam are putting their differences aside to find common ground in a wide range of issues, including counter-terrorism and regional stability.

"Vietnam and the United States stand together in opposition to the global scourge of terrorism," Marine said, noting that Vietnam has become an active participant in regional counter-terrorism efforts.

Vietnam also shares U.S. opposition to the development and spread of weapons of mass destruction, he said.

As a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors, Vietnam has publicly called on North Korea to honor its commitment to give up its nuclear-weapons program. "This is of no small significance considering the traditionally close ties between Hanoi and Pyongyang," Marine said.

"Both countries (the United States and Vietnam) desire peace in the Asia-Pacific region and believe that there can be no economic growth and prosperity without a stable security environment," he said. The two countries also share a mutual interest in seeing that strong regional institutions address security challenges, such as international crime, drugs and environmental threats, he said.

A bilateral agreement signed by the two countries last year lends American expertise to Vietnamese law enforcement agents working to stem the flow of drugs into and through Vietnam, Marine said.

"We are hopeful that by building bridges this way, we will be able in the future to expand our cooperation to include more direct cooperative efforts to shut down drug traffickers and other criminal organizations," he said.

But as the two countries look toward a more cooperative future, Marine said, they're helping heal old wounds by working together to find answers to the fate of missing service members in Vietnam, including 1,800 from the United States.

"As we mark the 30th anniversary of the end of the war, we must not forget those on both sides who made the ultimate sacrifice during the terrible conflict," he said. "The best way to do this is to remain steadfast in our efforts to achieve the fullest possible accounting of our missing personnel from the Indochina conflict."

Cooperation in this endeavor enabled the United States and Vietnam to move relations forward on other fronts and remain a top priority, he said.

Marine said he regularly urges the Vietnamese government to maintain its cooperation and to take concrete steps to allow full access to all archival records, renewed joint activities in the Central Highlands, and a concerted effort to conduct underwater activities.

"Right now, there are teams spread out across Vietnam conducting investigations and recovery activities," he said. He referred to five recovery teams, two research and investigative teams and an investigation team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command that deployed to Vietnam in early March.

The Defense Department announced the most recent success in this effort April 12. Two Army officers missing from the Vietnam War since 1971, Col. Sheldon Burnett and Chief Warrant Officer Randolph Ard, were positively identified and their remains were returned to their families for burial.

Four former North Vietnamese soldiers were instrumental in identifying the site where the two officers' OH-58A Kiowa helicopter went down near the Laos border, defense officials said.

"I want to thank the dedicated men and women -- both American and Vietnamese -- who work so hard to find answers for the loved ones of these soldiers," Marine said of the overall POW/MIA recovery initiative.

As these efforts advance, Marine acknowledged, areas remain in which the United States and Vietnam still don't see eye-to-eye, including Vietnam's human rights record. He vowed that the United States would continue pushing Vietnam to improve on progress slowly being made.

But these differences aside, Marine said, the two countries have come a long way since the fall of Saigon 30 years ago and the reestablishment of diplomatic relations just a decade ago.

"When one considers how far apart the United States and Vietnam once were, how implacably against each other we were -- and it wasn't that long ago -- I believe it's a testament to the efforts in both countries to build bridges, foster communication and create an atmosphere of trust and understanding," he said. "I can assure you that these efforts will continue."


http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...light=2,vietnam

United States Marine Corps

Press Release
Division of Public Affairs
Headquarters, U. S. Marine Corps
Washington, D. C. 20380-1775
Telephone: 703-614-4309 DSN 224-4309 Fax 703-695-7460
Contact: American Forces Press Service

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Release # 0624-03-0532
June 23, 2003

Joe Collins: Career Officer, Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary

WASHINGTON--By Casie Vinall
Special to American Forces Press Service

When the Army commissioned Joseph J. Collins as a second lieutenant in 1970, the Long Island, N.Y., native never dreamed his service career would take him to the top echelons of the Pentagon.

"I was just your standard typical M-1, A-1 infantry officer," Collins recalled of his early days in uniform, referring to the old model military rifle. Over the next 28 years, along with command and staff positions in infantry and armor units, his military career encompassed teaching at the United States Military Academy and the National War College. He also served as chief speechwriter for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and as an Army staff officer for NATO and Central European issues.

Retiring in 1998 as a full colonel, Collins began a new life in the civilian world. Or so he thought.

Beginning with a research job at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and as a consultant for media organizations such as ABC News Radio, Collins began settling into the private sector. But as it turned out, Uncle Sam wasn't yet finished with the retired officer. He was en route to a job at National Defense University when the Defense Department called him back to service in February 2001.

"The deputy secretary asked me to come back and help him with his confirmation, which I had previously told him I knew how to do and that I could be useful, and I haven't found the door yet."

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz asked Collins to serve as his special assistant. Shortly thereafter, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appointed Collins as deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability operations. His duties range from addressing congressional inquiries on war crimes to coordinating the shipment of Sesame Street programs to Afghan schoolchildren.

By definition, Collins explains, stability operations are "military operations outside of combat, which usually take place in a post-conflict situation." The joke around the office, he added, is that "stability operations are operations in unstable places."

In many ways, he noted, his office is the "junk drawer of OSD Policy" due to the number of miscellaneous activities that fall into this category. The umbrella for stability operations encompasses everything from noncombatant evacuations to civil-military relations, humanitarian mine action, peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance.

"Most of the conflicts we're engaged in today are taking place in areas where there is a full-blown humanitarian crisis going on," he noted. "Today, by definition the people in a belligerent country are considered not to be enemy, but are considered to be innocent."

War and recovery are inseparable, according to Collins. War, humanitarian assistance and reconstruction "go on almost simultaneously." Each year, he added, the Defense Department provides humanitarian assistance to the tune of about $50 million worldwide.

The Defense Department, however, is not the nation's lead organization for humanitarian affairs, he stressed. The military works in conjunction with the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development, which are, in
turn, supported by international organizations associated with the United Nations and by nongovernmental organizations.

"The U.S. military arm for getting involved in all of this," he said, is primarily the military's civil affairs units, which serve as a connection with outside organizations as well as providing assistance independently.

The Coalition of Joint Civil-Military Operations Task Force in Afghanistan, for example, has coordinated projects involving over 150 schools, benefiting 230,000 students; 40 medical facilities, benefiting more than 3 million people; and 600 wells, all the while, employing 40,000 Afghans.

Afghanistan has been of special interest to Collins long before he became involved with stability operations there. He said he developed an intense curiosity about the country in the late 1970s and studied the history of the Afghan people to better understand how they came to be where they are now. In the 1970s, prior to the Soviet invasion, he said, Afghanistan was a poor, but developing country.

"It had roads. It had airports. It had industries. It had colleges. It had connections with the outside world," he said. "There were foreign schools in Afghanistan. Many Afghans went to study abroad. Some stayed there and some took the information home."

Although his Afghan study began as a hobby, Collins eventually produced a dissertation focused on Soviet policy in Afghanistan. He did not realize just how integral being an "Afghan watcher" would be in his future role as deputy assistant secretary.

After the events of 9-11, Collins said, "it became clear that Afghanistan had become a failed state and, in effect, had become the captive of a terrorist group, the al Qaeda. In many ways, under the Taliban, Afghanistan was a wholly-owned subsidiary of an international terrorist group." To confront global terrorism, "we were going have to start in Afghanistan."

"The reconstruction of Afghanistan, which is in many ways, the construction of Afghanistan," Collins said, has been generally positive, but perhaps not as quick as some would like. Considering how many years Afghanistan had been at war and how long the country was under Taliban rule, he said, "we've made a lot of progress in the first year and a half of reconstruction." On the flip side, he added, much more needs to be done.

Collin's focus has now expanded to stability operations in Iraq. Even though torn by the Iran/Iraq war and recovering from the recent regime change, the more-developed Iraq is in a better state than Afghanistan, he said. One key difference between the two is the higher degree of education and wealth due to oil resources in Iraq, which gives it "the potential to sort of pull itself up by the bootstraps."

From infantry officer to Pentagon official, Collins' career has taken him from the halls of academia to the frontlines of world conflict. For most of the journey, his interest in international affairs has been a mainstay.

"There hasn't really been a distinct interruption between the kinds of things I looked at when I was a soldier, a strategy guy working in the Pentagon, or teaching international politics," he said. "The businesses we're in - humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping, post-conflict reconstruction - these are all part and parcel of the business of national security."

(Casie Vinall is an intern working for DefendAmerica.mil in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs.)

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BLT 1/4 conducts nonlethal force training
Submitted by: 11th MEU
Story Identification #: 2005106215447
Story by Staff Sgt. Sergio Jimenez



MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., (Sept. 29, 2005) -- The following is a photo essay of the Interservice Nonlethal Individual Weapons Instructor's Course here, Sept. 29. The purpose of the course is to train Marines to properly handle, disperse, disrupt or influence crowds and individuals during missions or situations when lethal force is not the first option. Some examples include holding back a crowd of hungry civilians at a food distribution site during a humanitarian mission or demonstrations of civil disobedience, said Capt. Gregory S. Rooker, Force Protection Officer, 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...8D?opendocument

LVS’ get facelift
Submitted by: Blount Island Command
Story by: Computed Name: Gunnery Sgt. Michael Reed
Story Identification #: 20051011077




AL ASAD, Iraq(Oct. 1, 2005) -- Our Marines are our most precious asset, as the improvised explosive device (IED) continues to be the number one cause of all coalition casualties, the Marine Corps is relentless in it’s efforts to provide better protection for Marines, as is the contact armor installation team (AIT) here, who began installing the Marine Armor Kit (MAK) to all Logistics Vehicle Systems (LVS) Sept. 20.

“When I heard that a Marine I recruited while on recruiting duty, hit a double stacked IED while driving a HMMWV,” said Staff Sgt. David Hinesbey, a Brunswick, Ga., native “it impacted me personally, and I wanted to contribute in the armoring process.”

It was incidents like this that compelled the Marines from Marine Corps Logistics Command to take part in the armoring process, so instrumental toward saving Marines lives.

“Knowing that if the vehicle had not had it (MAK), she would have died,” said Hinesbey, Source Chain Management Center, Albany, Ga.

The contact team here is part of the 23 Marine and nine Civilian Marine contingent from within Marine Corps Logistics Command sent to augment organizational level armor installation efforts. The 32 member team was divided into four contact teams, and is embedded with the 2nd Combat Logistics Group (FWD), and 2nd Marine Division units, to conduct armor installations here, Camp Fallujah, and Al Taqaddum.

There is 253 LVS’ in-theater to be armored. The AIT here has completed the installation of 20 MAKs since starting their first just 10 days ago. Through trial and error, the team has streamlined the installation process enabling them to armor two LVS’ each night.

According to Staff Sgt. Charles J. Cooke, AIT, SNCOIC, the team’s workday begins roughly at 6 p.m., and ends around 6 a.m., so as not to interfere with the supported units daily operations. This also allows for the staging of vehicles during the day, in preparation for armor installation at night.

“The Al Asad contact team has an incredible amount of leadership, initiative, and desire towards mission accomplishment,” stated Chief Warrant Officer-3 Bobby W. Sisai, AIT, officer-in-charge. “Having four SNCOs, gives them an advantage over the other contact teams.”

The majority of LVS’ to be armored are located here, and in the out-lying forward operating bases (FOBs) explained SiSai. “Currently there are two contact teams operating here, once the FOBs receive the MAK, Hinesbey and his team will travel to Al Qaim, Korean Villiage, and Blue Diamond to complete the installation on LVS’ there.”

The MAK consists of 3/8 inch armor providing 360 degree cab protection, 2 inch ballistic glass windshields, as well as side windows, and an air conditioning system.

These Marines despite their diverse occupational backgrounds, have come together to support one specific cause, their fellow Marines.

http://www.marines.mil/marinelink/mcn2000....4c?OpenDocument

Foreign Military Training Unit activates
Submitted by: 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade (Anti-Terrorism)
Story by: Computed Name: Cpl. Sharon E. Fox
Story Identification #: 200510795715





MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. --(Oct. 7, 20205) -- The Marine Corps will activate a new unit here Tuesday, in front of Building H-1. The Foreign Military Training Unit, part of the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade (Anti-Terrorism) will be the first of its kind in the Marine Corps.

The mission of the FMTU is to provide tailored basic-military- combat-skills training and advisor support for identified foreign military forces in order to enhance the tactical capability of coalition forces in support of the Commander, United States Special Operations Command and the Geographic Combatant Commanders’ Theater Security Cooperation Plans.

“Basically we train foreign military [personnel] in support of SOCOM,” said Col. Peter Petronzio, commanding officer of FMTU.

But even a unit with one basic concept, has many moving parts.

“Some of the challenges we’ve faced, like any new organization, is getting equipment, manning our unit, synchronizing time tables of manning with equipment, and just getting people to understand who we are and what we do,” said Petronzio. “We’re eager to get our message out [to the public], and that’s probably our biggest challenge. There are a lot of folks out there that either don’t understand us or have a very old perception of us. We just hope they will be able to understand our purpose.”

The concept of the FMTU is more than a year old but according to Petronzio, there wasn’t much done with the general concept until just a few months ago, when a commander was assigned and a vision was created.

“Through support from the 4th MEB (AT), we have the baseline facilities needed to be a working unit and we have an operational headquarters that is working hard and doing some great things,” said Petronzio.

More than 25 percent of the estimated 430 Marines and sailors have checked into the unit.

“We’ve already started on cultural training and have 11-man teams receiving their baseline training and ready to move into mission-specific training. We hope to have the remainder of our teams started on training by next year and are slowly building our capabilities as we get more people and equipment, added the Beverly, Mass., native.

Some of the baseline training the Marines are participating in include an Enhanced Marksmanship Program course and basic room-to-room house clearing techniques using EMP skills and techniques.

Every FMTU Marine will go through a 5-month training period with the unit, said Petronzio. It will cover basic-infantry skills, additional skills to be an independent operator, and constant cultural and language reinforcement.

“The FMTU is critical because we want to operate in ‘Phase zero’, Global War on Terrorism-relevant countries. We want to be ahead of the power curve on the GWOT,” said Petronzio. “If you can send a small group of Marines into a country to help stabilize its ungoverned areas to train them to do for themselves early and often, then you preclude the need five or 10 years down the road to have an expeditionary force go and straighten the situation out.”

The commander is quick to emphasize that the FMTU is a great, cost-effective way of helping nations help themselves. “We have to focus on those ‘Phase-zero’ places,” says Petronzio. “We need to help them help themselves.

“The big difference for us is that we’re going to focus our attention on those regions of the world relevant to what’s going on today. My personal opinion is that for too long the Marine Corps has conducted random acts of training in countries with no follow up and no continuous progression. The world has changed a lot in the last few years and I think now we need to focus our efforts.

“We’re doing great things, working extremely hard, and getting good Marines. Our hope is to have many non-commissioned officers that have done their deployed time in an infantry battalion. Hopefully they are mature beyond their rank, have a language skill, operate independently, and think outside the normal parameters of a squad or fire team. Many times that Marine will be the only one of his team in any particular country. He needs to be able to operate in an austere environment and make sound and timely decisions on his own. That’s basically what we’re looking for.

Petronzio’s expectation in the next year or two is that the FMTU will relieve the operational tempo of SOCOM and its special operation forces, and heavily engage in those phase zero countries. “We will have a significant contribution to get ahead of the power curve, ahead of the bow wave of this global war on terror. We’re investing small forces now so we don’t have to invest large forces later.”


http://www.marines.mil/marinelink/mcn2000....42?OpenDocument

Chapter XII: Holding the Road to Bataan
On 30 December 1941 the Philippine Commonwealth reaffirmed its faith in the future with the inauguration of President-elect Manuel Quezon at a brief ceremony on the island fortress of Corregidor. Across the bay, the American and Filipino troops were making ready for their last stand before withdrawing to Bataan. Despite Quezon's brave inaugural words, the future of the nascent republic never appeared darker.[1]
Almost all of the troops on Luzon were now north of Manila. The North Luzon Force stood on the D-5 line, from Bamban to Arayat, in front of San Fernando and the road leading into Bataan. (Map 8) Fifteen to twenty miles long, this line was the shortest of the five defensive lines used by General Wainwright's forces. Guarded on the left (west) by the steep heights of the Zambales Mountains and on the right by the rugged 3,367-foot high Mt. Arayat and the twenty-mile-long Candaba Swamp, it was susceptible only to frontal attack by the Japanese force moving south from Tarlac along Route 3.

Ten miles south of Bamban, the west anchor of the D-5 line, an unimproved road, Route 74, branched off from Route 3 to the southwest to give access to Bataan. The main road into the peninsula, Route 7, began at San Fernando, ten miles father south. Troops north and south of San Fernando would have to pass through that town to get to Bataan; only the left elements of the troops on the D-5 line would be able to use Route 74.

General Homma's main striking force was not aimed at the D-5 line, but at Manila. This force, which had broken through at Cabanatuan on the 30th, was moving rapidly down Route 5, east of the Candaba Swamp. Once it reached Plaridel, where a road led westward to Route 3, it would be only a short distance east of the two bridges at Calumpit. If the Japanese secured Plaridel and the bridges quickly enough, they would cut off the retreat of the troops still south of Calumpit and, by gaining a position west of the Pampanga River in the rear of the D-5 line, compromise the execution of the withdrawal into Bataan.

General MacArthur had foreseen this contingency as soon as the Japanese had broken through at Cabanatuan and had quickly sent reinforcements from the North and South Luzon Forces to hold Plaridel and the road to the north as far as Baliuag. Defending Plaridel was as essential to his plan for withdrawal to Bataan as holding the D-5 line. Possession of this barrio meant that the Calumpit bridges over which the forces east of the Pampanga must pass to get to San Fernando were safe. The task of the forces on Luzon was, then, twofold: to hold in the north along the D-5 line and on the east at Plaridel. Failure to


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Map 8: Holding the Road to Bataan

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hold long enough at either point spelled the doom of the entire plan.


MOUNT ARAYAT, looking west.
The Defense of Calumpit
For the defense of the Calumpit bridges MacArthur placed every unit that could be spared east of the Pampanga. From the South Luzon Force came the 51st Infantry (less 1st Battalion) and the 75-mm. guns of Colonel Babcock's SPM provisional battalion, both stationed at Plaridel. The 194th Tank Battalion (less Company C) was posted at Apalit, on the west bank of the Pampanga two miles above Calumpit, in position "to insure the exit" of those forces east of the river. If necessary, the tank battalion was to move to Bocaue, between Manila and Plaridel, to reinforce Company C, part of the South Luzon Force, which was to hold that barrio "until the extrication of North and South Luzon Forces was insured."[2] At least one company of the 192d Tank Battalion was in the Plaridel-Baliuag area.
The 91st Division, retreating down Route 5 from Cabanatuan, reached Baliuag at daybreak of the 31st. It was joined shortly by elements of the 71st Division--the 71st Field Artillery and the 71st and 72d Infantry--which had been ordered there the night before by General Wainwright. The 71st Division units took up positions north of Baliuag and the 91st Division went into reserve south of the town.


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Before 1000 Wainwright's headquarters warned the two divisions that they would have to withdraw from Baliuag in time to clear the Calumpit bridges, nine miles away, by 0400 the next morning.[3]
At approximately 1000 that morning, General Sutherland, MacArthur's chief of staff, telephoned Jones, commander of the South Luzon Force, and placed him in command of all forces east of the Pampanga. In effect, this made Jones commander of the troops holding the Calumpit bridges. Sutherland ordered Jones to hold the bridges until the 1st Brigade (PC) had passed over and warned him that all troops would have to be west of the Pampanga River by 0600 of 1 January, for at that time the bridges would be blown. Apparently General Wainwright was not informed of the change in command.[4]

The Fight for Plaridel
The defense of the Baliuag-Plaridel area was of the greatest importance. Baliuag, a town of rambling houses and nipa huts scattered along Route 5 and the north bank of the Angat River, commands the approaches to Plaridel, six miles to the south. Plaridel is located at the intersection of Route 5 and several secondary roads, two of which extend along opposite banks of the Angat River to Route 3 and the Calumpit bridges, some eight miles to the northwest The South Luzon Force and those elements of the North Luzon Force in the area would have to pass through Plaridel and along these secondary roads to cross the Calumpit bridges. South of Plaridel lay the invader's route to Manila.
General Tsuchibashi, 48th Division commander, was fully aware of the importance of Calumpit and the Baliuag-Plaridel area. On the 30th he had ordered two tank regiments and a battalion of infantry to advance from Cabanatuan to the Angat River and cut the route from Manila to San Fernando. This force, led by Col. Seinosuke Sonoda, commander of the 7th Tank Regiment, and assisted by a company of engineers to repair roads and bridges, was marching unopposed down Route 5 toward Plaridel on the night of the 30th.[5]

On the morning of 31 December an advance detachment of Colonel Sonoda's force reached the outskirts of Baliuag. The engineers, protected by tanks, attempted to repair the bridge across the stream north of the town, but were met by fire from the 71st Field Artillery. Shortly after, the enemy tanks were brought under fire by a platoon of Company C, 192d Tank Battalion, which lay in concealed positions below the stream. The Japanese broke off the action and withdrew to the east where they effected a crossing around noon. It was at this time that the 91st Division left its reserve position below Baliuag and started for Bataan, leaving the 71st Division elements along in the town.[6]


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By 1330 the Japanese tanks had reached the eastern outskirts of Baliuag and were awaiting infantry reinforcements before making an all out assault against the town. Meanwhile, the 71st Infantry prepared to pull out of Baliuag in accordance with orders. The two infantry regiments and the engineers left in buses around 1400, but the artillery regiment remained behind.[7]
At about this time General Wainwright arrived at Jones' command post in the Plaridel schoolhouse. The North Luzon Force commander, unaware of the fact that Jones now commanded all troops east of the Pampanga, ordered him to take up positions for a close-in perimeter defense of the Calumpit bridge. Jones informed Wainwright of his orders from Sutherland and explained that he intended to hold the enemy at Baliuag rather than at the bridge. While Jones and Wainwright were talking, General Stevens, 91st Division commander, entered the command post, followed a short time later by a South Luzon Force staff officer who announced that the 71st Division had moved out of Baliuag. Jones then ordered Stevens to stop the 71st and put it in position west of Plaridel, along the road leading to Calumpit. Wainwright left soon after for his own command post.[8]

Stevens' efforts to halt the withdrawal of the 71st Division infantry elements proved futile. By 1500 the main body of Sonoda's mechanized force was standing in front of Baliuag and it was perfectly evident that the Japanese were massing for an attack. Deeply concerned over the effect of an attack on the untried 51st Infantry, Jones ordered two platoons of Company C, 192d Tank Battalion, to cross the river and attack the enemy concentration at the east end of Baliuag. The tanks were to be supported by about a half dozen of Colonel Babcock's 75-mm. SPMs which were to fire on Baliuag and its northern approaches when the tanks broke off the attack. After a hasty reconnaissance, Babcock placed his guns on the dry, baked fields a few thousand yards west of Baliuag and sent a forward observer to a position 500 yards west of the town. For communications with the tanks Babcock had a radio-equipped scout car of Company C.

At about 1700 the tanks of Company C, led by Lt. William Gentry, moved out to the attack. As the two platoons approached the enemy, the covering artillery fire, presumably supplied by the 71st Field Artillery, lifted. A bitter fight ensued. The American armor made a shambles of that part of Baliuag in Japanese hands. The tanks rolled through the streets, firing into bahas, smashing through the nipa huts as if they were so many toy houses, and scattering hostile infantry right and left. A brief but wild tanks-versus-tanks action followed. In the fading daylight American and Japanese tanks chased each other up and down the narrow streets, while enemy foot soldiers, in a futile gesture, fired small arms at the tankers. The SPMs and artillery remained idle, unable to fire for fear of hitting their own tanks. When Company C finally broke off the action, it had knocked out eight Japanese tanks with little loss to itself. As the tanks pulled back, the SPMs and


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artillery opened up n Baliuag and continued to fire until 2200 when Fowler and Babcock pulled their men back to Plaridel and then west across the Pampanga. The last of the tanks crossed the Calumpit bridge at about 0230 on 1 January.[9]
Holding the unimproved road from Plaridel to Calumpit was the untried 51st Infantry. When at 0300 the 1st Brigade (PC) cleared the Calumpit bridge General Jones sent his chief of staff to Plaridel with orders for the 51st to withdraw immediately. The retirement began at 0400, 1 January. Meanwhile, the Japanese had entered Baliuag and were pushing cautiously toward Plaridel. At 0400 they were close enough to hear the sound of motors as the 51st Infantry began to pull out, and immediately rushed forward to attack. Firing into the truck column the Japanese hit the rear-most vehicles but inflicted no damage. Lacking motor transportation they were unable to follow. Colonel Stewart pushed ahead rapidly and crossed the Pampanga with his 51st Infantry at about 0500 on the morning of the 1st, the last unit to cross the Calumpit bridge.[10]

"Blow the Bridges"
What the Japanese could not accomplished on the ground they might have accomplished with their air force. On 31 December the highway and railroad bridges spanning the Pampanga at Calumpit presented to the Japanese air force the most inviting target since Clark Field. Heavily laden with dynamite charges for rapid demolition and protected by only two gun batteries of the 200th Coast Artillery (AA), the bridges were extremely vulnerable to air attack.[11] Indeed, like marriage, in Shaw's classic definition, they combined the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
The Japanese failed to take advantage of this opportunity for a decisive blow from the air. The 48th Division urged that the Calumpit bridges be bombed and there were heated discussions over this question, but the view of Col. Monjiro Akiyama, 14th Army air officer, that the destruction of the bridges would prove of little value, prevailed. The 14th Army's order of the 30th, therefore, directed the 5th Air Group simply to attack the retreating enemy and to make an effort to destroy the bridges west of Lubao, just above the base of the Bataan peninsula.[12]

Even with this limited mission, the Japanese air forces made only a desultory effort. Col. Harry A. Skerry, the North Luzon


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Force engineer and the man directly responsible for blowing the bridges, later wrote that he was "amazed" by the "weak air efforts" the Japanese made and "the few planes seen in the sky, despite the previous almost total destruction of our air force and the resulting enemy air superiority."[13]


CALUMPIT BRIDGES spanning the Pampanga River
At about 0500 on New Year's Day, as the 51st Infantry cleared the Calumpit bridge, General Wainwright asked Generals Jones, Stevens, and Weaver if all their units were safely across. He received affirmative replies from these three, but Colonel Skerry pointed out that a platoon of demolition engineers under Lt. Coo. Narcisco L. Manzano (PS) was still on the road south of Calumpit. Nothing had been heard from Manzano since the previous noon, and Colonel Skerry requested that destruction of the bridges be delayed as long as the tactical situation permitted, to enable Manzano's group to escape. Wainwright assented, but all final preparations for demolition were made and orders were issued to fire the charges at 0600.

It was still dark. There was no Japanese air bombardment or artillery fire, but from the south came the sounds of rifle fire. The nervous Filipino troops fidgeted in their positions and stared apprehensively across the river. At 0545, when there was still no sign


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of Manzano's detachment, Wainwright extended the time for blowing the bridges to 0615.
As dawn broke, the noise of enemy rifle fire from the south increased. General Wainwright, unaware that the main Japanese force was pushing toward Manila and that less than a regiment had been sent toward Calumpit, believed that this fire presaged a major Japanese effort to cross the Pampanga. Blowing the bridges would place the deep, unfordable river squarely in the path of the advancing enemy and give the Bataan force time to prepare for defense. Wainwright then made his decision; Manzano and his men would have to reach Bataan by other routes. he turned to his engineer. "Skerry," he said, "we cannot wait any longer. Blow the bridges."

The covering force withdrew to a safe distance, the explosives were checked, and at 0615 the charges were detonated. The air was filled with a roar and a rushing noise, a flash lit up the sky, and the Calumpit bridges disappeared in a mass of falling debris. In front of the defenders flowed the deep Pampanga; to their rear lay San Fernando, where the road to Bataan began.

The D-5 Line: Bamban-Arayat
By the first day of the new year the bulk of the American and Filipino forces had escaped from the enemy pincer movement designed to trap them on the plain before Manila. Calumpit had been passed successfully and the troops from the south had side-stepped the Japanese and withdrawn in good order across the Pampanga. MacArthur's men no longer faced the main strength of Homma's 14th Army, which was pushing rapidly toward Manila.
San Fernando, nine miles north of Calumpit, was as vital to the successful completion of the plan of withdrawal as Plaridel. Not only did the South Luzon Force have to pass through it before turning southwest to Bataan, but almost the entire North Luzon Force would funnel through that town also.

Thirty-five miles northwest of Manila, and strategically second in importance only to the capital, San Fernando is an important road and rail junction. It is there that Route 7, the main road to Bataan, joins Route 3. The troops from Calumpit would have to travel northward along Route 3 to reach San Fernando; those on the D-5 line would withdraw south along this road and Route 10. At San Fernando both groups would pick up Route 7 for the final lap of their journey to Bataan.

The 21st Division on the west flank of the D-5 line was the only unit which could escape into Bataan without going through San Fernando. At Angeles, midway between Bamban and San Fernando, it would leave Route 3 and follow Route 74 to Bataan. All other units north and south of San Fernando would reach Bataan via San Fernando and Route 7.

Even if the enemy did not impede the march to Bataan, the roads over which the tired soldiers must travel to reach the peninsula would present many obstacles. From Calumpit north to San Fernando, and from there south to Bataan, the road was packed with a "solid stream of traffic," military and civilian.[14] Vehicles of all types--cars, buses, trucks, artillery, and tanks--filled the center of the road. In some places, there were stretches of several miles


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where the vehicles were lined up almost bumper to bumper. On each side was an endless line of pedestrians, mostly civilians fleeing from the invading army.


SAN FERNANDO, looking northwest. Route 3 from Calumpit runs diagonally through the photograph; Route 7 leading to Bataan is in upper left. Zambales Mountains are visible in background.
The enemy air force could hardly be expected to overlook so obvious and inviting a target on their way to other, more important military missions. The primary objective of the thirty-two light bombers of the 5th Air Group that day was ammunition dumps, but the Japanese pilots reported that they also dive-bombed American vehicles and "motorized units."[15] Colonel Collier noted that "hostile bombers, with the rising sun glistening on wing tips, flying at low and high altitudes, crossed and recrossed the road."[16] But he saw no dive-bombing or strafing attacks. "Had the bombers struck the jammed columns with bombs and strafing," he wrote, "out withdrawal into Bataan would certainly have been seriously crippled."[17]

Since 30 December General Homma had been strengthening his forces in front of the D-5 line. By New Year's Eve he had on Route 3, in and around Tarlac, the entire 9th Infantry Regiment, the Kanno Detachment (3d Battalion, 2d Formosa), 8th Field Artillery (less one battalion), two batteries of the 22d Field Artillery, and a battalion of the 48th Mountain Artillery. The mission


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of this force was to drive south toward Bataan.[18]
Along the D-5 line stood two Philippine Army divisions, the 11th on the right and the 21st on the left. Between the high ground on each end of the line the terrain was flat, the vegetation consisting of cane fields and uncultivated grassland. As the troops reached this position they began to clear fields of fire and, when they could get the wire, erected-barbed-wire entanglements.[19]

The 21st Division held the left (west) portion of the flatlands along the south bank of the Bamban River from the Magalang-Concepcion road to the Zambales Mountains. on the right was the 22d Infantry; to its left was the 21st Infantry, with the 3d Battalion on the right and the 2d Battalion on the left. Along the front, between the two battalions, were two high multiple-span steel bridges (one railroad and one highway) fording the Bamban River. The engineers had destroyed both bridges, but the river, practically dry at this season of the year, presented no obstacle to advancing infantry and only a slight one to vehicles. To strengthen the river line, therefore, Company C, 23d Infantry, was posted on the high ground north of the Bamban River and west of Route 3, in position to dominate the road and railroad south of the town. The 21st Field Artillery was in general support.[20]

The wisdom of placing Company C in this position was soon confirmed. At about 0130 New Year's Day, a Japanese force mounted on bicycles and estimated as of company size was observed pedaling down the road from Bamban toward the destroyed bridge between the 2d and 3d Battalions, 21st Infantry. The enemy troops were part of the Kanno Detachment, which had been caught in the open by American tanks at Zaragoza two days earlier. Their reception at Bamban was no less warm. As the Japanese cyclists advanced along the short stretch of road paralleling the river east of the bridge, Company C delivered a punishing fire in their midst. After some minutes of confusion and milling about, the surprised and badly hit Japanese force retreated, having suffered thirty-five casualties. Company C gained an assortment of bicycles, swords, and miscellaneous equipment, as well as a wounded Japanese noncom. Since he spoke no English and no one present understood Japanese, he proved useless as a source of information. By the time he had been evacuated to the rear he had died of his wounds.[21]

By 0900 the remainder of the Kanno Detachment had reached Bamban. The infantry soon began an attack against the river line and Company C; the artillery joined in the action about noon. That afternoon the fighting was brisk, with heavy shelling on both sides and with Japanese aircraft participating in the action. But all efforts by the Japanese to cross the river met with failure and Company C was still in position late in the day.

At division headquarters reports of Japanese troop movements south from Tarlac


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to Bamban had been received earlier in the day, once scout noting "that one of our own tanks was being driven around Tarlac to the hilarity of the enemy troops."[22] These report were accurate. The 9th Infantry and supporting troops were moving forward to reinforce the Kanno Detachment. As the Japanese came within artillery range they were brought under fire by guns of the 21st Field Artillery. Although suffering losses in personnel and equipment, the 9th Infantry by 1600 had joined the Kanno Detachment on the north bank of the river.
But the Japanese for some inexplicable reason failed to attempt a crossing. At nightfall the 21st Division began to move out, Company C wading the shallow Bamban to rejoin the division. The entire division withdrew down Route 3 to Angeles, then turned southwest along Route 74 to Porac. The enemy followed cautiously and it was not until 1130 of the 2d that the Kanno Detachment reached Angeles. The Japanese now had possession of the Clark Field area.

It was now the turn of the 11th Division to extricate itself and withdraw into Bataan. This division had recently been strengthened by the return from the Cagayan valley of about 1,000 of its men, drawn largely from the 12th and 13th Infantry Regiments. Its sector of the D-5 line extended from the Magalang-Concepcion road eastward to the Pampanga River. On the right (east) was the reorganized 12th Infantry, holding a front from Mt. Arayat to the Pampanga River and the town of Arayat. It was in position to guard against an unexpected Japanese advance toward San Fernando along Route 10, which connected Gapan on Route 5 with that town.

The western portion of the 11th Division line, from the Magalang road to Mt. Arayat, was held by the 11th Infantry under the command of Col. Glen R. Townsend, who had led the Cagayan valley force. At Magalang a north-south road from Concepcion branched off, one section leading to Angeles on Route 3 and another to Mexico, a few miles northeast of San Fernando. The 2d Battalion, 11th Infantry, was posted across the Magalang road, a few miles north of the town and directly in the path of a Japanese advance from Concepcion. The 3d Battalion extended the line east to the mountains, and the 1st Battalion, recovering from its hard fight at Zaragoza on the 30th, was in reserve.[23]

Early on 1 January General Brougher, the division commander, ordered Colonel Townsend to withdraw his 11th Infantry, starting at 2000 that day. The regiment was to retire along the Magalang road through Mexico and San Fernando to Guagua, about fifteen miles from Bataan.

While the 11th Infantry was preparing to move, an enemy force estimated as a reinforced battalion of infantry with artillery support was pushing south along the Magalang road from Concepcion. At 1630 this Japanese force attacked Townsend's line. Maj. Helmert J. Duisterhof's 2d Battalion, composed of Igorot troops, bore the brunt of the assault. Despite repeated attacks, the Igorots, supported by two 75-mm. SPM


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guns, held firm, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy. A Japanese attempt to outflank the 11th Infantry line by pushing elements through dense fields of sugar cane met with failure. At 2000, the appointed hour, the 11th Infantry broke contact and began its withdrawal, passing through the 194th Tank Battalion in position east of San Fernando. By 0200 of the 2d the regiment had reached Guagua. During the night it was joined by the 12th Infantry and remaining elements of the 13th Infantry.[24] With the successful withdrawal of the 11th Division, the troops on the D-5 line had made good their escape through San Fernando. Meanwhile the remaining troops south of that town were doing the same.
Escape Through San Fernando
The blast that destroyed the Calumpit bridges in the early hours of 1 January signaled the end of the South Luzon Force. Its mission completed, the force moved on to Bataan where General Jones rejoined the 51st Division. At the same time General Stevens of the 91st Division and General Weaver, commander of the tank group, went on to San Fernando to join their units.[25]
When the debris had stopped falling at the Pampanga crossing, the covering force of 71st and 91st Division elements, originally organized by Stevens, returned to its positions along the river bank. A second force, the 3d Battalion of the 23d Infantry, with a battery of the 21st Field Artillery, moved into position near Apalit, about 4,000 yards to the north on the west bank of the Pampanga. The mission of this battalion, led by Maj. Charles A. McLaughlin, was to "assist in delaying the enemy advance on San Fernando," by preventing a hostile crossing before 2000. In support of both forces was the tank group, posted just below San Fernando.[26]

Late on the morning of 1 January the Japanese reached Calumpit. The Tanaka Detachment (2d Formosa, less 3d Battalion, and a battalion of the 48th Mountain Artillery) had moved cautiously from Plaridel during the night and now faced the covering force across the wide, unfordable Pampanga. The sight of the Japanese at such close proximity was extremely disconcerting to the poorly trained Filipino troops. Their nervousness was increased by the sight of the Japanese bombers which passed overhead that morning on their way to bomb installations on Bataan.

During the day the Japanese made numerous attempts to push a force across the swiftly flowing Pampanga, but to no avail.[27] The covering force on the river line pulled out for San Fernando during the afternoon, followed that evening by McLaughlin's battalion. The remnants of the 71st and 91st Divisions which constituted the first of these forces were "so badly disorganized and in need of equipment" that they were sent directly to Bataan. McLaughlin's battalion


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rejoined the 21st Division at Porac on the morning of 2 January. The last elements to pass through San Fernando were the tanks. Reaching the town at 0200 on the 2d, after all the others had left, they found it to be "truly a ghost town." The tankers gave the order to blow the bridge across the San Fernando River and in the darkness moved down Route 7 toward Guagua and the American line being formed there.[28]
The Japanese did not cross the Pampanga until the afternoon of 2 January when at 1600 the Tanaka Detachment finally got its artillery over the swiftly flowing river. Once across, Colonel Tanaka moved forward rapidly and by 1830 had reached San Fernando. There he made contact with the Kanno Detachment which had pushed down Route 3 from Angeles.[29]

In the few days from 30 December 1941 to 2 January 1942 the North and South Luzon Forces had completed successfully the most complicated and difficult maneuver of the campaign thus far. They had held at Plaridel and along the D-5 line. A part of the force had crossed the Calumpit bridge, marched through San Fernando, and down Route 7 toward Bataan. Another part had withdrawn from the D-5 line, along the flat grassland west of Mt. Arayat to Mexico and San Fernando to join the others retreating down Route 7. The remainder had moved down Route 3 to Angeles and then along Route 74 to Porac. Everywhere the enemy had been held and the route of escape kept open until the last unit was on its way into Bataan.


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Table of Contents ** Previous Chapter (11) * Next Chapter (13)


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Footnotes
[1] Quezon, The Good Fight, pp. 227-35. General MacArthur and High Commissioner Sayre also spoke briefly and feelingly at the ceremony. MacArthur's speech is printed in Hunt, MacArthur and the War Against Japan, pp. 48-49.
[2] Prov Tank Gp Rpt of Opns, p. 14.

[3] NLF and I Corps Rpt of Opns, p. 13; USAFFE-USFIP Rpt of Opns, p. 39; ltr, Selleck to Board of Officers, 1 Feb 46, sub: Reinstatement of Ranks; ltr, Col Fowler, CO 71st FA, to author, 30 Apr 49, OCMH; Capt Albert W. Erickson, 71st Inf (PA), pp. 2-3, and Bentz, 92d Inf (PA), pp. 1-2, both in Chunn Notebooks.

[4] Jones, Diary, p. 16. These instructions were passed on to General de Jesus, commander of the 1st Brigade (PC), for his was the only unit not yet in position to clear Calumpit rapidly.

[5] 14th Army Opns, I, 84; statements of Col Moriji Kawagoe, CofS 48th Div, 9 Mar 50, ATIS Doc 56354 and of Maj Makoto Nakahara, Opns Officer, 48th Div, 13 Mar 50, ATIS Doc 56372, in Interrogations of Former Japanese Officers, Mil Hist Div, GHQ FEC, II.

[6] USAFFE-USFIP Rpt of Opns, p. 39; NLF and I Corps Rpt of Opns, p. 13; Prov Tank Gp Rpt of Opns, p. 14; ltr, Fowler to author, 30 Apr 49, OCMH.

[7] USAFFE-USFIP Rpt of Opns, p. 39; ltr, Fowler to author, 30 Apr 49. Official reports do not record the fact that the 71st Field Artillery remained in Baliuag. This fact is established by the artillery commander, Colonel Fowler.

[8] General Jones was unaware that the 71st Field Artillery was still at Baliuag. Interv, author and Falk with Jones, 1 Nov 49 and 6 May 50. See also, Jones, Diary, pp. 16-17; NLF and I Corps Rpt of Opns, pp. 13-14; USAFFE-USFIP Rpt of Opns, p. 39; ltr, Fowler to author, 30 Apr 49, OCMH; MacDonald, Supplement to Jones Diary, p. 15.

[9] The account of this action is based on the following sources, many of them in conflict with each other: Prov Tank Gp Rpt of Opns, p. 14; ltr, Weaver to author, 30 Jan 50; Jones, Diary, p. 17; interv, author and Falk with Jones, 31 Oct and 1 Nov 49, 24 Jan 50; ltr, Maj Curtiss (forward observer for the 75-mm SPMs), To Whom It May Concern, 50 Jun 45, copy in OCMH; Collier, Notebooks, II, 78-80; Lt Col Thomas Dooley, The First U.S. Tank Action in World War II (paper prepared for Advanced Officers Class No. 1, The Armored Force School, 1 May 48), p. 12; ltr, Weaver to Wainwright, 20 Nov 45, copy in OCMH; 14th Army Opns, I, 84.

[10] Jones, Diary, p. 17; 14th Army Opns, I, 84; ltr, Col Skerry, NLF Engineer, to Lt Col George A. Meidling, 4 Jun 49, Comment 9. Col Skerry's comments, altogether numbering twenty-one, pertain to Chapter II of Compat Engineer Operations, a projected volume in the Series Engineers of the Southwest Pacific 1941-1945. These comments were sent to the author by Colonel Skerry and are on file in OCMH. They are hereafter cited as Skerry, Comments on Engineer Hist, with appropriate number.

[11] Interv, author with Gen Sage, 28 Feb 51; USAFFE-USFIP Rpt of Opns, p. 39.

[12] Statements of Cols Kawagoe, CofS, 48th Div, and Akiyama, in Statements of Japanese Officials on World War II, GHQ FEC, Mil Intel Sec, I, 19, II, 134.

[13] Skerry, Comments on Engineer Hist, No. 9, p. 5; interrog of Lt Col Hikaru Haba, Intel Officer, 14th Army, Apr 47, Interrogations of Former Japanese Officers, Mil Hist Div, GHQ FEC, I.

The account of the blowing of the bridge is based on Colonel Skerry's Comment 9; Wainwright, General Wainwright's Story, p. 44; and interv, author with Jones and Sage, 28 Feb 51.

[14] Collier, Notebooks, I, 73-74.

[15] 5th Air Gp opns, p. 43.

[16] Collier, Notebooks, I, 74.

[17] Ibid., 76.

[18] 14th Army Opns, I, 64, 71-72.

[19] Mallonée, Comments on Draft MS, 8 Jan 52, OCMH; ltr, Townsend to Ward, 8 Jan 52, OCMH; Central Luzon, Allied Geographical Sec (AGS) GHQ SWPA, Terrain Study 94, I, 48; Skerry, NLF Engineer Rpt of Opns, p. 9.

[20] Brief Hist of 22d Inf (PA), p. 2; Mallonée, Bataan Diary, I, 106; O'Day, 21st Div (PA), II, 14.

[21] The account of 21st Division operations at Bamban is based upon O'Day, 21st Div (PA), II, 15; Brief History of 22d Inf (PA), p. 4; Opns of 21st Inf (PA), p. 2; Richards, Steps to a POW Camp, pp. 7-8; 14th Army Opns, I, 65, 84; ltr, O'Day to Ward, 14 Jan 52, OCMH.

[22] O'Day, 21st Div (PA), II, 15.

[23] NLF and I Corps Rpt of Opns, p. 12; Townsend, Defense of Phil, OCMH; 11th Inf (PA), Beach Defense and Delaying Action, pp. 21-22, OCMH; Capt Liles, 12th Inf (PA), p. 13; Chunn Notebooks.

[24] Ltr, Townsend to Ward, 8 Jan 52, OCMH; O'Day, 21st Div (PA), II, 15. See also ltr, Col Miller to Ward, 31 Dec 51, OCMH. There is no Japanese confirmation of this action.

[25] Jones, Diary, p. 17; Skerry, Comments on Engineer Hist, No. 9, p. 10; Miller, Bataan Uncensored, pp. 122-23.

[26] NLF and I Corps Rpt of Opns, p. 14; Skerry, Comments on Engineer Hist, No. 9, p. 10; ltr, McLaughlin to author, 14 Jun 49, OCMH; Mallonée, Bataan Diary, I, 113; O'Day, 21st Div (PA), II, 6.

[27] NLF and I Corps Rpt of Opns, p. 14; 14th Army Opns, I, 65, 84; USA vs. Homma, p. 3055, testimony of Homma.

[28] NLF and I Corps Rpt of Opns, p. 14; Mallonée, Bataan Diary, I, 114; Miller, Bataan Uncensored, p. 124; Prov Tank Gp Rpt of Opns, p. 15; Dooley, First U.S. Tank Action in World War II, p. 13; ltr, Miller to Ward, 31 Dec 51, OCMH.

[29] 14th Army Opns, I, 84; USA vs. Homma, p. 3055, testimony of Homma.

Force Requirements in Stability Operations
JAMES T. QUINLIVAN


Military requirements for the post-Cold War environment are the central question of a large, somewhat disorganized, debate. The concept of conducting frequent and extended "peace operations" has produced a significant effort to understand both their political context and their military requirements. One category of peace operations, interventions to restore and maintain order and stability, continues its prominence as current news and as a recurring theme in nightmare visions of the future.

It is sometimes difficult to anticipate the force size and the time required to restore and maintain order in a failed or failing state. The force size is driven by two demographic revolutions of the last decades: dramatic growth in the populations of troubled states, and the movement of a considerable portion of that population to the cities. The movement from rural to urban settings is so significant that the populations of some cities exceeds that of many states. The duration of such operations is affected both by their inherent difficulty and by the implicit need in most cases to recreate internal forces of order. Duration adds another dimension, defined by the force available to conduct the intervention and the duration of each unit's stay in the region.

This article investigates the numbers required for stability operations, both for entire countries and individual cities, and explores the implications of those numbers for deployment, rotation, readiness, and personnel retention.

Army Field Manual 100-23, Peace Operations, defines the general concept of "peace operations." Within the broader category, "peace enforcement" is further defined as

the application of armed force or the threat of its use, normally pursuant to authorization, to compel compliance with sanctions or resolutions--the primary purpose of which is the maintenance or restoration of peace under conditions broadly defined by the international community.[1]

Within the general definition of peace enforcement, "restoration and maintenance of order and stability" are those peace enforcement activities in which

Military forces may be employed to restore order and stability within a state or region where competent civil authority has ceased to function. They may be called upon to assist in the maintenance of order and stability in areas where it is threatened, where the loss of order and stability threatens international stability, or where human rights are endangered.[2]

In this article, the term "stability operations" refers to operations in which security forces (combining military, paramilitary, and police forces) carry out operations for the restoration and maintenance of order and stability.[3]

The Problem of Numbers in Stability Operations

There are no simple answers to the question of how many troops are required for any sort of military operations. However, the purpose of stability operations--to create an environment orderly enough that most routine civil functions could be carried out--suggests that the number of troops required is determined by the size of populations. This section discusses the general rationale for such an approach, illustrates the range of force numbers that have been used in military operations that seem to correspond to the definition of stability operations, and suggests implications for current population sizes in operations now described as peace enforcement.

From the start, practitioners of counterinsurgency have been clear in stating that the number of soldiers required to counter guerrillas has had very little to do with the number of guerrillas. As Richard Clutterbuck wrote of Malaya in 1966,

Much nonsense is heard on the subject of tie-down ratios in guerrilla warfare--that 10 to 12 government troops are needed to tie down a single guerrilla, for instance. This is a dangerous illusion, arising from a disregard of the facts.[4]

Conversely, a "hearts and minds" counterinsurgency campaign places the focus on the people, the military consequences of which are requirements for population control measures and local security of the population. Population control measures and local security both demand security force numbers proportional to the population. The static forces that protect the population from insurgents and cut off any support the population might provide to them are essential to the campaign. Consequently, in any stability operation it is almost certain that the force devoted to establishing order will be both larger in numerical terms than the forces dedicated to field combat and more aligned to political aspects of a "heart-and-minds" concept of operations.

This requirement for forces other than in the jungle or its equivalent is a general condition. Over a range of stability operations in which opposition has not progressed to the stage of mobile warfare by main force units, the size of stabilizing forces is determined by the size of the population and the level of protection or control that must be provided within the state. Simply generating forces does not guarantee success. Forces in a stability operation serve a broader political-military approach than simply countering or eliminating insurgencies. The ability to generate forces for a stability or peace enforcement operation is a most necessary condition for success--for even successful political strategies in such situations have a military component. The generation of forces is thus a necessary but not sufficient condition for achieving stabilizing objectives.

This proposition is illustrated rather than proven through some historical examples, each of which is described briefly below. Figure 1, below, shows historical cases of forces devoted to particular stability operations.


Figure 1. Security force numbers used in past stability operations.

The figure relates force size to population, showing the security force size per thousand of population. The figure portrays a range of situations, from enforcing the laws in a generally ordered society to situations of maintaining order where the rule of law has collapsed. The numbers shown are simply the aggregated number of police and army (the "security forces") used in particular cases to achieve results that do not always equate to "victory" or "success." The cases are suggestive rather than definitive, but they provide a sense of scale for the resources required in various situations.

• Force ratios of one to four per thousand of population. At the low end of the force requirement scale are the police present day-to-day in generally peaceful populations such as the United States. Overall, the United States is policed at a ratio of about 2.3 sworn police officers per thousand of population. If the ratio is calculated to include the civilian support apparatus of police departments, the ratio increases to 3.1 law enforcement personnel per thousand.[5] Similar numbers are found in the United Kingdom (excluding Northern Ireland) and other European countries.

There are applications of numbers of this scale to military stability operations. The occupation of Germany immediately after the surrender used nine US divisions in the American Zone. In October 1945, policy changed and the operation shifted to a "police-type" occupation. This change led to the creation of the United States Constabulary (organized as a single large division) charged with the internal security of most of the American Zone of Occupation. The constabulary was created on the basis of one constable for every 450 German civilians (2.2 per thousand).[6] The force was entirely adequate to its limited objectives of enforcing public order, controlling black market transactions, and related police functions.

The UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) deployed about 20,000 security forces (16,000 troops and 3600 civilian police) for a variety of duties that included supervision of the cease-fire and voluntary disarmament of combatants, supervision of about 60,000 indigenous police to provide law and order, and administration of a free and fair election. In a population of roughly 9.1 million, the UN force had a force ratio of about 2.2 per thousand of population. By itself, the UN did not have a presence outside of large population centers nor a plausible capability for coercion, control, or protection of either the combatant factions or the civilian population.

• Force ratios of four to ten per thousand of population. A number of operations have used security and military forces at such force ratios:

Ongoing operations in India's Punjab state against Sikh militants deploy a security force of about 115,000 (regular troops, paramilitary security formations, and police) to secure a population of about 20.2 million, giving a force ratio of 5.7 per thousand.[7] The counterinsurgency campaign in the Punjab has been denounced as routinely violating human rights by causing hundreds of disappearances and summary executions. In the face of some popular support for the insurgents, even such a harshly punitive campaign has required large forces to protect and coerce.[8]

In 1965, the United States intervened in the Dominican Republic to stave off an incipient civil war. The United States deployed soldiers and Marines to separate the protagonists and assumed responsibility for stability in much of the country, particularly the capital. Peak deployment of US forces brought 24,000 to stabilize a population of about 3.6 million, giving a force ratio of about 6.6 troops per thousand.[9]

• Force ratios above ten per thousand of population. Force ratios above ten per thousand have been mounted in stability operations. In 1952 the British forces in the Malayan Emergency deployed close to 40,000 regular troops from Britain and the Commonwealth as well as the regulars of the Malay Regiment itself.[10] At the same time, the police force had 29,800 regular police together with 41,300 special constables,[11] for a total full-time security force of more than 111,000. With a population at the time of 5,506,000, the British generated a force ratio of about 20 per thousand of population. If the Home Guard force of 210,000 (1953 strength, not all of whom were either armed or active at any given time) were added to the previous figure, the force ratio would be even higher.

In Northern Ireland the British government deployed for more than 25 years a security force of around 32,000 (including both British military forces and the Royal Ulster Constabulary) to secure a total population of just over 1.6 million, giving a force ratio of about 20 per thousand. The British have recently reduced their military forces as part of an ongoing peace process.

Implications of Force Ratios Based on Population

These population-driven force ratios have a number of implications. For total populations, they imply that stability operations could demand large numbers of peacekeeping forces. For urban populations, they suggest that initial commitments could also be large. Finally, these ratios indicate that long-term commitments might be difficult to sustain without exacting unacceptable tolls on readiness or retention.

Implications for Entire Populations

The populations of countries in the underdeveloped world have expanded markedly relative to the population of the United States. More particularly, the populations of Third World countries have expanded even more dramatically relative to the size of the American military.

Figure 2, below, shows the population of various states on the framework used in Figure 1 to illustrate the historic force requirements for stabilization operations.


Figure 2. Security force size as a function of force ratios and current populations of representative countries.

The figure suggests two implications. First, very few states have populations so small that they could be stabilized with modest-sized forces. Second, a number of states have populations so large that they are simply not candidates for stabilization by external forces. Between the two extremes are countries large enough that only substantial efforts on the part of great powers or substantial contributions from many states could generate forces large enough to overcome serious disorder in such populations. Consider, however, that even many of these countries have populations so large that relatively modest per capita force deployments would entail moving, sustaining, and employing tens of thousands of troops in what the Army calls a "bare-base environment." The more rustic the environment, the larger the logistics tail needed to sustain the force.

Implications at Smaller Scales, Problems with Cities

Some might propose avoiding the problem of total populations by dealing with entire countries a little at a time in some updated version of an enclave or oil spot approach. But the current sizes of starting points or regions in too many states create problems comparable to operations that undertake to deal with the entire state. If we assume that among the first operational tasks of a stabilizing force is securing the capital, entry ports, and principal cities, we must bear in mind that many of those cities are now so large that they themselves constitute major problems for stabilization.

Country
Population
(millions)
Capital
Population
of Capital
(millions)
Capital's
Population
as percent
of total

Columbia 34.0 Bogota 5.0 15%
Cuba 10.9 Havana 2.2 20%
Dominican Republic 7.6 Santo Domingo 1.3 17%
El Salvador 5.0 San Salvador 0.4 8%
Guatemala 10.3 Guatemala City 1.2 12%
Table 1. Populations of Capital Cities as Percentages of Total Populations.
(Estimated populations circa 1993. Source: Europa World Yearbook, 1995.)

In interventions before World War II, the populations of countries in which the United States intervened were such that a small landing force of Marines and sailors often could secure the entry port. The populations of those ports and of the capital cities were generally small and in need of protection from the rural insurgents whose activities motivated the American intervention. Today that situation has changed significantly: capital cities and entry ports now have large populations frequently numbering over a million and, rather than being centers of stability on the fringe of disordered interiors, such cities are now more likely to be the center of disorder.

The problem of numbers is illustrated in the table above, giving the populations of some Caribbean and Latin American countries and their capital cities. Not only are the capitals heavily populated in absolute numbers, but many also contain a sizable percentage of the entire population of the country.

Beyond the absolute numbers of people in such cities, the cities themselves have developed in ways that complicate military operations. Much of the population of Third World cities lives in densely packed squatter settlements on the fringes of the core cities. As we discovered in Somalia, these aggregations of people in flimsy but densely packed shelters, clustered in areas without designed road access, are extremely difficult to patrol or control.[12]

The problem of numbers in the capital city or principal entry port presents an intervening power with a situation quite different from that of a traditional insurgency: Unless the capital city is quickly brought under both control and visible order, the credibility--locally and globally--of the intervention as a force for stability drains away together with whatever political legitimacy the intervention possessed. Therefore, establishing control over the large populations of such cities must be a major objective at the start of any operation, from which the conclusion is that any intervention force must have large numbers at the outset of operations.

The Problem of Numbers for Sustained Operations

The requirement for forces may extend well beyond the anticipated conclusion of an intervention. The United States tends to expect that the forces of other nations will replace American forces soon after initial operations. If such expectations are not met, American military forces can face substantial and long-term commitments. To sustain a force in a stability operation for any length of time, other forces must be available--either preparing for deployment to the operation or recovering and retraining from deployment. The ability to sustain an intervention force depends on the total number of available force units of the desired kind, the number of such units committed to the operation, the time required for training and deploying for the mission, and the time needed for recovery and retraining for the units' conventional missions.

All recent peace operations have relied on infantry-heavy units, either pure infantry or mechanized infantry. Other types of units, such as military police, civil affairs, and psyops, have carried out critical functions, but in manpower-intensive situations such as stability operations there has been simply no alternative to drawing on infantry for the bulk of the force. Other units--engineers, aviation, artillery--can provide support as in regular operations where appropriate, or with proper training they can substitute for infantry. Furthermore, in bare-base regions, the logistics support force requirement will be substantial.

Table 2, below, shows the total numbers of infantry battalions and other units available within the existing force structure for both the Army (active and reserve) and the Marines (active).

Type of Unit Active Army Army Reserve or
National Guard Active USMC
Infantry battalions 42 56 24
Mechanized infantry battalions 26 42 -
Non-divisional Military Police companies 49 110 -
Terminal Operating companies 4 4 -
Table 2. Total 1995 Force Inventories for Some Representative Units.
(Source: Program Analysis & Evaluation Directorate, OCSA, US Army.)

There is an intimate connection between the total force size, the numbers deployed to an operational tour, the length of an operational tour, and the time before a unit or an individual next faces an operational deployment.

In Vietnam, American soldiers and Marines had operational tours as long as 12 or 13 months. In recent history, Western governments have been unwilling to impose such protracted tours. European countries and the United States now generally accept that units will conduct intervention operations in six-month increments (or less). Pure peacekeeping tours such as the US peacekeeping operations in Sinai and Macedonia have been six-month deployments. The same has held true for Marine deployments on presence operations. Commitment to peace enforcement operations, where the prospect of active combat is one of the conditions of the intervention, may develop a shorter rotation cycle.


Figure 3. Time between deployments determined by the fraction of the force deployed.

Figure 3, above, shows the time between operational tours as a function of the total fraction of the units (or personnel) of the given type deployed to the operation compared to the duration of the operational tour.[13] The time between operational tours is an important measure of the effect of the operation on the entire force in two ways:

It defines the total time available for training, both that training required for the unit's stability role and the retraining required to prepare the unit for its original mission upon completion of the intervention operation.
Over a sustained period, it represents the time available for relief between intervention operations for the now relatively large portion of the enlisted force which has chosen the military as a profession.
The general character of Figure 3 shows that, with short operational deployments, the time to next deployment rapidly decreases with the fraction of the force deployed. With one-fifth of the force deployed on this or related operations, the time until the soldier's next deployment is 16 months (with four-month operational deployments) or 24 months (with six-month operational deployments). With a third of the force deployed, the time to next deployment plummets to eight months (for four-month operational tours) or 12 months (for six-month operational tours).

These tour lengths have important implications for readiness and quality of life. If units have only a little more than a year for a cycle of retraining to original role, maintaining skills within their original role, and then training to special deployment tasks, it seems unlikely they will have time to progress to highly integrated combined arms training. This will affect even units that are not deployed; for example, an armored brigade that has had its mechanized infantry battalion deployed to an operation will not be able to train at brigade level or even be able to train battalion task forces by cross-attachment of mechanized companies to armor battalions.

The combination of force ratios, current populations, the size of existing infantry forces, and the implications for rotation can be astounding. Force ratios larger than ten members of the security forces for every thousand of population are not uncommon in current operations (Northern Ireland, or even Mogadishu). Sustaining a stabilizing force at such a force ratio for a city as large as one million (or for a country as small as one million) could require a deployment of about a quarter of all regular infantry battalions in the US Army. With current force sizes this means that within two years, every infantry soldier in the US Army would have been cycled through an operational deployment and many would have started on second deployments to the operational area.

The human consequences are potentially more grave. It is sobering to realize that, at a minimum, any extended commitment to a particular operation could mean many individuals would expect a deployment to that operation every year. It is difficult to predict the full range of effects on family life caused by frequent absences of military family members and their frequent exposure to combat-like conditions. While some might imagine that success in such ventures could breed praetorian ambitions in the military, this is hardly the most likely outcome of frequent returns to combat-like short tours. Those with experience of the Vietnam decade see such commitments leading to retention problems and the attendant increases in training costs, as well as the wearing away of the professional force so painfully established since the mid-1970s.

Implications

In the past decade, as civilian populations in underdeveloped states have exploded, the size of American and allied military forces has declined significantly. Interventions to restore and maintain order and stability place military forces squarely at the juncture of these two trends. As practiced in recent decades, intervention operations are troop-intensive, with the forces required related closely to the size of the populations in the failed or failing states.

The populations of many countries are now large enough to strain the ability of the American military to provide stabilizing forces unilaterally at even modest per capita force ratios. Many countries have populations so large that the United States could participate in their stabilization only through multilateral forces that bring together major force contributions from a large number of countries. And we must finally acknowledge that many countries are simply too big to be plausible candidates for stabilization by external forces.

If a stability operation must be sustained for an extended period, the rotation of forces can have a pronounced effect on the readiness of the rest of the force for other military missions. At the same time, the troops may face repeated deployments to combat-like tours for what appear to be less-than-vital national interests. The effects on retention and ultimately the professionalism of the force seem likely to be adverse.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


NOTES

1. US Army, FM 100-23, Peace Operations, December 1994, p. 6.

2. Ibid., p. 7.

3. This expression reuses the early doctrinal term "stability operations" which is no longer a part of the lexicon. As defined in 1967, "stability operations" was that type of internal defense and internal development operations and assistance provided by the armed forces to maintain, restore, or establish a climate of order within which responsible government can function effectively and without which progress cannot be achieved. US Army, FM 31-23, Stability Operations--U.S. Army Doctrine (Washington: GPO, 1967). The term is relevant to this article in that it provided analytical and logical continuity between the conditions under which earlier operations were conducted and our present concepts of peace enforcement.

4. Richard L. Clutterbuck, The Long, Long War: Counterinsurgency in Malaya and Vietnam (New York: Praeger, 1966), pp. 42-43. See also the discussion of such "tie-down ratios" in Larry E. Cable, Conflict of Myths: The Development of American Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the Vietnam War (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 81-83.

5. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, Crime in the United States 1993, Uniform Crime Reports for the United States 1993 (Washington: GPO, 1994).

6. Earl F. Ziemke, The United States Army in the Occupation of Germany, 1944-1946 (Washington, GPO, 1975), p. 341.

7. Interview with Punjab's Director General of Police, Kanwar Pal Singh Gill, Jane's Defence Weekly, 23 January 1993, p. 32.

8. Human Rights Watch, Human Rights Watch World Report 1994: Events of 1993 (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993), pp. 162-63. Amnesty International, An Unnatural Fate: "Disappearances" and Impunity in the Indian States of Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab (New York: Amnesty International, 1993).

9. Lawrence A. Yates, Power Pack: U.S. Intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1965-1966 (Leavenworth, Kans.: Combat Studies Institute, 1988).

10. Noel Barber, The War of the Running Dogs, The Malayan Emergency: 1948-1960 (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1971), pp. 156-57.

11. Federation of Malaya, Federation of Malaya Annual Report, 1953 (Kuala Lumpur: Government Press, 1954), p. 223.

12. Problems of urban insurgency are overviewed in Jennifer Morrison Taw and Bruce Hoffman, The Urbanization of Insurgency: The Potential Challenge to U.S. Army Operations (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, MR-398-A, 1994).

13. The fraction deployed may be different depending on whether it is calculated on the basis of units or personnel. The fraction of personnel of a certain type deployed will be smaller than the corresponding fraction of units deployed because of the additional personnel slots for such personnel in other than TO&E units.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


James T. Quinlivan is Director of the Arroyo Center at RAND, in Santa Monica, Calif. The Arroyo Center is the Army's federally funded research and development center for policy analysis. The author is a graduate of the Illinois Institute of Technology and has an M.S. in applied mathematics from the University of Colorado at Boulder and an Engineer's Degree in Operations Research from UCLA.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Paramet...995/quinliv.htm

We lost a good Marine

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/09/26/obit.adams.ap/

Don Adams of 'Get Smart' dead
'Would you believe?' actor was 82

Monday, September 26, 2005; Posted: 3:46 p.m. EDT (19:46 GMT)

Get Smart
Barbara Feldon as Agent 99 and Don Adams as Maxwell Smart in "Get Smart."
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LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Don Adams, the wry-voiced comedian who starred as the fumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart in the 1960s TV spoof of James Bond movies, "Get Smart," has died. He was 82.

Adams died of a lung infection late Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, his friend and former agent Bruce Tufeld said Monday, adding that the actor broke his hip a year ago and had been in ill health since.

As the inept Agent 86 of the super-secret federal agency CONTROL, Adams captured TV viewers with his antics in combatting the evil agents of KAOS. When his explanations failed to convince the villains or his boss, he tried another tack:

"Would you believe ... ?"

It became a national catchphrase.

Smart was also prone to spilling things on the desk or person of his boss -- the Chief (actor Edward Platt). Smart's apologetic "Sorry about that, chief" also entered the American lexicon.

The spy gadgets, which aped those of the Bond movies, were a popular feature, especially the pre-cell-phone telephone in a shoe.

Smart's beautiful partner, Agent 99, played by Barbara Feldon, was as brainy as he was dense, and a plot romance led to marriage and the birth of twins later in the series.

Adams, who had been under contract to NBC, was lukewarm about doing a spy spoof. When he learned that Mel Brooks and Buck Henry had written the pilot script, he accepted immediately.

"Get Smart" debuted on NBC in September 1965 and scored No. 12 among the season's most-watched series and No. 22 in its second season.

"Get Smart" twice won the Emmy for best comedy series with three Emmys for Adams as comedy actor.

CBS picked up the show but the ratings fell off as the jokes seemed repetitive, and it was canceled after four seasons. The show lived on in syndication and a cartoon series. In 1995 the Fox network revived the series with Smart as chief and 99 as a congresswoman. It lasted seven episodes.

Adams never had another showcase to display his comic talent.

"It was a special show that became a cult classic of sorts, and I made a lot of money for it," he remarked of "Get Smart" in a 1995 interview. "But it also hindered me career-wise because I was typed. The character was so strong, particularly because of that distinctive voice, that nobody could picture me in any other type of role."

He was born Donald James Yarmy in New York City on April 13, 1923, Tufeld said, although some sources say 1926 or '27. The actor's father was a Hungarian Jew who ran a few small restaurants in the Bronx.

In a 1959 interview Adams said he never cared about being funny as a kid: "Sometimes I wonder how I got into comedy at all. I did movie star impressions as a kid in high school. Somehow they just got out of hand."

In 1941, he dropped out of school to join the Marines. In Guadalcanal he survived the deadly blackwater fever and was returned to the States to become a drill instructor, acquiring the clipped delivery that served him well as a comedian.

After the war he worked in New York as a commercial artist by day, doing standup comedy in clubs at night, taking the surname of his first wife, Adelaide Adams. His following grew, and soon he was appearing on the Ed Sullivan and late-night TV shows. Bill Dana, who had helped him develop comedy routines, cast him as his sidekick on Dana's show. That led to the NBC contract and "Get Smart."

Adams, who married and divorced three times and had seven children, served as the voice for the popular cartoon series, "Inspector Gadget," as well as cartoon character Tennessee Tuxedo. In 1980, he appeared as Maxwell Smart in a feature movie, "The Nude Bomb," about a madman whose bomb destroyed people's clothing.

Tufeld said funeral arrangements were incomplete.

Junior Marine is experienced beyond what rank implies
Submitted by: MCB Hawaii
Story Identification #: 2005107202119
Story by Sgt. Joe Lindsay



MARINE CORPS AIR GROUND COMBAT CENTER, TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. (Oct. 7, 2005) -- The shrapnel burning in his legs most likely came from a hand grenade, he figured, considering the fighting was so up close and personal that day in Fallujah. He couldn’t really be sure. It might have been from an rocket-propelled grenade, mortar, or who knows what other kind of homemade bomb some insurgent had put together in his basement. The media and military called these tools of death improvised explosive devices, but it didn’t really matter to him what label they were given or even what exactly it was imbedded inside of him, piercing his flesh.

All that mattered was that he stayed with his men and continued the fight.

Thus began the story of Lance Cpl. Justin Snyder, 21 at the time, and just barely old enough to have a beer. He was squad automatic weapons operator with 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, based out of Marine Corps Base Hawaii, Kaneohe Bay, and he was in the most fierce close-quarters battle that the Marine Corps had faced since Hue City in Vietnam almost 40 years ago.

Hawaii seemed a far away place. His home and family in Las Vegas, further still. While other American youths his age were paying money to have pieces of ornately designed shiny metal stuck through their noses, tongues, and belly buttons as the latest youth rite of passage back in states, Snyder was getting paid to have rusty metal fragments tear through his flesh in a far different rite of passage that Marines have been experiencing since 1775.

“I’d always run my mouth about, ‘If you’re an able-bodied young American, then you should join some branch of the service,’” said Snyder, a fire-team leader with Charlie Company, 3rd Platoon, as he sat with an M203 grenade launcher attached to his M-16A2 service rifle in the frigid high desert of Hawthorne, Nev., during a recent training exercise as 1/3 gears up for yet another combat deployment, this time to Afghanistan. “Basically, I was all talk, so I decided to put my money where my mouth is, and here I sit. That’s that.”

Sometimes, though, that isn’t always merely that.

“I’m not sure Lance Corporal Snyder truly understands the impact and importance he has to not only his squad and platoon, but also to his company, his battalion and to the entire Marine Corps as a whole,” said 1st Sgt. Gerard Calvin, first sergeant, Charlie Company, 1/3, and a native of Richmond, Va. “He is a ‘Been there; done that; got the T-shirt Marine,’ and just watching the way other Marines gravitate to him speaks volumes for the respect he commands just by his presence.”

According to Calvin, even though Snyder’s rank of lance corporal may be considered a junior rank, there is nothing junior about this Marine.

“Circumstances have turned him into a seasoned vet,” said Calvin, who is preparing to make his third combat tour to Afghanistan. “You can see the intensity and confidence in his eyes, and the Marines around him are drawn to that. Even as a lance corporal, he is a proven leader of Marines. Any leader worth his salt, and I don’t care what their rank is or how long they’ve been in the Corps, can learn from Marines like Lance Corporal Snyder.”

Gunnery Sgt. Paul Davis, company gunnery sergeant for Charlie Company and an Iraq veteran said he couldn’t agree more.

“Lance Corporal Snyder knows what the unknown is like,” said the Laurens, S.C. native. “On its face, that statement might not seem to make sense, but believe me, to those who have been under fire, it does. He has proven that he will keep attacking with rounds whizzing by his head, and that even when wounded, he will keep going. He is an example to all Marines that intestinal fortitude is as powerful a device as any weapon issued to us. I’m proud to have him in Charlie Company, and I am proud to serve with him.”

For his part, Snyder, despite his combat experience and numerous accolades, said he would never rest on his laurels.

“I lost a lot of good friends, good Marines, in Fallujah,” said Snyder. “I feel like I have a responsibility to make sure as much as our guys come back from Afghanistan as possible, hopefully all of them, while still getting the job done that we are being sent over there to do.”

Because of his past experience in Afghanistan, Snyder said the mountain combat training 1/3 received earlier at the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport, Calif., and the desert field operations they are currently conducting at Twentynine Palms during the combined arms exercise phase of their training, is so important.

“I’m out here putting what I know to use and also learning a lot of new things,” said Snyder. “You’ve always got to keep learning in the Marine Corps. The day you stop learning is the day it’s time to pack your bags and get out.”

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...CF?opendocument

1/5 returns from tour in Iraq
Submitted by: MCB Camp Pendleton
Story Identification #: 2005106111640
Story by Cpl. Tom Sloan



MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (Oct. 6, 2005) -- The excitement intensified for the Marines and sailors as their convoy of white busses carried them closer to the camp here during the early-morning hours of Sept. 28.

The men knew what awaited them on the parade deck, which made them all the more eager to get there.

The warriors had spent the last seven months fighting against terrorism and for the freedom of others.

For seven long months, they’d been conducting stability and support operations in volatile Ar Ramadi, Iraq, and wanted desperately to see and embrace their loved ones.

More than 1,000 Marines and sailors with 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment returned home from war. Family members and fellow Marines met them on the parade deck and gave them a hero’s welcome.

The homecoming marked the unit’s third deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom since military operations in Iraq began in March 2003.

“This feels great,” said Cpl. Richie L. Gunter, with Company B, as he hugged his wife, Jenny, for the first time in seven months. “I’m so happy to be home and with her again.”

This was the 31-year-old Woodland, Calif., native’s third Iraq tour with 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, and it would be his last.

“It’s a huge weight lifted off my shoulders,” he added, referring to the fact that he’s now finished fighting.

Gunter is scheduled to leave the Corps in April, after which he plans on going to work for his father-in-law on his tomato farm.

The Marines conducted countless missions in the Al Anbar capital city in an effort to quell the insurgency and restore its infrastructure, explained Lt. Col. Eric M. Smith, the infantry battalion’s commander.

“Everyday Marines were out there doing heroic acts,” said the 40-year-old Marine leader from Plano, Texas. “Ramadi required a consistent level of action.”

The endeavor was often difficult and dangerous, Smith said, requiring his Marines to operate day and night.

“The Marines were selflessly devoted to the mission, and their actions were tireless,” he continued. “The important thing to remember is Ramadi has an ambient level of violence. We had to operate in a city with a healthy level of insurgency and also watch out for the well being of the civilian populace.”

Smith said fighting insurgents in Ramadi, which has fully operating hospitals, schools and markets, was a unique task for his Marines. It required them to be equal parts warrior and diplomat, he explained.
He said it was difficult to fully prepare yourself for a mission as difficult as Iraqs, but that they did they’re best and were helped by the training they did receive.

“There’re lots of different types of Iraq. We had to be good Marines.”

First Battalion, Fifth Marines also trained several hundred members of the Iraqi Security Forces to fight the city’s insurgency during the deployment.

“We stood up and introduced a company of ISF into Ramadi,” he said. “They’re living in the city and are conducting operations against the terrorists.”

According to Department of Defense officials, a competent force of ISF who are capable of providing security to Iraq without assistance is the ticket home for the U.S. military. “It was a milestone for us,” officials said.

The insurgents’ preferred weaponry came in the form of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which they placed on roads throughout the city and used to target convoys.

Insurgents also attacked Marines with small arms fire.

The biggest engagement was in May when 20 insurgents attacked Marines at an entry control point.

“That gunfight resulted in us killing 13 insurgents,” Smith said. Marines captured the other seven, he said.

The infantry battalion suffered its own losses during the deployment.

Fifteen Marines and one Navy corpsman were killed while fighting terror on the urban battlefield.

“We left 16 good men behind and 125 were wounded, some of them severely,” Smith said. “It humbles me to know that these men were willing to sacrifice such things for the good of the mission. They fought and died for our brother Marines.”

Smith said it hurts him that he wasn’t able to bring home all his men.

“You can’t make (their death) right with them or their families,” he said. “You feel unfulfilled returning home without them.”
Smith said leading a battalion in combat was his ‘solemn duty.’

“It was my obligation, my duty,” he said. “I was surrounded by 1,000 brave men and America has a significant debt of gratitude to pay to these men. They’re no different from the men who fought in World War II and saved the world. There’s no difference in the Marines who attacked down central Ramadi and the Marines who stormed the beaches of Iwo Jima. It’s the same level of heroism. Marines are Marines, and they carry on the warrior tradition.”

Editor’s note: Cpl. Sloan deployed with 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, serving as the unit’s combat correspondent. Sloan is a native of Coleman, Texas.

http://www.marines.mil/marinelink/mcn2000....A2?opendocument

This is the part that gave me chills [The marine guy says "Oh no, we've gotta go in and get it."]


http://www.petdance.com/nr/interviews/hell-on-wheels.html

Naked Raygun interviewed in
Hell On Wheels

The following is taken from Greg Jacobs' excellent book Hell On Wheels: A Tour Stories Compilation. It's got tour stories from a zillion different (mostly punk) bands, from All to X, with stops in the middle for Mary's Danish, Butthole Surfers, Dwarves, Superchunk and L7.

I broke it up into paragraphs, as the original in the book is just one big stream of text, which is hard enough to read in the book, but would be harder onscreen. Parenthetical comments are direct from the text.

Pierre Kezdy was interviewed by Greg Jacobs at the Casbah in San Diego, CA.

Pierre: This is when John (Haggerty) had just quit Naked Raygun, so we had a new guitar player, Bill Stevens [sic]. Our regular roadie couldn't make it, so I got this marine friend of mine to do it. He's a total marine! We had to do some special gig in New York. The roadie and Bill drove out with the van. We all, the rest of us (in the band) flew out. (After the show) everybody else except me the roadie and Bill Stevens drove back. We figured, "Ah "expletive deleted" you know, New York to Chicago, 17 hours, we'll just go right through."

So we get out of New York, it's about 5:00, and the roadie says, "I gotta get something to eat, I'm "expletive deleted"in' hungry." I go no, let's just keep driving. And he has to stop at a gas station in "podunk" Pennsylvania. And this place was ancient, it was from the 1930s. He looks through the dusty old menu and he sees stromboli on there. He has to have a stromboli. So he orders his "expletive deleted"in' stromboli. It literally took two-and-a-half hours to make this stromboli. We just sat in this "expletive deleted"in' gas station and they kept saying: "Oh, it's coming, it's coming." Two-and-a-half hours at this gas station for this stromboli. So finally we got back on the road, we kept driving and we got tired, so we pull over at a hotel.

The next morning we get out, get right on the Ohio State Turnpike and I'm driving the van. All of a sudden just hear this explosion, and smoke starts pouring through the dash. White smoke starts pouring through the dash, and I thought, "White smoke... it must be a radiator host." So I pull over to the side of the road. We pile out of the van. And the smoke is starting to come out the front now. We were thinking, ""expletive deleted", a little radiator host?" And then we though "Oh jeez, I hope it's not on fire!" All three of us looked down below the fan and as soon as we looked down flames shoot out from underneath the van. All theses semis pull over; they've got their fire extinguishers out, they couldn't put it out. We start hauling our gear out, throwing it down the dith, so we had drums rolling down the ditch, amps rolling down the ditch. We were trying to get everything out.

Now the smoke is turning black, the flames are up in front. We were all trying to pull all of our personal "expletive deleted" out of there but the smoke got too bad, and the big amps were still in there. I said ""expletive deleted" it, just it burn." [The marine guy says "Oh no, we've gotta go in and get it."] He "expletive deleted"in' goes in there. So I figured if he's going in there, I'm going in there too. Luckily the wind direction changed towards the front of the van. We got the amps out. When the two amps were out, flames started shooting out the back. The guitar player says, "I left my leather jacket in there." What does the marine do? He says, "I'll go get it." "expletive deleted"ing flames were shooting out of the van, he jumps in there, grabs the leather jacket and comes out totally unscathed. By then, the fire department showed up and they just let the thing burn. The fuel line was feeding the fire. It burned to a crisp.

Then I called Jeff (Pezzati the singer), he had already gotten back and he was at work. He had all the insurance papers and stuff. I said, "Jeff guess what?" He said "what?" I said "The van burned!" And he goes, "just get it fixed and drive back, you know, put it on your credit card or something." And I said, "No you don't understand, the van is toast!" He goes, "Well stay overnight somewhere and get it fixed and come back." I said "You don't understand; the van is "expletive deleted"ing gone!" There was literally nothing. All the tires burned, everything burned. It was just a metal hull sitting on the highway. It took Jeff 5 minutes to realize that the van was gone. Plus, we had 1,000 T-shirts that were not insured, so we lost about $5,000 in shirts. That was pretty hairy!

Purple Heart recipient describes attack
Submitted by: 2nd Force Service Support Group
Story Identification #: 200510494240
Story by Lance Cpl. Matthew K. Hacker



MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (Oct. 4, 2005) -- It was June 23, 2005, when 20 Marines boarded a seven-ton truck and began their treacherous journey back to Camp Fallujah, Iraq. What happened a short distance down the road is something that has, and will, continue to change their lives forever.

Sitting in the second to last seat in the back, on the right side of the truck, was Lance Cpl. Erin Liberty of Niceville, Fla., an ammunition technician with Ammunition Company, 2nd Supply Battalion, 2nd Force Service Support Group. She remembers talking with the female Seabee next to her, when a series of combined explosions violently lifted the truck from both sides.

“When it blew up, we all flew back and then forward again in our seats,” said Liberty. “I looked at the girl next to me and saw her bounce up and down in the flames. I just closed my eyes and waited for it to end. I felt myself being thrown in the air, but my eyes remained shut. When I impacted the ground, I realized nothing hurt. I felt everything that was happening, but it was like there was a bubble around me, because when I hit the ground and woke up, I felt no pain. I looked at my hands and saw the skin hanging off my left pinky finger, but it still didn’t hurt. Not then. ”

Lying on the ground and covered in dust, she knew it was an improvised explosive device, but it was later she learned it was constructed of five, 155-millimeter incendiary rounds and a few propane tanks, according to Liberty. They had gone off about six feet from each side of the truck.

Trying to recover from the concussion and the ringing in her ears, she looked over and saw the Seabee she had spoken too just seconds before the blast.

“She was lying next to me, unconscious,” Liberty added. “I tried to pull her away from ground zero, but there was a firefight happening at the same time, so a few guys pulled me off and threw me against the wall. I wanted to go back for her, but the way the truck was positioned, it rolled over on top of her before I could.”

After the firefight had died down and the injured Marines and sailors were recovered, they loaded onto another vehicle and headed straight for the Battalion Aid Station at Camp Fallujah, according to Liberty.

“We then just jumped on another seven-ton and drove away,” Liberty said. “We all just sat there in silence, except for the sounds of discomfort and pain. I can still see the people with their skin hanging off of them. I remember seeing this girl with blood all over her flak jacket and the skin on her fingers falling off. Then, suddenly the silence broke, when a girl in the back of the truck started singing, Amazing Grace. I remember praying to God, and thanking Him that I was alive.”

When they returned to the camp, they were rushed into the surgical unit, but all the serious and critical injuries were rushed in first. Liberty walked in after everyone else, following the blood trails, she said.

They fixed both of her badly burned hands before she went back to her room. When she got there, she saw she got some packages from home that day.

“One was from my mom. She got me the most gorgeous rosary,” said Liberty. “That night, I just remember lying in bed, praying to let me forget about it. I tried to sleep that night, but obviously I couldn’t sleep much. All I wanted was to just wake up in the morning and feel like it didn’t just happen. The whole thing just kept playing in my mind.”

The next morning, she remembers waking up and thanking God, because her thoughts of the present, rather than the tragic events of the day before. She was glad to feel that, but with the morning sun came a new pain. Her neck began to hurt, so she went back to the BAS.

The doctors told Liberty she had broken a cervical vertebrae in her neck and she was going to have to return to the United States.

She returned to Camp Lejeune shortly after the incident and has been on convalescent leave since July 3. Not long after she went on leave, she received her Purple Heart Medal.

“It was extremely hard to accept, knowing all the people that had died,” said Liberty. “It’s nothing you can train or practice for, and you always receive it under the worst circumstances.”

Now, she wears a neck brace to assist in stabilizing the break and help with the pain. She is currently recuperating from first, second and third degree burns on her hands and two black eyes in addition to her broken neck.

Liberty will undergo surgery in Florida next month, where they will put a metal plate between her C4 and C5 vertebraes in an attempt to stabilize the break.

In light of the life-altering events she’s been through, she’s still moving forward in her life. Liberty married on Sept. 19, after getting engaged right before she left for Iraq in February.

“It’s been a rough engagement,” Liberty states, with a light, but respectful chuckle.

Liberty confesses, that even though it has been almost four months since the incident, she still has thoughts of that day.

“I wonder what would have happened if those guys wouldn’t have pulled me away from the truck,” Liberty added. “I imagine what would have happened if I had the strength to pull her away. I’m sure that will always stay with me. Honestly, my mind and my heart hurt way more than my body ever will.”


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PART III. CONTEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT OF FORCE

X. Strategies and Policies of Terrorism

A. General: The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon of September 11, 2001 have made it more important than ever to comprehend the military significance and political implications of terrorism. While America's current war on terror will be addressed in the last week of the course, this case examines the phenomenon of terrorism in the twentieth century from the standpoint of terrorists themselves, and looks specifically at the relationship among terrorist policies and strategies.

In the twentieth century terrorism has been employed with many different political purposes in view. Some terrorists have aimed at forcing governments to renounce specific policies they found objectionable. Others have desired to topple governments and build alternative structures of political power. Still others have tried to put an end to colonialism or to expel foreign occupiers. Terrorism has sometimes been used as the sole strategy, and sometimes in conjunction with (or in subordination to) other means of struggle such as industrial strikes, rural arson, guerrilla warfare and even conventional military operations. Terrorist methods have included sabotage, hostage-taking, carefully targeted assassinations of officials and the wholesale murder of civilians. More often than not, terrorism has been instrumental, undertaken in the pursuit of discrete political objectives. In short, terrorism has been, in Martha Crenshaw’s phrase, a “strategic choice.”

The first group of assigned readings this week discusses the problem of defining terrorism. It also examines the historical evolution of terrorist strategies and terrorist theories of victory. The second group of readings deals with four cases of terrorism in practice: the Socialist-Revolutionary Party's campaign of terror in Imperial Russia (1902-1907); the IVA/IRA war to end British rule in Ireland (1918-1921); the FLN's struggle to drive the French from Algeria (1954-1961); and the Shining Path's battle to make a revolution in Peru (1980-1992). All four of these terrorist movements inflicted considerable damage on their chosen targets. Two of them were successful, or at least partially successful, politically.

Founded in 1902, the Socialist-Revolutionary (or SR) party dedicated itself to violent overthrow of the tsarist autocracy. Although influenced by Marxism, the SRs sought to make a revolution in the name of and in the interest of the peasants who constituted the overwhelming majority of the Russian Empire's subjects. The SRs believed that the best means of igniting a revolutionary conflagration in Russia would be through a campaign of political murder directed against the highest officials in the government. These terrorist acts were supposed simultaneously to petrify the imperial bureaucracy, undermine the authority of the government, and touch off a general insurrection by the rural masses. In the first two and a half years of its existence, the SRs' "Combat Organization" was able to carry out a series of sensational assassinations that numbered among their victims two ministers of the interior, a governor-general, a minister of education and one of the tsar's uncles. There can be little doubt that SR terrorism helped create the environment that made the Russian revolution of 1905-07 possible. Although that revolution did transform Russia from an autocracy into a quasi-constitutional state, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party was in the end unable to destroy the tsarist system. It was crippled both by internal dissention and severe government repression. Then, too, the tsarist police managed to insinuate its spies and agents into the party's inner circles: Evno Azef, a prominent member of the party's "Combat Organization", and at one point in 1907 its head, was secretly a police employee. But the party was also defeated in part by the contradictions between the logic of mass politics and the logic of conspiracy. By 1905 the party had built up a network of local organizations scattered throughout Russia. During the revolution hundreds of provincial SRs (or people who identified themselves as SRs) undertook political murders, robberies and acts of arson on their own, often without the permission or knowledge of the party's central committee. It did not help matters much that the party's maximalist faction preached the doctrine of "economic terror", and called for indiscriminate attacks on the lives and property of factory owners and landlords. There were thousands of incidents of "revolutionary" violence in the years 1905-07, by no means all of them perpetrated by SRs. It has been estimated that these resulted in at least nine thousand casualties, of whom one half were private citizens. The scale of the bloodbath alienated moderate public opinion in Russia and assisted in discrediting terrorism as an instrument of political struggle.

By contrast, the Irish Republicans enjoyed much greater political success with the strategy of terrorism and guerrilla war they employed against the British from 1918-1921. Michael Collins, who became the de facto leader of the paramilitary Irish Volunteers in the spring of 1918, devised much of that strategy. Unlike those of his colleagues in Sinn Féin who thought that they could negotiate a British withdrawal from Ireland, Collins was firmly convinced that only violence could secure Ireland's complete independence. Collins organized his Volunteers, who soon became known as the Irish Republican Army, into terrorist cells, and led them in a campaign of intimidation and, ultimately, murder directed against Irish "collaborators", the Irish police (RIC) and British officials. British efforts to track down and crush the IRA were frustrated by Collins' superb intelligence department, which frequently supplied him with exact advance information about British intentions and plans. The non-cooperation of a substantial proportion of the Irish public also stymied British counter-terrorism. Britain therefore decided to escalate the repression. In 1920 London recruited and dispatched to Ireland special paramilitary formations, of which the most notorious was the Black and Tans. Charged to "make Ireland hell for the rebels", these units carried out a policy of "reprisals" that degenerated into looting, torture, and homicide. The various forces of the British Crown gunned down over two hundred unarmed civilians in 1920. Such atrocities validated IRA terrorism in the eyes of the Irish population and intensified support for the Republican cause, particularly in the south of the country. Although Britain did have the raw military power to suppress the rebellion in Ireland, the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, hesitated to apply it. One reason for this was his concern for Britain's international standing, particularly in the United States where millions of Irish-Americans openly sympathized with the Irish independence movement. Another was his appreciation of what the cost would likely be, for he was informed that the complete pacification of Ireland would require the deployment of at least an additional hundred thousand troops and the expenditure of an extra hundred million pounds a year. In the summer of 1921 Lloyd George opened negotiations with Eamon de Valera, who as the Prime Minister of Ireland's shadow Dáil government was the political head of Sinn Féin. The ensuing talks resulted in the December 1921 treaty that created the Irish Free State. The Irish nationalists received some but not all of what they had wanted, for six counties in the north remained under British rule. The more extreme Irish republicans rejected the treaty outright and started a civil war.

Strategies that incorporated terrorism also achieved some success in the Algerian case. France had conquered Algeria in the 1830s and had proclaimed it to be an integral part of France in 1847. Yet the Muslim inhabitants of Algeria, who numbered eight and a half million by 1954, were treated as subjects rather than citizens by the French state. Political and economic power in Algeria was concentrated in the hands of the European settlers (pieds noirs), a community of approximately one million people. In 1951 a small group of Algerian nationalists, including several French army veterans, established an organization to fight for Algeria's independence. The Front de Libération Nationale (National Liberation Front or FLN) launched its anti-colonial offensive in November 1954. The FLN's initial acts of sabotage and terrorism did not, however, produce the spontaneous, massive popular uprising on which it had been banking. Realizing that a rapid victory was beyond its grasp, and inspired by the example of the Viet Minh in Indo-China, the FLN then attempted to implement a strategy that borrowed many elements from Mao's teachings about people's war. But that strategy also deviated from Mao's in important respects, since it placed emphasis on urban guerrilla warfare and the premeditated murder of civilians, French and Algerian alike. The French responded with martial law, draconian repression and a military build-up that eventually committed about half of the regular army to the Algerian counter-insurgency. France managed to smash the FLN's urban infrastructure in 1957, and succeeded in isolating the rural battlefield by erecting extensive fortified barriers that cut the Algerian insurgents off from their bases and sanctuaries in Morocco and Tunisia. After 1959 FLN fighters, as one historian writes, "did not appear in the countryside in units larger than company size." From the military point of view, the FLN had been beaten. Yet military defeat did not preclude political victory. De Gaulle, who owed his political comeback in 1958 to the Algerian crisis, had arrived at the conclusion that it was in France's best interest to grant Algeria her independence. De Gaulle won a national referendum on the question of Algerian self-determination, and negotiated France's withdrawal from Algeria in 1962, despite an abortive military coup against him and numerous attempts on his life by right-wing French terrorists.

Our final case of terrorism in practice is that of Peru's Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path guerrilla movement. Sendero was the creation of a group of fanatic Peruvian intellectuals who embraced an extreme form of Maoist ideology. Several of its members, including its leader, former philosophy professor Abimael Guzmán Reynoso, had studied or trained in China during the era of the Cultural Revolution. It was their objective to overthrow the Peruvian government, seize power and use that power to unleash a cultural revolution of their own that would not only banish capitalism, but even mechanized agriculture from Peru. Sendero's plan was to implement a classical Maoist three-phase strategy of guerrilla war, lavishly supplemented by terror. Terrorist activities were designed to publicize the revolutionary movement, demoralize the government, and wreck the Peruvian economy all at the same time. In addition to bombing power lines, rural medical clinics, government offices and bridges, Sendero guerrillas engaged in wholesale murder. From 1980, when the first armed bands became active in the mountains of Ayacucho, until 1992, when the Peruvian authorities apprehended Guzmán, Sendero Luminoso was responsible for killing over twenty seven thousand people. Among the dead were government functionaries, foreign tourists, businessmen and aid workers, and Indian peasants who either resisted the revolution or evinced insufficient enthusiasm for it. Although Sendero initially established a limited social base among the rural poor, over the long term its vicious tactics, economic warfare and doctrinaire ideology alienated the majority of Peru's peasants. As Marks' account makes clear, the case of the Shining Path raises important questions about the capacity and limits of terrorist strategies to win popular support.

B. Essay and Discussion Questions

1. In light of the mini-cases we have examined this week, under what circumstances do strategies that incorporate terrorism have the greatest chances of success?

2. In light of the mini-cases we have examined this week, under what circumstances are strategies that utilize terrorism most prone to failure?

3. How can a terrorist movement best exploit a government's political or military reaction against it?

4. How can terrorists best shape their campaigns to attract formal or informal support from abroad?

5. What are the strengths and weaknesses of terrorism as an instrument of mass political mobilization?

6. How are the terrorist strategies we have studied this week similar to and dissimilar from the classical Maoist strategy of people's war?

7. Thomas Perry Thornton has argued that a strategy of terrorism is likely to be "appropriate" only if the terrorists "enjoy a low level of actual political support but have a high potential for such support." Do you agree?

8. How useful is Clausewitzian "triangular" analysis for understanding the outcomes of the terrorist campaigns we have studied this week?

9. How useful is Sun Tzu's theory of war for understanding the outcomes of the terrorist campaigns we have studied this week?

10. What strategies are most effective in defeating terrorists?

C. Required Readings

1. Crenshaw, Martha. "The Logic of Terrorism: Terrorist Behavior as a Product of Strategic Choice," in Walter Reich, ed., The Origins of Terrorism. Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1998. pp. 7-24. (Selected Readings)

[Crenshaw offers a spirited defense of the proposition that terrorism can often be understood as politically and militarily rational.]

2. Thornton, Thomas Perry. "Terror as a Weapon of Political Agitation," in Harry Eckstein, ed., Internal War. New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1964. pp. 71-99. (Selected Readings)

[Thornton is interested in the political objectives that terrorists pursue. Although he is writing about the use of terrorism in insurgencies, his insights may be applicable to other sorts of terrorist movements as well.]

3. Geifman, Anna. “The Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries and Terror” in Anna Geifman, ed. Thou Shalt Kill. Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894-1917. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. pp. 45-83. (Selected Readings)

[The chapter from Geifman's book deals with the use of terror by the Russian Socialists-Revolutionaries in the early twentieth century. She shows how terror escaped from the control of the party leadership and took on a life of its own.]

4. Kee, Robert. The Green Flag. The Turbulent History of the Irish National Movement. New York: Delacorte Press, 1972. pp. 548-603; 628-732.

[Kee's highly readable narrative history of the Anglo-Irish War lays special stress on the political and tactical disagreements among the Irish nationalists themselves.]

5. Townshend, Charles. “The Irish Republican Army and the Development of Guerrilla Warfare.” The English Historical Review, vol 94, no. 371 (April 1979). Pages 318-345 (Selected Readings)

[This article offers an insightful assessment of the strategy and organization of the IRA during the Anglo-Irish War. Townshend highlights the weaknesses of the IRA as a fighting force and evaluates the strategic and political assumptions of its members. In addition, this article compares the actions of the IRA to other insurgencies that occurred during the twentieth century.]

6. Clayton, Anthony. The Wars of French Decolonization. London and New York:Longman, 1994. pp. 108-187. (NWC Reprint)

[Clayton gives a succinct account of the Algerian war of independence.]

7. Crenshaw, Martha. "The Effectiveness of Terrorism in the Algerian War," in Martha Crenshaw, ed., Terrorism in Context. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995. pp. 473-513. (Selected Readings)

[Crenshaw examines the terrorism perpetrated by the FLN, the MNA, the pieds noirs, and the OAS during the Algerian war. While arguing that the Algerian experience shows that terrorism "is more likely to be effective than successful", she nonetheless suggests that terrorism may have made an enormous contribution to the French decision to abandon Algeria. She also describes the way in which the FLN exploited terror to marginalize, silence, or eliminate its political rivals within the Arab population.]

8. Marks, Thomas. “Making Revolution Sendero Luminoso in Peru as Maoist Conclusion, 1980” in Thomas Marks, ed. Maoist Insurgency since Vietnam. London: Frank Cass, 1996. pp. 253-284. (Selected Readings)

[Marks shows how the Sendero Luminoso grew from a small cabal of radical intellectuals into a force cable of paralyzing the government and economy of Peru. He also explains how and why the Sendero Luminoso ultimately failed.]

9. Bolivar, Alberto, "Peru", in Yonah Alexander, ed. Combating Terrorism: Strategies of Ten Countries. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2002. pp. 84-115. (Selected Readings)

[Bolivar gives an insightful overview of Peru's successful counter-terrorism strategy against Sendero Luminoso.]

10. Nelson Manrique, "The War for the Central Sierra," in Steve J. Stern, ed. Shining and Other Paths. War and Society in Peru, 1980-1995. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998. pp. 193-223. (Selected Readings)

[This article analyzes the interaction of Sendero Luminoso and Peru's rural population.]

11. Laqueur, Walter. "Left, Right and Beyond: The Changing Face of Terrorism," in James F. Hoge, Jr. and Gideon Rose, eds. How Did This Happen? Terrorism and the New War. New York: Public Affairs, 2001, pp. 71-82. (Selected Readings)

[Laqueur sets the attacks of September 11 in historical context, reflects on the use of terrorism by religious fanatics, and explains why contemporary terrorists "have become more dangerous than ever before."]

D. Additional Subject Bibliography:

General Works on Terrorism and the History of Terrorism:

1. Bell, J. Bowyer. Terror Out of Zion. The Fight for Israeli Independence. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1996.

2. Gurr, Nadine and Cole, Benjamin. The New Face of Terrorism. Threats from Weapons of Mass Destruction. London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2001. (HV6431.G87 2000)

3. Harmon, Christopher. "Five Strategies of Terrorism", Small Wars and Insurgencies, Autumn 2001, Pages 39-66.

4. Harmon, Christopher C. Terrorism Today. London: Frank Cass, 2000. (HV6431.H365 2000)

5. Dedijer, Vladimir. The Road to Sarajevo. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966.

6. Laqueur, Walter. A History of Terrorism. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002.

7. Laqueur, Walter. The New Terrorism. Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. (HV6431.L35 1999)

8. Laqueur, Walter and Alexander, Yonah, eds. The Terrorism Reader: A Historical Anthology. Rev. ed. New York: NAL Penguin, 1987. (HV6431.T49)

9. Marighella, Carlos. The Minimanual of the Urban Guerilla. San Francisco: Patrick Arguello Press, 1978. (U240.M347 1978)

10. Parry, Albert. Terrorism from Robespierre to Arafat. New York: Vanguard Press, 1976.(HV6431.P37 1976)

11. Rubin, Barry, ed. The Politics of Terrorism. Terror as a State and Revolutionary Strategy. Washington, D.C.: Foreign Policy Institute, 1989. (HV6431.P65 1989)

12. Sorel, Georges. Reflections on Violence. Jeremy Jennings, ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999 (HD6477.S523)

13. Trautmann, Frederic. The Voice of Terror: A Biography of Johann Most. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987. (HX898.M67.T7)

14. Wilkinson, Paul. Political Terrorism. New York: Wiley, 1975. (HC491.W55)

Terrorism in Tsarist Russia:

1. Carr, E.H. Michael Bakunin. New Ed. New York: Octagon Books, 1975. (HX915.B3C3 1975)

2. Hildermeier, Manfred,"The Terrorist Strategies of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party in Russia, 1900-1914", in Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Gerhard Hirschfeld, eds., Social Protest, Violence and Terror in Nineteenth- and Twentieth Century Europe. London: Berg Publishers, 1982. Pages 80-87. (HN380.Z9V57 1982)

3. Perrie, Maureen. The Agrarian Policy of the Russian Socialist-Revolutionary Party from its Origins through the Revolution of 1905-1907. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976. (HD1993 1901.P47 1976)

4. Perrie, Maureen. "Political and Economic Terror in the Tactics of the Russian Socialist-Revolutionary Party before 1914, in Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Gerhard Hirschfeld, eds., Social Protest, Violence and Terror in Nineteenth- and Twentieth Century Europe. London: Berg Publishers, 1982. Pages 63-79. (HN380.Z9V57 1982)

5. Pomper, Philip. Sergei Nechaev. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1979. (DK219.6.N4P65)

6. Savinkov, B. V. Memoirs of a Terrorist. Joseph Shaplen, trans. New York: A & C Boni, 1931.

7. Venturi, Franco. Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth Century Russia. Francis Haskell, trans. New ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. (HX312.V44.513 1983)

Ireland, 1916-1921:

1. Augusteijn, Joost. From Public Defiance to Guerilla Warfare. The Radicalisation of the Irish Republican Army: A Comparative Analysis. Amsterdam: Centrale Drukkerij Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1994. (DA962.A94 1994)

2. Barry, Tom. Guerilla Days in Ireland. Boulder, CO: Robert Rinehard Publishers, 1995 (DA916.8.B37)

3. Bell, J. Bowyer. The Secret Army. The IRA. Rev. 3rd ed. Dublin: Poolbeg Press, 1997 (DA959.B43 1998)

4. Carroll, F. M. American Opinion and the Irish Question 1910-1923. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1978. (DA959.C37 1978)

5. Coogan, Tim Pat. Eamon de Valera: The Man Who Was Ireland. New York: Harper Collins, 1993.

6. Coogan, Tim Pat. Michael Collins: A Biography. London: Hutchinson, 1990. (DA965.C6C66 1990)

7. Collins, Michael. The Path to Freedom. Dublin: The Talbot Press Limited, 1922.

8. Figgis, Darrell. Recollections of the Irish War. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 192?. (DA962.F47)

9. Holt, Edgar. Protest in Arms. The Irish Troubles 1916-1923. London: Putnam, 1960.

10. Mackay, James. Michael Collins: A Life. Edinburgh, 1996.

11. O'Brien, Brendan. A Pocket History of the IRA. Dublin: O'Brien Press, 1997. (DA963.027 1997)

12. Townshend, Charles. The British Campaign in Ireland, 1919-1921: The Development of Political and Military Policies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. (DA962.T68)

The Algerian War, 1954-1962:

1. Aussaresses, Paul. The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-terrorism in Algeria, 1955-57. Enigma Books, 2002.

2. Connelly, Matthew James. A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for

Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era. Oxford University Press, 2002.

3. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Constance Farrington, trans. New York: Grove Press, 1963. (DT33. F313)

4. Horne, Alistair. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962. Rev. ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1987. (DT295.H64 1987)

5. Lacouture, Jean. De Gaulle: The Ruler 1945-1970. Alan Sheridan, trans. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. (DC420.L313)

6. Macey, David. Frantz Fanon: A Biography. New York: Picador, 2001. (CT2628.F35M34 2001)

7. Talbot, John. The War Without a Name: France in Algeria 1954-1962. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980.(DT295.T25)

8. Pontecorvo, Gillo, director. The Battle of Algiers. Casbah Films. 1966/ The Criterion Collection, 2004 [includes newly released re-mastered original in 3-DVD set with interviews/documentary footage].

The "Shining Path" in Peru:

1. Clutterbuck, Richard, "Peru: Cocaine, Terrorism and Corruption," International Relations, (August 1995). Pages 77-91.

2. Gorriti Ellenbogen, Gustavo. The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru. Robin Kirk, trans. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. (F3448.2.G6713 1999)

3. Kent, Robert B. "The Geographical Dimension of the Shining Path Insurgency in Peru," The Geographical Review. Volume 83. Number 4 (October, 1993). Pages 441-454.

4. Palmer, David Scott. "The Revolutionary Terrorism of Peru's Shining Path," in Martha Crenshaw, ed., Terrorism in Context. University Park, PA.: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995. Pages 249-310. (HV6431.T4665 1995)

5. Palmer, David Scott. The Shining Path of Peru. 2d ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. (F3448.2S54 1994)

6. Poole, Deborah and Renique, Gerardo. Peru: Time of Fear. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1992. (HV6433. P4P66 1992)

7. Starn, Orin. "Maoism in the Andes: The Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path and the Refusal of History," Journal of Latin American Studies, Volume 27, Number 2 (May 1993). Pages 399-421.

8. Stern, Steve J., ed. Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980-1995. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998. (F3448.2.S53)

9. Strong, Simon. Shining Path: A Case Study in Ideological Terrorism. London: RISCT, 1993. (D839.3 C6)

PART III. CONTEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT OF FORCE

XI. THE GULF WARS 1990-2005

A. General: Taken together, the conflict with Iraq from 1990 to 2005 encapsulates almost all of the types of war examined in the Strategy and Policy syllabus. This module begins with a regional coalition war (1990-91), which results in containment (1991-2003), the breakdown of which leads to another regional coalition war (2003), the aftermath of which is an irregular war (2003-???). The depth and breadth of this case makes it particularly rewarding for dwelling on course themes such as Policy-Strategy Match, War Termination, and Intelligence, Assessment and Plans.

Iraq in 1990-1991, like Germany in 1917, Japan in 1941, North Korea and its Soviet patrons in 1950, and North Vietnam in 1964, misjudged how the United States would react to aggression. On the other side of the conflict, the American political leadership deftly handled most of the political problems of fighting a limited war. American military planners had to hastily improvise operational plans for waging joint/combined air and ground campaigns against the Iraqis. The interplay between civilian and military leaders –detailed by Trainor and Gordon - was critical in the reassessment of the initial plans. The reworked strategy proved stunningly successful in execution, routing Iraq’s army and quickly liberating Kuwait, but questions remain whether the performance left room for improvement in execution or if the Coalition should have pursued more ambitious objectives.

In considering the key war-termination issues of how far to go militarily and what to demand politically in 1991, one should again give special attention to the interaction between American civilian and military leaders as well as between the United States and multinational coalition members. One should also consider whether or not the calculations of American policymakers and strategists – including President George H.W. Bush and his national security advisor Brent Scowcroft – gave too much weight to the short-term costs of going farther militarily and demanding more politically at the end of the war, and too little weight to possible longer-term costs of a cautious war-termination strategy.

Whatever one’s judgment of the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein proved to be an adaptive and determined opponent. His continued political survival and halting compliance with the cease-fire agreement rendered the ultimate political result of the First Gulf War more ambiguous than many expected. Since U.S. and Coalition objectives in Desert Storm were explicitly limited, the United States countered with a post-war policy of “containment” using a combination of sanctions, international inspections, and limited but increasingly frequent use of air power (Operations Southern and Northern Watch), as discussed in the Byman and Waxman and Pollack selections.

However, across the course of the 1990s, the containment of Iraq gradually eroded, and international efforts to monitor and destroy Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs broke down. At the same time, a postwar policy of containment required a continued American military presence in Saudi Arabia - a presence that became the heart of Osama Bin Laden's "declaration of Jihad" in 1998 (detailed in Lewis). As a result, the alternative to containment - overthrow of the regime - became more appealing politically, and U.S. objectives became unlimited by the late 1990s. This evolution is discussed in detail by Kenneth Pollack’s excellent pre-Operation Iraqi Freedom analysis of policy options. After the terrorist attacks of September 2001, U.S. policy makers committed themselves to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein through the use of conventional military force, if necessary – a decision that led to Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003.

Much of the debate over the appropriateness of abandoning a policy of containment and over the case for war in 2003 continues to hinge upon the vital issue of intelligence. The selections from the Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD offer a rare glimpse into the complex raw material upon which policy decisions had to be based. Similarly, Woodward’s article captures how an evolving intelligence picture interacted with other policy concerns at the highest levels to alter the strategy and character of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

As in Desert Storm, planning for conventional military operations was creative, if contentious, and Coalition forces achieved remarkable success. Operation Iraqi Freedom, launched in March 2003, decisively defeated Iraq’s conventional military forces and overthrew the Ba’athist regime – but the restoration of political order and the creation of a new democratic regime were complicated by an emerging Iraqi insurgency now coupled with the efforts of Al Qaeda elements. The Bush administration, which had made the need to eliminate Iraqi WMD the central political issue in its justification for war, paid a heavy political price both domestically and internationally after inspectors failed to find evidence of active weapons of mass destruction programs, detailed in Pollack’s unusual confession of misjudgment.

Many have argued that the planning for war termination, post-conflict stabilization missions, occupation and the rebuilding of Iraq demonstrated significant flaws - issues discussed by Schadlow, O’Hanlon, and Diamond. Similarly, the institutional dimension of strategy (inter-agency cooperation and civil-military relations) and the international dimension of strategy (coalition building and operations) were handled quite differently in Operation Iraqi Freedom, despite the presence of so many veterans of the first Gulf War in both the military and civilian leadership. The evolution and consequences of the administration’s new approach to Iraq are discussed in Mann, O’Hanlon, and Diamond.

Finally, in addition to highlighting key issues of war planning and war termination, this case study illuminates the influence of the Gulf Wars on the United States’ vision of how to use hi-tech weaponry to fight wars in the future. Indeed, for some visionaries, Desert Storm marked a transition from the traditional American way of war - in which the United States overwhelmed enemies with massive material superiority in what usually turned out to be wars of attrition - to a new way of war in which the United States would try to win more quickly and at a lower cost in casualties by taking advantage of hi-tech advances in sensors, C4 architecture, and long-range precision-strike weaponry. These capabilities were demonstrated even more decisively in Operation Iraqi Freedom, but have not been easy to apply to the Iraqi insurgency that followed Saddam’s fall.

B. Essay and Discussion Questions:

1. What strategic alternatives were available to Saddam Hussein in 1990 that might have achieved his political objectives?

2. Comparing how the Gulf War of 1990-1991 (Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm) resembled other limited, regional wars that we have studied in this course, what factors seem to be the most important determinants of strategic success in such wars?

3. How effectively did American political and military leaders work together from August 1990 to March 1991 to formulate a strategy that not only matched the stated political objectives but also was sensitive to other political considerations that remained on the minds of policymakers?

4. Was air power strategically effective in the United States’ struggle against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1990-2003?

5. Was containment a viable strategy for dealing with Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1990-2003? Why or why not?

6. How well did American military and political planners handle the major war termination issues that they needed to face in the conflicts with Iraq?

7. Were coalitions an asset or a hindrance to strategic success in the Persian Gulf wars? Why?

8. Did the US military successes in 1991 and 2003 produce a favorable political result? Why or why not?

9. Sun Tzu says that a strategist should frustrate the enemy’s strategy. How well, and in what ways, did Saddam Hussein frustrate American policy and strategy from 1990 to 2003?

10. What impact did intelligence have on American policy and strategy vis-à-vis Iraq from 1990 to 2003?

C. Required Readings:

1. Gordon, Michael R., and General Bernard E. Trainor, USMC (ret). The Generals’ War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1995. pp. 31-101, 123-202, 227-248, 267-288, 413-432, 443-461, 476-477.

[This reading provides an opportunity to assess civil-military relations, interservice cooperation and rivalry in war planning, the various strategic alternatives open to decision makers, the strengths and limitations of the high-tech RMA pioneered by the American armed forces, the limits of intelligence in piercing the fog of war, and war termination in Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm.]

2. Bush, George and Brent Scowcroft. A World Transformed. New York: Knopf, 1998. pp. 380-382, 388-402, 416-492.

[President George Bush and his national security adviser Brent Scowcroft wrote an illuminating account of foreign policy decision-making during their time in office. Portions of their account rely on a revealing diary kept by President Bush. The sections of this book dealing with the Gulf War provide insights into high-level decision-making during wartime and are especially good for understanding American policy aims in the war, the politics of coalition building, the press of domestic political considerations on the making of strategy, and the president’s role as commander-in-chief.]

3. NSD-54 (January 15, 1991) and “Dod New Briefing – Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen Myers” (March 21, 2003). (Selected Readings)

[These short readings provide the US war aims in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom, respectively. The latter reading is not an official document, but does reflect the policy perspective of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.]

4. Murray, Williamson. "Air War in the Gulf: The Limits of Air Power." Strategic Review (Winter 1998). pp. 28-38. (Selected Readings)

[While it may not have been the ideal application of air power that some analysts claim, the 1991 air operations did achieve extraordinary results in spite of considerable problems in planning and execution cited by critics. Murray provides an analysis of what worked and what did not in this strategic application of air power, drawing on the Gulf War Air Power Survey and other sources.]

5. Byman, Daniel, Kenneth Pollack, and Matthew Waxman. "Coercing Saddam Hussein: Lessons from the Past," Survival (Autumn 1998). pp. 127-148. (Selected Readings)

[The authors draw upon historical events from 1975 to 1998 to illustrate how Saddam Hussein's behavior was influenced by applying pressure to key elements of his relationship with his power base. This reading provides insights into the inner workings of Saddam's regime.]

6. Pollack, Kenneth M. The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq. Washington, DC: Brookings 2002. pp. xxiv-xxx, 27-35, 46-54, 58-94, 168-180, 387-424.

[Kenneth Pollack, an official in the first Bush and Clinton administrations, lays out a careful case for overthrowing Saddam Hussein in a book published after 9/11 but before Operation Iraqi Freedom. Pollack’s case for invasion is based on the failure of the containment policy of the 1990s and on Iraq’s potential acquisition of nuclear weapons in the 21st century. This reading discusses internal risings in Iraq before and after Desert Storm; the establishment of containment – including the “no-fly zones” - and the international inspections regime from 1991-1998; and the gradual erosion of that regime in the late 1990s.]

7. Pollack, Kenneth M. “Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong?” The Atlantic Monthly (January-February 2004). (Selected Readings)

[The U.S. used the threat of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction programs as its primary public argument for launching Operation Iraqi Freedom. Pollack attempts to explain what happened to Iraq’s weapons and why the large stockpiles that were expected – based on United Nations inspections as well as various national intelligence assessments – have not yet been found.]

8. Mann, James. Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), pp. 332-358. (Selected Readings)

[Focusing on the international and institutional dimensions of strategy, the author examines the decision to go to war with Iraq in 2002, internal debates about the role of allies and international institutions, pre-war diplomacy, and the expansion of political objectives in the run-up to the conflict.]

9. Woodward, Bob. "U.S. Aimed for Hussein as War Began." Washington Post, 22 April 2004, p. A1 (Selected Readings)

[This article is a modified excerpt from Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack. Throughout the period in question, Woodward was given unique access to the highest levels of the Bush administration and hence is able to capture a slice of the policy-strategy interaction not available elsewhere.]

10. “Interview: Lt. Gen. Raad Al-Hamdani” PBS: Frontline – the invasion of Iraq at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sh...views/raad.html (Selected Readings)

[The subject of this interview was the commander of Iraqi Republican Guard Forces south of Baghdad in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Gen. Al-Hamdani discusses the tactical and strategic errors made by Iraqi military and political leadership, the impact of air power and joint operations on combat in early April 2003, and his personal experiences in battle against Coalition forces.]

11. O’Hanlon, Michael E. “Iraq Without a Plan,” Policy Review 128 at http://www.policyreview.org/dec04/ohanlon_print.html (Selected Readings)

[The author critiques the post-invasion phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom as both a failure in judgment on the part of civilian planners and also as a failure of military leadership to provide an adequate balance to optimistic civilian assumptions.]

12. Diamond, Larry. “What Went Wrong in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs (September/October 2004) at http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040901faes...ng-in-iraq.html (Selected Readings)

[The author, who served as Senior Advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad from January – April 2004, argues that the US did not commit adequate resources to secure Iraq in the post-conflict phase, and did not make the best use of the resources it did have on hand. The article also points out that despite over a dozen years of focus on Iraq, the US did not adequately understand the nature of the Iraqi state and political system. As a result, he argues that Iraq’s transition to democracy – already a daunting task – will be much more difficult.]

13. Shadlow, Nadia. "War and the Art of Governance." Parameters (Autumn 2003). pp. 85-94. (Selected Readings)

[The author discusses America’s experience in post-conflict stabilization and occupation during the twentieth century, and suggests lessons for American strategy today.]

14. Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD (excerpts are Key Findings (Regime Strategic Intent, Regime Finance and Procurement, Delivery Systems, Nuclear, Chemical, Biological) from the original Fall 2004 report; and Prewar Movement of WMD out of Iraq, Iraqi Detainees: Value to Investigation of Iraq WMD and Current Status, and Residual Proliferation Risks: People from the 2005 Addenda) at http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/ (Selected Readings)

[This selection is drawn from the final report on the status of Iraq’s WMD programs. The key findings include the fact that Saddam wanted to end sanctions while retaining some capacity to reconstitute his WMD program; indications that Iraq’s efforts to maintain some WMD capacity focused on chemical weapons and ballistic missiles; evidence that Iraq’s nuclear weapons capability was essentially destroyed in 1991; and the conclusion that no meaningful WMD capability was deployed or available in 2003.]

15. Lewis, Bernard. "License to Kill: Usama bin Ladin's Declaration of Jihad," Foreign Affairs (Nov/Dec 1998). pp 14-19. (Selected Readings)

[Lewis, the leading Western historian of the Middle East, shows how Bin Ladin's declaration of February 1998 justified its call for war against the United States by pointing to the American military presence in Saudi Arabia and American policy toward Iraq.]

D. Additional Subject Bibliography:

1. Al-Jabbar, Faleh Abd. “Why the Uprisings Failed.” Middle East Report, No. 176, Iraq in the Aftermath (May – Jun., 1992), 2-14.

2. Arkin, William M., “Baghdad: The Urban Sanctuary in Desert Storm?” Air Power Journal, Winter 1997.

3. Baram, Amatzia, and Barry Rubin. Iraq’s Road to War. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. (DS79.7.I73)

4. Biddle, Stephen. “Victory Misunderstood: What the Gulf War Tells Us About the Future of Conflict,” International Security (Fall 1996). pp. 139-179.

5. Byman, Daniel, and Matt Waxman. Confronting Iraq: U.S. Policy and the Use of Force Since the Gulf War. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2000. (AS36.R288 no. 1146)

6. Cohen, Eliot A. Gulf War Air Power Survey, 6 vols. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993. (DS79.724.U6 G85)

7. Cordesman, Anthony H. The Iraq War: Strategy, Tactics, and Military Lessons. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2003.

8. Cordesman, Anthony H., and Abraham R Wagner. The Lessons of Modern War, Vol. 4: The Gulf War. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996. (U42.C59 1990 v.4)

9. Cordesman, Anthony H. The War After the War: Strategic Lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2004.

10. De la Billière, Sir Peter. Storm Command: A Personal Account of the Gulf War. London: Motivate, 1992. (DS79.74.D45)

11. Ederington, L. Benjamin, and Michael J. Mazarr, eds. Turning Point: The Gulf War and U.S. Military Strategy. Boulder: Westview Press, 1994. (UA23.T85)

12. Franks, Tommy, with Malcolm McConnell. American Soldier. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

13. Freedman, Lawrence, and Efraim Karsh. The Gulf Conflict 1990-1991: Diplomacy and War in the New World Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. (DS79.72.F74)

14. Friedman, Norman. Desert Victory: The War for Kuwait. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1991. (DS79.72.F75)

15. Garrity, Patrick J. Why the Gulf War Still Matters: Foreign Perspectives on the War and the Future of International Security. Los Alamos: Center for National Security Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1993. (IP Coll. 500053)

16. Keaney, Thomas A., and Eliot A. Cohen. Revolution in Warfare? Air Power in the Persian Gulf War. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1995. (DS79.724.U6 K43)

17. Khalid bin Sultan, with Patrick Seale. Desert Warrior: A Personal View of the Gulf War by the Joint Forces Commander. New York: Harper Collins, 1995. (DS79.74.B56)

18. Mahnken, Thomas G. “A Squandered Opportunity? The Decision to End the Gulf War” in Andrew J. Bacevich and Efraim Inbar, editors, The Gulf War of 1991 Reconsidered (London: Frank Cass, 2003)

19. Mueller, John E. Policy and Opinion in the Gulf War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. (DS79.724.U6 M84)

20. Murray, Williamson. “The Gulf War as History,” MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History (Autumn 1997). pp. 6-19.

21. Murray, Williamson and Major General Robert H. Scalres, Jr. The Iraq War: A Military History. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2003.

22. Mylroie, Laurie. “How We Helped Saddam Survive,” Commentary (July 1991). pp. 15-18.

23. Pape, Robert A. Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercian in War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. (UG700.P365)

24. Piscatori, James, ed. Islamic Fundamentalisms and the Gulf Crisis. Chicago: The Fundamentalism Project, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1991. (BP60.I8254)

25. Powell, General Colin L., with Joseph E. Persico. My American Journey. New York: Random House, 1995. (E840.5.P68)

26. Press, Daryl. “Lessons from Ground Combat in the Gulf,” Keaney, Thomas A., “The Linkage of Air and Ground Power in the Future of Conflict,” Mahnken, Thomas G., and Watts, Barry D., “What the Gulf War Can (and Cannot) Tell Us about the Future of Warfare,” and Biddle, Stephen, “The Gulf War Debate Redux: Why Skill and Technology Are the Right Answer,” International Security (Fall 1997). pp. 137-174.

27. Record, Jeffrey. “Defeating Desert Storm (and Why Saddam Didn’t),” Comparative Strategy (April-June 1993). pp. 125-140.

28. Reynolds, Colonel Richard T., USAF. Heart of the Storm: The Genesis of the Air Campaign Against Iraq. Maxwell Air Force Base: Air University Press, 1995. (DS79.724.U6 R49)

29. Scales, Robert H. Certain Victory: The U.S. Army in the Gulf War. Fort Leavenworth: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Press, 1994. (DS79.72.S292)

30. Schwarzkopf, General H. Norman. It Doesn't Take a Hero: General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the Autobiography. New York: Bantam Books, 1992. (E840.5.S39)

31. Swain, Richard M. Lucky War: Third Army in Desert Storm. Fort Leavenworth: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Press, 1997. (DS79.724.U6)

32. Warden, Colonel John A., III. "Employing Air Power in the Twenty-first Century," in Shultz, Richard H., Jr., and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., eds. The Future of Air Power in the Aftermath of the Gulf War. Maxwell Air Force Base: Air University Press, 1992, pp. 57-82 (UG633.F86)

33. Woodward, Bob. Plan of Attack. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.

34. Woodward, Bob. The Commanders. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991. (E881.W66)


http://www.nwc.navy.mil/cncscasestudies/cases/case11.htm

Makes one wonder how many fakes there are out there.... learned of several in forums.

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1019387.php

August 08, 2005

2-star charade
Legion member’s buddies thought he was major general

By John Hoellwarth
Times staff writer

SHREVEPORT, La. — William J. Lawson’s hands shook as he held the reproduction of a 60-year-old military service record.

He had just been handed the record of a Marine who served from Jan. 10, 1945, to Aug. 6, 1946.

He read the file, noting that the young leatherneck was discharged as a private first class whose decorations included only marksmanship badges. Turning to the last page, the 78-year-old man was confronted with a picture of the teenager, who he would later describe as looking sad.

He was asked: “Do you recognize this Marine?”

He closed the file and put it on the table in front of him at the American Legion Post in Shreveport that had become the center of his social life since moving to Louisiana 13 years ago.

He looked up with his good eye and said, “I believe I do,” his voice shaky, almost broken.

And just like that, his six-year portrayal of a highly decorated Marine major general was over. He asked to be called “Bill.”

A ruse unravels

Lawson’s wife, Syble, had warned him for years to give up the ruse, reminding him over and over that it would catch up to him one day. The beginning of his undoing came June 22. Lawson attracted national media attention when he showed up in uniform to deliver a rousing speech to Shreveport citizens gathered in protest after groundskeepers at Forest Park Cemetery threw away items left at grave sites there, including several American flags.

One person who was there described the event as bearing a striking resemblance to the last scene of “Frankenstein,” with a riotous mob of citizens ready to crucify Robert Lomison, president of Forest Park Cemeteries and Funeral Home. A combat-wounded, Silver Star-sporting retired major general was “leading the charge.”

It didn’t take long for a photo of Lawson to hit the news wires. A subsequent investigation by Marine Corps Times uncovered Lawson’s true military record and offered a glimpse of a young man who celebrated only one Marine Corps birthday as an active-duty leatherneck.

Although he claimed to rate a Silver Star for actions on Iwo Jima during World War II, he was in New York awaiting his first day in boot camp when the flag was raised on Mount Suribachi in February 1945.

He was a recruit at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., a few months later when the Marines conducted their last amphibious landing of the Pacific island-hopping campaign, hitting the beach on Okinawa, Japan.

He was assigned to a training battalion at Camp Lejeune, N.C., when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and the Japanese later capitulated.

The eager young man who attended high school at Xavier Military Academy and sought his parents’ permission to enlist in the Marines before his 18th birthday never got to fight.

“I wanted to fight,” he said. “I was trained for it. I was prepared to fight Japan on the home front.”

Instead, Lawson’s military career was cut short while he served at Camp Pendleton, Calif. A wayward military tractor pinned him against a wall, blew out both of his knees and broke his ankle.

His record shows he was transferred to a military hospital detachment for injured Marines on May 8, 1946. He spent more than three months in recovery before his final transfer to Camp Pendleton’s Separation Company. Eleven days later, he was discharged from the Corps.

“I felt cheated when I got hurt and they discharged me,” he said. “’Cause I wanted to make the Corps my life.”

To this day, Lawson wears braces on his lower legs and motors around the legion post on a motorized scooter that is also a fixture on the back of his car. He wears a patch because he lost his eye to a retinal condition that afflicts some seniors.

Lawson said that after he got out of the Corps, he spent his working years with an insurance agency and in the plastics industry before retiring.

But word around the legion post is that Lawson was left a large sum of money after his father died, which allowed him to buy a large house in one of Shreveport’s more affluent neighborhoods and effectively portray the very model of a modern major general.

A hero in Shreveport

When Marine Corps Times interviewed Lawson in Shreveport on Aug. 4, he was on his way to a meeting of the “Forty and Eight,” which members of the American Legion describe as the invitation-only inner circle of the organization. As one legionnaire put it, the Forty and Eight is to the American Legion what the Shriners are to the Masons.

Lawson agreed to meet at the legion post and arrived wearing a Marine Corps ball cap adorned with both his signature two stars and studded with pins representing his top-shelf awards.

There was a long pause as he reviewed his service record.

“I believe ...,” he paused and restarted.

“For the good of the legion ...,” he paused to restart again.

Then, he just began at the beginning.

Lawson said his deception started when he moved to Louisiana from Cudjoe, Fla., and someone at the legion post got the idea he was a retired general. He described it as a case of mistaken identity, and he eventually acquiesced in 1999, thinking he could use the legion’s willingness to accept him as a general to positively influence his community.

“I said, ‘Do not start this general stuff here, please,’” Lawson said, noting that people were “fairly good for about six months, then it started to get out.”

Though over the years he has declined every offer to take on a formal leadership role at the legion, word of Lawson’s status as a general quickly spread from the post to the Shreveport community at large, which embraced him as a sort of local veterans’ spokes-man and activist.

“Things got beyond where they should have gotten,” Lawson explained. “I wish it would have stayed low-key, but [the legion post] kept throwing stuff at me.”

Lawson appeared at numerous city- and veteran-sponsored community events at the Veteran’s Memorial on Shreveport’s Clyde Fant Parkway. On Memorial Day 2004, Lawson showed up wearing his award-laden cap.

“The first time I did anything in this is when they asked me to come to the dedication for the Purple Heart monument,” he said, referring to an event four years ago organized by the local chapter of The Military Order of the Purple Heart. “My assumption was that they’d ask me to go around with them and see Marines at the [local Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals].

“Next thing is that I’d give a talk in reference to the flag,” he said, referring to his appearance at Forest Park Cemetery. “Lomison got himself into a pickle. I was trying to do some good. I was trying to do what I thought a major general would do.”

Maintaining the illusion

When asked to put his lie in perspective, knowing so many Marines are earning legitimate awards for combat valor even now, Lawson said, “I feel I … I have felt all along not too happy with that. It’s something that has snowballed.”

Even so, Lawson had to take some deliberate steps in maintaining appearances. When asked about the cost of impersonating a major general, he said he spent more than $1,000 getting everything just right.

When asked about how he chose the medals he would wear or ensure he placed them in the correct order, Lawson said he took a very specific approach to the awards.

“The awards were picked from a picture of … I don’t remember who it was,” he said. “I’m trying to remember. It was in one of the Marine Corps books.”

Lawson said that over the years his wife has asked him, “Why don’t you stop this before it gets out of hand?”

His reply: “It’s already out of hand.”

Lawson’s chief concern now is the damage this will do to his relationship with his wife, but he was also mindful of the damage it will do to his relationship with the community that has thus far embraced its resident major general.

What happens next

Lawson could face up to six months in jail and have to pay a fine, said Thomas A. Cottone Jr., a special agent with the FBI based in West Paterson, N.J., who investigates medals frauds — primarily false Medal of Honor claims — and phony service members. Cottone was not familiar with Lawson’s case but discussed such situations in general terms.

If prosecuted, Lawson would be charged under with wearing medals or other decorations he did not rate and for wearing a military uniform, which includes wearing false rank insignia. Whether charges are brought ultimately rests with the local district attorney who would prosecute the case, he said. Since Lawson is a civilian and therefore not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, he would not be charged with impersonating an officer, Cottone said.

But the worst penalty a person in a situation like Lawson’s could face is the inevitable public humiliation he would receive in his community, Cottone said.

“I still say the worst penalty for these imposters is being publicly identified,” he said.

Cottone added that someone like Lawson also could be guilty of public theft — but that’s more figurative. While masquerading as a two-star general, he has likely been given services and other gifts for free or at a discounted rate simply because of who people thought he was.

“He’s got a bunch of unearned things, solely because they think he’s a two-star general,” he said. “In some sense, he’s been committing thefts for years.”

Cottone recalled another man who was impersonating a brigadier general in New Jersey. The man paraded about with three Navy Crosses he didn’t rate and was giving speeches at the local military base.

“He went to the country club, and everyone referred to him as ‘general,’” Cottone said.

As Cottone’s investigation drew to a close, officials learned that the man would be the featured speaker at an event on Memorial Day. Sometime after the FBI busted the man, he committed suicide, Cottone said.

Cottone, who has been investigating these sorts of crimes for 10 years, said it’s important to maintain the significance of rank insignia, medals and the military uniform.

“If none of these things means anything, then why not make everyone a four-star general,” he said.

A spokesman at Marine Corps headquarters said the Corps’ office of the inspector general will investigate.

“As a matter of course, the inspector general’s office would be the one to initially investigate any claims of someone who is improperly wearing the uniform or medals,” said Maj. Douglas Powell.

If they determine there is “credible evidence” against such a person, the matter could be turned over to the staff judge advocate general or to the FBI, he said.

Powell said it’s important for Marines to understand how seriously the Corps takes these matters. Lawson’s alleged crime is an insult to every other service member on active duty, he said.

“This guy wearing a uniform smacks every other service member in the face while they’re putting their life on the line,” he said.

A community reacts

Contacted for comment on Lawson’s ruse, Lomison, the cemetery president, said he was “overwhelmed and saddened” for him.

“I took great umbrage to Mr. Lawson’s attacks on my patriotism and support of veterans. Errors were made during the Forest Park spring cleaning, but we admitted our mistakes and took responsibility for our actions,” Lomison said. “I sincerely hope that Mr. Lawson will do the same. My thoughts and prayers are with Mr. Lawson.”

Reactions among American Legion members seemed to be a shared sense of shock and disbelief. Those legionnaires who had the opportunity to view Lawson’s records invariably shook and scratched their heads for a few moments before declining to go on the record with a comment.

One legionnaire pointed out that the post commander went to high school with Lawson’s wife and that even though he obviously wasn’t a major general, his enlisted service still makes him eligible for membership in the legion.

Lawson, whose drinks are served in a uniquely spotted glass he asks for specifically every time he drinks at the post’s bar, isn’t so sure he’ll be able to overcome his shame enough to continue his membership.

“It’s probably going to be bad enough that I’ll lose a lot of friends I hold dear,” he said. “Perhaps I’ll move back to Florida.”

Foreign Naval attache observe recruit training
Submitted by: MCRD Parris Island
Story Identification #: 200351510535
Story by Lance Cpl. Jennifer Brofer



MCRD/ERR PARRIS ISLAND, S.C. (May 9, 2003) -- Thirty-eight members of the Corps of Foreign Naval Attache and their wives visited Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., May 6, to observe training and tour the Depot.

The Corps of Foreign Naval Attache is comprised of officers from foreign countries, representing their governments at their countries' embassies in Washington D.C., who travel around the country to observe how military training is conducted in the U.S.

"It's an educational opportunity for them to try and get a good idea of what we do here," said Col. Jeffrey Bearor, commanding officer, Recruit Training Regiment. "They travel around the country to all the services to gain an appreciation of how the U.S. armed forces are trained and equipped. It helps them better understand us, so they can do their jobs more efficiently."

As part of their biennial visit, they toured various areas of recruit training, starting at the infamous yellow footprints, where they received a recruit's welcome.

"We have all been looking forward to this," said Col. Herman Dukers, Royal Netherlands Marine Corps. "The tour gives us an idea of what basic training is like and what recruits have to go through."

After the question and answer brief at Receiving, they toured the rifle range at WFTBn. to observe recruits using the new automated unknown distance targets at Khe Sahn range during Event Six of the Crucible.

"I think [the training] is very difficult and very tough for the youngsters, but it's necessary to build a soldier, a Marine." said Army Col. Andrzej Turek, Embassy of the Republic of Poland.

Turek was very impressed by the tour because no special preparations were made to the training curriculum to make it look more difficult for recruits in order to "show off" for the visitors.

For the last part of the tour, the group went to Page Field to witness recruits completing the day movement course and other obstacles during the Crucible.

The visits conducted by the attache give them an opportunity to witness and compare training conducted by U.S. forces to their own. This allows them to integrate aspects of U.S. training that will benefit their own armed services.


http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...light=2,foreign

Foreign weapons training prepares Marines for Georgia deployment
Submitted by: MCAS Cherry Point
Story Identification #: 200386135354
Story by 1st Lt. Justin M. Colvin



Fort Bragg, N.C. (July 31, 2003)-- (July 31, 2003) -- A team of 25 U.S. Marines completed a foreign weapons training package taught by U.S. Army Special Forces at Ft. Bragg, N.C. July 30.


The team, comprised mostly of infantry Marines, is preparing to deploy to the Republic of Georgia to train a light infantry battalion of selected Georgian troops in U.S. small unit tactics as part of the Georgia Train and Equip Program. They make up the fourth rotation of the tactical training portion of the program and will relieve the current team of Marines already in place in that country.


The GTEP began as a coordinated effort between the government of Georgia and the U.S. government to enhance the capability of selected Georgian military units to provide security and stability to the citizens of Georgia and the region. The program initially began in April, 2002 with the deployment of U.S. Army Special Forces to the region; the job has since been handed over to the Marines.


The purpose of the Special Forces training at Ft. Bragg was to equip the Marines with the knowledge they'll need to identify, maintain, and employ the various foreign weapons systems they will encounter while in Georgia. As a former Soviet state, the Georgian military is equipped with mostly Soviet weapons. The Marines will need to be familiar with their operation before they can begin training the foreign troops on how to employ them more efficiently.


Traditionally the job of training foreign nationals has been the mission of the Special Forces, but with the broad scope of the War on Terrorism, innovative changes have been made to effectively utilize other U.S. forces. "This is not a typical Marine Corps mission, but the Marines here are all volunteers and have risen to this new challenge," said Maj. Charles A. Western, commanding officer, Phase III-D, GTEP. "These Marines will accomplish this mission. Adapting to and overcoming any obstacle is our job."


As rocket propelled grenades (RPG-7s) exploded and AK-47 assault rifles cracked off bursts of ammunition behind them, the team leaders were already planning for their experience with the Georgians. "My end goal is to get them to think like us," said 1st Lt. Daniel R. Nolan, team leader, Phase IIID, GTEP. "Basically I think the Marines have cornered the market when it comes to small unit tactics, leadership down to the lowest level, and doing what it takes to accomplish the mission."


Almost half of the Marines that will deploy to Georgia in the coming weeks have returned from Operation Iraqi Freedom. As they trained on the weapons that only a few months ago were being fired at them by the enemy, most were surprisingly eager to be heading out the door once again.


"I just want to do a good job over there to give these guys the training they need to become a professional, cohesive fighting force, and leave them with a lasting impression of the United States Marine Corps," said Nolan, who returned from Iraq in June with Task Force Tarawa. When the commanding officer was approached about any reservations he might have about taking these Marines back overseas so soon, Western simply responded, "We're Marines. It's what we do."


http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...light=2,foreign

Silver Star account 'chilling'

Submitted by: MCB Camp Pendleton
Story Identification #: 20056914563
Story by Sgt. Monroe F. Seigle



MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (June 9, 2005) -- Leondro F. Baptista says any of the 25 men in his platoon would have done what he did last spring in Iraq.

Nonetheless, his exploits were anything but ordinary -- even to a man who's heard plenty of firsthand accounts about what heroes have done.

"What this Marine did brings chills down my spine," said Maj. Gen. Richard F. Natonski, commanding general for 1st Marine Division, who on June 3 handed Baptista a Silver Star -- the nation's third-highest award for bravery in combat.

"Actions like this truly made a difference in Iraq," Natonski added.

A resident of Miami and a former team leader with Company B, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion here, Baptista recalls in vivid detail the sounds of the enemy's machine-gun fire directed at his platoon that day in the Al Anbar Province of Iraq more than a year ago.

He also remembers the six Marines who were wounded in the firefight.

It happened April 7, 2004. Sixty enemy combatants in fortified positions assaulted the platoon. Baptista, a sergeant at the time, immediately dismounted his vehicle and led a "hit team" to flank the enemy positions, according to the award citation.

After sprinting across a shallow canal and climbing a 10-foot berm, he charged toward the enemy fighters. While drawing fire from enemy machine guns, he silenced one gunner, then continued to press the enemy by hastily forming a three-man assault team, the citation stated.

He then scaled another berm under heavy enemy fire. He disarmed an improvised explosive device and charged forward, surprising 11 enemy combatants. He eliminated four of them, then directed the fire team of three Marines against the remaining seven insurgents, the citation stated.

As he came under fire from different enemy positions, Baptista then provided cover for his team for a withdrawal to safety.

After the award ceremony, Baptista spent the afternoon with several of his Operation Iraqi Freedom comrades. He talked briefly about the firefight and detailed what he remembered.

"Everything happened so quickly out there that it seemed to have only lasted a few minutes, but in actuality, the entire ambush lasted 30 minutes. Time gets distorted when things are happening so fast," Baptista said.

"I am thankful for the recognition, but I also feel somewhat unworthy of it, because all of us that were out there that day made sacrifices. I think all of these Marines here today deserve recognition. I was just put into a position that put me in charge, and I had to make some split-second decisions."

Baptista, who was born in Rio De Janiero, Brazil, and became a naturalized American citizen, has studied criminal justice since he was honorably discharged from the Marine Corps in September 2004. He plans to move back to California to become a police officer locally.

"He was a fearless and natural leader," said Gunnery Sgt. Daniel Griego, operations chief for Company B. "He was one of those Marines you always had to hold back, and if you let him go at the right time, he would win the race. He never questioned what he was told to do."

"It was good to see some familiar faces again," Baptista said. "I am just glad to still be here today and that all my brothers came home safely."

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...ghlight=2,enemy

Scout Sniper honored with Silver Star

Submitted by: MCB Camp Pendleton
Story Identification #: 200563011057
Story by Lance Cpl. Ray Lewis



MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (June 30, 2005) -- Under enemy fire for 12 hours at a time with rounds landing inches from his head, sniper Sgt. John E. Place volleyed with such a lethal response, insurgents wouldn't poke their head out their windows.

"He neutralized so many insurgents that Iraqi broadcasters in Iraq pleaded the public to watch for snipers," said Maj. Gen. Richard F. Natonski commanding general of the 1st Marine Division.

For his exploits in operation Iraqi Freedom II, Maj. Gen. Natonski pinned Place's left breast pocket with a Silver Star June 23 -- the third highest military award given for combat heroism.

"It's hard to believe an individual would have such an impact on a country," Natonski said.

Place, 22, said he was just trying to be the best Marine that he could be.

He also said being a sniper isn't about the numbers you get, it's about the dedication - this job isn't fun.

"The events from Iraq frequently play in my head - but I try to focus on the positive," said Place, who looks up to snipers like Carlos Hathcock as inspiration.

"It takes desire to do this difficult job. Long hours go into being a sniper - some of the hours run into your personal life," said Place.

Place, from St. Louis, and former team leader with Company E, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, used a corpsman to fill in for a downed Marine.

"As a sniper you need a spotter to do your job correctly. My first spotter got shot in his hand, then one of the corpsman stepped up and took position as spotter - he did great things," said Place.

Place also did great things, according to his Silver Star award citation.

On various occasions, Place carried out his Marine Corps missions.

While conducting a key-leader ride-along March 18, two insurgents attacked his convoy. He immediately located and destroyed their position, which enabled the convoy to proceed unharmed.

During a security patrol March 26, Place encountered two more insurgents and neutralized their position.

Just two weeks later, with another company, he engaged and eliminated enemy forces while under intense enemy fire.

From April 11 through 24, Place's keen observation ensured his supported rifle company maintained a lethal, long-range response to enemy attacks.

During an ambush April 26, enemy forces attacked a company patrol 400 meters away from friendly lines. Disregarding his own safety, Place left the cover of his defensive position to close with and destroy the enemy.

"We are blessed to have him in our Corps today. He was 2/1 Echo Company's guardian angel," Natonski reiterated.

Place said it was challenging during his deployment but his parents Lynn and Richard Place, his brother Richard H. Place, and the St. Louis community kept him going by sending him care packages.

"Now that he's a Marine, the bigger brother role isn't there anymore, he's (a) professional," Richard H. Place said.

After the ceremony, Place freely answered all of the media's questions."It's great to be recognized but there are guys still out there doing heroics - even the good men that just died," said Place, referring to the Marines that made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq.

Place is currently assigned to 1st Marine Division Schools as a Marksmanship Training Unit instructor and has until Oct. 9 to determine if he will re-enlist.

"I haven't decided yet, but if I do stay - for sure I'm going back to Iraq," Place said.

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...hlight=2,silver

The enemy’s silent, invisible weapon
Submitted by: MCB Camp Butler
Story Identification #: 200442023599
Story by Lance Cpl. Thomas A. Sloan



CAMP KINSER, Okinawa, Japan (April 16, 2004) -- Exposure to poisonous gases and other chemical agents during a Nuclear, Biological and Chemical attack is a threat to service members deployed to various places around the globe in support of the war on terrorism.

For this reason, Marines are required to conduct annual NBC training, according to Cpl. Michael L. Frantz, NBC specialist and noncommissioned officer-in-charge of NBC Defense section, Headquarters and Service Battalion, 3rd Force Service Support Group.

“The training covers what to do in the event of an attack in order to live through it and still carry out the mission,” said the 22-year-old Ephrata, Pa., native. “We go over how to wear the gear and check it for serviceability, how to use detection equipment and the M291 skin decontamination kit. The training takes about a half a day and ends with a trip to the gas chamber.”

Dressed in Mission Oriented Protective Posture-4 gear, trainees normally send in small groups to spend a short time inside the chamber where they receive a brief and perform side-straddle-hops to get a feel for how MOPP gear limits mobility. They also exposed their faces to chlorobenzalmalononitrile, better known as CS gas, by breaking the seal on their masks.

MOPP Gear is uncomfortable to wear but could prove necessary for survival in warfare, according to Cpl. Rico O. Brown, motor transportation operator for H & S BN, 3rd FSSG, and Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran.

“We wore the suits at MOPP level two (boots, trousers and jacket) for a solid month; the high desert temperatures and numerous layers of clothing made the heat almost unbearable,” the 23-year-old Detroit, Mich., native said. “There’s no telling how much I sweated. As bad as it was though, I felt safe and confident knowing it would protect me if an NBC attack were to occur.”

An attack never did occur, but there were instances where the threat was imminent, said Brown.

“There were times when we got a level four alert and had to put on our masks,” he said. “I’m a vehicle operator, and wearing a mask while trying to drive is hard. I didn’t complain too much though; I’d gladly give up some comfort to stay alive. Dying by gas is a terrible way to go.”

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...ight=2,veterans

Cheers, crowds greet returning Marines

By Thomas Sheeran
The Associated Press

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BROOK PARK, Ohio - People with relatives in a Marine Corps battalion that lost 48 members in Iraq cheered loudly Thursday as the unit finished its trip home.

Thousands of people lined a one-mile parade route from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport to welcome back the 160 Marines of Headquarters and Service Company of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines.

The parade route led to a recreation center where the Marines could have private reunions with friends and family.

"You don't really realize what we have until it's gone," said Melissa Schlabach, 25, of Canton, who brought her 2½-year old son, Josh, to welcome home her brother, Cpl. Brent Monastra, 23, of Canton. "I'm really excited to see him. Growing up with him, you don't realize what you have until he's not around."

The Marines' fallen comrades were on their minds as they returned.

"It's really sad, I lost a lot of good friends," said Lance Cpl. Jason Woodliff, 23, of Massillon, who served in Iraq with his brother Johel Woodliff, 20.

"There's nothing else you can do but come back and lead a normal life and think of them as you go along," Jason Woodliff said.

Lance Cpl. Nick Kehl, 23, of Berea, said the deaths made the homecoming difficult. "It's really hard losing guys," he said.

The battalion commander, Col. Lionel B. Urquhart, told family members their support was important to the Marines while they served overseas.

"We couldn't have done it without you," he said. "You lifted our spirits when our spirits needed to be lifted."

Brook Park police estimated the parade crowd at more than 5,000.

The caravan of Marines was escorted by a more than 70 civilian motorcycles plus police cars, fire trucks and an ambulance with sirens sounding and lights flashing.

The Marines saluted the flags held by a color guard at the recreation center. Some carried their bags. One walked with crutch.

Lance Cpl. Eric Montgomery, whose brother Lance Cpl. Brian Montgomery, 26, of Willoughby, was killed while the two served in Iraq, worked at the homecoming directing relatives and Marines into the center's parking lot.

"Right now, it's just bittersweet," Montgomery said. "I can't wait to see these guys get home so bad. I love these guys."

Montgomery escorted his brother's body home in August.

"There's a part of me wishes my brother was coming home with them and that I was coming home with them, because I was looking forward to that," he said. "But I'm home now and I just can't wait to give these guys the welcome they deserve because they're all heroes."

The battalion's deaths included 14 Marines killed in back-to-back attacks within a week during the summer. Five of those Marines were from Greater Cincinnati. Another 150 unit members were wounded. The battalion has about 900 members.

The reunion scene was the Brook Park recreation center, which was decorated with a red carpet and banners reading "Thank You," "We Love You" and "Let Freedom Ring."

A separate arrival ceremony was held in early afternoon for Beans, a puppy adopted by Cpl. Jeff Boskovitch, 25, of nearby North Royalton, and fellow Marines. Iraqi villagers sold the puppy for a quarter and three jelly beans and she became the unit's mascot.

Boskovitch was killed in Iraq on Aug. 1 and his mother, Kathy Wright, asked the Marine Corps to fly the dog here to live with her. It had been her son's wish to bring the dog home.

Homecomings are planned today for battalion units based in Akron and Columbus. The battalion also has units in Buffalo, N.Y., and Moundsville, W.Va.

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art.../510070389/1056

U.S. forces continue training Iraq’s future
Submitted by: 2nd Marine Division
Story Identification #: 200551633613
Story by Cpl. Mike Escobar



FALLUJAH, Iraq (May 10, 2005) -- Fathal Jabbar and his 19 comrades sit together atop stone bleachers, proudly clutching red folders tightly in their hands as they swap stories about their experiences over the past few days.

Beside them their officers speak with American commanders occasionally looking back at the jundi (privates) and smile in satisfaction as they recognize the pride their troops are feeling.

Today marks a special day in the lives of Jabbar and his comrades. He and fellow soldiers from the Iraqi Security Forces’1st and 2nd Battalions, 2nd Brigade, have graduated from the first squad-level infantry skills training course conducted by 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment personnel here.

“The training was very, very good,” stated Jabbar, a Baghdad native and class honor graduate. “All the information the Marines have taught me I will teach my troops now. God willing, we will do our job of protecting the future of Iraq.”

Five days ago, these soldiers had stood before a group of U.S. Marines prepared to learn tactics that will save theirs and their troops’ lives on the country’s urban battlefields.

According to Chief Warrant Officer “Gunner” Kenneth R. Silvers, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment’s gunner, battalion medical and infantry personnel spent five days teaching the Iraqi soldiers topics such as patrolling tactics, first aid in combat, and urban war fighting skills.

“This course is geared toward the fire team leader concept,” explained the 37-year-old Rome, Ga. native and the course curriculum’s developer. “They have squad leaders in their units already, but didn’t really understand the concept of a team leader. We’ve given them the skills so when they go back to their units, they can be made team leaders within their squads.”

According to Silvers, the Marine instructors, who were chosen from the battalion’s four infantry companies, had their students conduct a live-fire range with their AK-47 automatic rifle on the first day of training. The range was similar to the one Marines with the battalion completed prior to deploying here.

“This was kind of similar to the Marine Corps’ EMP shooting package,” he explained.

Silvers referred to the Enhanced Marksmanship Program, a training package that teaches Marines how to quickly shoot targets at close range and rapidly reload their weapons.

“After that, (the Iraqi students) do a ‘shooting house’ (maze-like structure made up of barriers) here, where they learn how to move through a structure and clear rooms,” Silvers continued.

On the second training day, the soldiers learned how to conduct cordon and search operations.

Jabbar and his fellow students establish a perimeter, or cordon, around the target area to ensure no one entered or left while the operation took place. The students then enter the building and question those inside while others search the premises.

This training was followed by lessons in basic troop movement and formations.

“We also teach them some basic patrolling tactics that day,” Silvers said. The Iraqi soldiers learned how use hand signals and move as a squad while simulating patrolling through Fallujah’s streets.

“These classes are similar to those Marines receive in boot camp and Marine Combat Training ( MCT),” Slivers added.

Training day three brought more patrolling for the soldiers as well as instruction in conducting Vehicle and Personnel Entry Control Point operations. Here, the troops practice setting up and manning stations where they check personnel for concealed weapons, explosive devices and anti-Coalition and Iraqi government propaganda. Currently, Iraqi soldiers and U.S. troops man numbers of these stations throughout Fallujah.

“On day four, we taught them to give and receive an operation order,” Slivers explained. “The orders process for them is nothing like we have in the Marine Corps. So we taught them how we do it.”

Marine leaders issue these written orders before every operation. The reports state the mission’s objectives along with the details on how the operation will be conducted.

The final day of training consisted of a final exercise that put all their newly learned knowledge to the test.

“The exercise lasted about five hours,” Slivers stated. “It’s a culmination of everything they’ve learned. Basically, an operation order is issued and the two squads go out to conduct a patrol. They move over to (a nearby) building, cordon it off, enter it and then clear the bad guys out of it.”

The Iraqis simulate taking casualties as they clear rooms, putting their medical training to the test.

The troops run through this evaluation twice so that each squad can conduct a different aspect of the operation. “After that, it’s on to the graduation ceremony,” Silvers added.

All 20 Iraqi soldiers successfully completed this first squad-level training course, and the instructors said they were impressed by the soldiers’ quick understanding of the training material.

“At first, there was a little bit of difficulty with the translation, but the students really wanted to learn, so we made it work,” stated Cpl. Randolf S. Ramirez, one of the chief instructors. “There was a lot of initiative coming from this crowd. At first, they were kind of laid back, but by day five they were all into it and wanted to do all the training. I’d say they’re fully developed grunts (infantrymen) now.”

Despite the soldiers’ general motivation level, the instructors recognized a few extraordinarily motivated soldiers.

Silvers said Jabbar finished as the class honor graduate because of his leadership skills and all-around motivation. Additionally, the instructors recognized four other soldiers for being outstanding squad leaders. “Every day, we’d rotate the squad leaders out,” Silvers continued. “Through that rotation, we found those who stood out above all the others.”

At the troops’ graduation, Jabbar received a tool kit, including a mini shovel, flashlight and Gerber multi-purpose tool. The four other “honorable mention” soldiers received a multi-purpose tool, as well.

The ceremony also featured appearances from Iraqi Brig. Gen. Juad Khudun, the 2nd Brigade’s commander, and Lt. Col. William M. Jurney, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine’s commander. They congratulated the soldiers and presented each of them a diploma and class photo.

“During this time, we have benefited from the experience of the Marines,” Khudun stated after the ceremony. “My soldiers and the Marines are working as one family in the streets of Fallujah. We are grateful for the Coalition forces helping us create a new Iraqi army.”

These soldiers, though, are only the first to benefit from the knowledge and experience of the Marines here supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

“Operations permitting, we’re going to keep on doing this type of squad training once every other week,” Silvers stated. “There’s also leadership training planned out over the next several months at the platoon, company, and battalion-sized unit level.”

For now, the local soldiers and their leadership remain grateful for the Marines’ help, and look forward to serving their country.

“A big concern for the soldiers is helping to rebuild Iraq,” Khudun stated. “The Marines’ training has helped them to protect Iraq and protect themselves. We will help bring about security to this free and democratic new Iraq.”

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...hlight=2,silver

Hero receives Silver Star for bravery
Submitted by: MCB Camp Lejeune
Story Identification #: 2004819103545
Story by Pfc. Lucian Friel



MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (August 6, 2004) -- The scars on his arms were reminders of the sacrifice he made to save his fellow Marines lives amiss combat in Iraq, earning him the Marine Corps' third highest award.

Gunnery Sgt. Timothy P. Haney, 39, a native of Clearfield, Pa., received the Silver Star Medal in a ceremony at the base theater August 6.

The medal, designated solely for heroism in combat, was awarded to Haney for his distinct bravery and fearlessness in action against enemy forces as platoon sergeant of the Combined Anti-Armor Platoon, Weapons Company, 2d Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, Task Force Tarawa, I Marine Expeditionary Force in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom from March 20 to April 3, 2003. During this period his leadership, personal sacrifice and calming influence enabled his platoon to repeatedly engage and defeat enemy forces in close combat.

From March 23 to 26, while conducting missions to destroy enemy tanks and other heavy armored vehicles, Haney's platoon participated in firefights with Iraqi Military and Paramilitary forces in An Nasariyah, Iraq, during which his personal example, while under fire, set the tone for the platoon's tactical success.

During one direct fire engagement against a heavy machine gun, he dismounted his vehicle to gain awareness of the enemy's positions, exposing himself to enemy fire and providing higher headquarters with vital situational awareness.

On March 26, 2003, as the battalion's Main Command Operations Center came under attack from two directions, Haney raced through intense fire placing Marines in defensive positions and directing their fire. An explosion riddled Haney's body with 60 pieces of shrapnel as he began preparing wounded Marines for evacuation. Ignoring his wounds he continued transporting injured Marines to the Battalion Aid Station, refusing medical attention until everyone else had been treated.

"You just act sometimes. You simply remember the drills and muscle memory takes over your body," he said. "I did what every Marine in 2/8 would have done if they were in my position. They're all just as deserving of this medal as I am."

Haney's wife Jackie and son Robert, 12, were on hand to watch their Marine receive the medal, which was originally established in 1918 as the Citation Star. In 1932, the Silver Star was redesigned as a medal with a retroactive provision allowing servicemembers as far back as the Spanish-American War (1898) to receive it for gallant actions.

"I'm very proud of my dad today, he's an American hero and he's my hero," said Robert.

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...hlight=2,silver

A true Marine to the depths of his soul
Submitted by: MCB Hawaii
Story Identification #: 20039916127
Story by Lance Cpl. Monroe F. Seigle



MCB HAWAII, KANEOHE BAY, Hawaii (September 5, 2003) -- In June of 1957, many Marines in our beloved Marine Corps had not been born yet.

It this same year, a young man who had always dreamed of becoming a Marine, left his home in Radford, Va., at the age of 17, and took his first steps on a journey to Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, S.C.

Retired Col. John Ripley's mother cried when he left home to join the Marines. His father beamed with pride he knew his son would succeed in becoming a member of the world's fighting force.

"When I went to boot camp, it was a tough experience," recalled the salty, blue-eyed colonel with a chuckle. "I was physically fit, and I was a tough kid, but no one could be prepared for what lied ahead of us. Twenty-five percent of the platoon did not make it through recruit training."

Ripley can still recall how the Marine Corps was everything he thought it would be and how he felt the day he pinned on the Eagle, Globe and Anchor.

It was only a year after Ripley had earned the title Marine that he was nominated to be a fleet appointee and earn a commission in the Marine Corps or Navy. In June of 1958, the private first class reported to the U.S. Naval Institute.

Although the determined, young warrior was usually first in all the inspections and set records on the obstacle course that to this day have yet been broken, academics were a tough challenge for him.

"I struggled for four years in most of my classes," recalled the colonel. "I had to work and study like crazy to stay abreast of the other students as far as academics were concerned.

"I remember in 1962 I was commissioned as a 2nd Lt. in the Corps, and let me tell you - I was ready to get back into the fleet," said Ripley. "The Marine Corps was already part of me, and I knew I wanted to be a Marine for the rest of my life."

After graduating from the Naval Academy, Ripley was granted one month of leave; however, the gung-ho warrior had no interest in going home and wasting time. He was ready to go back to the fleet as an infantry officer.

As a commanding officer, Ripley enjoyed leading his troops. He was the commanding officer of three companies and a reconnaissance platoon. He was the type of Marine that other Marines in his charge looked up to and respected as a leader. This proved to be an advantage when he led Lima Co., 3rd Bn., 3rd Marine Regiment into combat in the gruesome battles of Vietnam.

During the spring of 1972, in the mist of the Vietnam conflict, Ripley found himself in a desperate situation. More than 30,000 North Vietnamese troops were pushing through defensive points during a major assault when Ripley put himself in personal danger to set high explosives and destroy a key bridge in Dong Ha. This single act of bravery thwarted the North Vietnamese troops assault and destroyed 200 of their tanks in the process. Ripley later received the Navy Cross, the nation's second highest award for heroism, for his personal sacrifices in the line of duty.

Ripley returned to the Amphibious Warfare School after his tour in Vietnam to serve as an instructor, only to once again find himself longing for the action of front lines. He returned to Vietnam to serve as an advisor to the Vietnamese Marines.

"I was given a chance to serve with some magnificent warriors during my tours in Vietnam," he recalled with a touch of emotion. "There were Marines out there that would have put their lives on the line without thinking twice."

Ripley continued to serve in the Marine Corps after his second fight in Vietnam. He eventually attained the rank of colonel and retired from the Corps in 1992. Today, he continues to keep the Marine Corps close to his heart as he serves as the director of the Marine Corps History and Museums.

"If I can say anything to the Marines today, I would explain to them that being a Marine is a great privilege, never a right. It is something that you earn and if you prove to be good enough, then you can serve," said the colonel sternly. "If you ever think for a moment you can just take off your pack and call it quits, you are wrong.

"We have a tremendous legacy to uphold and everything we do must burnish that reputation," he continued. "There is no easy way to be a Marine and there never will be. You are a Marine every day and it is your responsibility to uphold the legacy that Marines in the past have so dearly established.


http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...f5?OpenDocument

Legion of Merit awarded for outstanding service
Submitted by: MCB Camp Lejeune
Story Identification #: 2000124131037
Story by Sgt. Bobbie J. Bryant



CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (Nov. 07, 2000) -- The director of instruction for Marine Corps Combat Service Support Schools was awarded the Legion of Merit recently in a ceremony aboard Camp Johnson recently.
Lt. Col. John R. Miles of Staten Island, N.Y., was presented the award by Col. J.C. Hardee, the assistant chief of staff for Training, Education and Operations, Marine Corps Base.

Miles reported to G-5, II Marine Expeditionary Force in 1994 to serve as a regional plans officer after graduating from the School of Advanced Warfighting at Quantico, Va. He stayed there for the next six years and served as a planner, deputy assistant chief of staff and finally, as the assistant chief of staff, G-5.

"He was initially the regional plans officer for the Southern Command," said Hardee, the former chief of staff for II MEF from Clayton, N.C. "He spent six months on Joint Task Force 160 as the plans officer in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, supporting migrant operations."

The JTF was responsible for security, feeding, health and having a destructive weather plan for 40,000 migrants, according to Miles. All of these functions required long-term planning.

"Planners coordinate the activities during the development of a plan. Everything a planner does is a team effort," he said.

"The most exciting part of working in the G-5 as a planner was that on a regular basis I was involved in plans that would have elements of II MEF going off to combat or some other crisis," Miles said.

Miles later served as the regional planner for the European Theater.

"He served in this billet during a time when there was a tremendous amount of activity in the U.S. European Command and within NATO," said Hardee. "He is very well known to both U.S. and allied planners. He attained instant credibility through his diligence and professional performance of duty. He has a great work ethic. He's very intelligent and has been blessed with a great deal of common sense. He worked very hard to take care of the Marines in his section."

Miles traveled extensively in an official capacity throughout Northern Europe, specifically Norway and to the southern flank of Europe. While there, he was developing deliberate war plans in support of NATO and contingency planning in support of Bosnia and Kosovo.

"He spent a lot of time in the Balkans forming plans that might potentially involve U.S. Marines," Hardee said.
"I think that what Lt. Col. Miles brought back to II MEF was important. I think that what's much more important is what he took to Europe as a direct representative of II MEF," he said. "In the eyes of many U.S. and allied officers that he met and worked with in Europe, he represented not just II MEF but also the United States Marine Corps."

Miles took 27 trips to Europe between 1995 and 2000. Ten of those trips were to Bosnia in support of II MEF's role there as part of the strategic reserve.

"We have sent him TAD innumerable times to that theatre," Hardee said. Often times these trips were known and planned on some he had no notice. Some were for a short period of time others kept him away from his family for weeks on end.

"For a Marine to serve for six years in the same general type of billet and to maintain such a high level of performance is a significant accomplishment. On an easy day his duties were hard," he said.

"It has been a difficult six years for my family," Miles said. "It would have been very difficult to keep my focus without my family's support. It was absolutely critical and it meant the world to me."


http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...e7?OpenDocument

Marine Air supports NATO exercise Clean Hunter
Submitted by: Marine Forces Europe
Story Identification #: 2004628112722
Story by Master Sgt. Phil Mehringer



KARUP, Denmark (June 28, 2004) -- The skies of NATO's northern region were recently filled with sounds from Marine Corps aircraft in support of Clean Hunter 2004, an aviation exercise designed to test command and control of NATO's air assets. The exercise involved 200 aircraft, 10 nations and more than 300 U.S. Marines.

Twenty Marine Corps F/A 18 Hornets, 10 each from Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 122 "Crusaders" and Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 321 "Hells Angels" were on hand to provide the fast movers for the exercise. The Crusaders of VMFA-122 are based out of Beaufort, S.C., while Hells Angels are from Washington, D.C. Keeping the Hornets in the fight were two KC-130s belonging to the "Rangers" from Marine Aerial Refueling Squadron 234 from Ft. Worth, Texas.

The scenario of the exercise established four coalition zones in which aircraft had to alternate attacks on each other. It was necessary for pilots to adjust their missions quickly, moving from a defensive role to an offensive role. Aircraft alternated timeframes, placing them either on the attack or on the defense.

"The scenario is similar to the Kosovo Air Task Order," said Maj. Carsten Rasmussen, assistant director of operations for Air Base Karup and exercise planner. The backbone of the exercise is "trying out plans, communications, air task orders and checking to see if our skills are correct," added Rasmussen.

Targets during the exercise consisted of radar sites, airfields and other ground targets. Electronic warfare assets and Combat Search and Rescue projects were also incorporated in the scenario buildup.

Airspace for the exercise spanned through 10 countries in northern Europe, ranging from Scotland to the west and the Czech Republic to the east. Other countries involved in the exercise were the U.K., France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Denmark, Luxemburg and Belgium.

All of the U.S. Marines participating in Clean Hunter were located at Air Base Karup. The area offered a great history lesson for the visiting Marines.

The base was originally named "Einsatzhafen Grove" by German forces that built the base shortly after their occupation of Denmark in the Spring of 1940. A loose translation for the Deutsch description is "forward combat air base." The Germans continued to improve the installation up until the very end of WW II, including the construction of a longer, concrete runway that left Allied forces questioning the intent of such a runway. The answer to the question became apparent at the end of the war when 165 German aircraft were captured, including six Arado jet aircraft.

The base has transitioned through several periods since the German occupation ended in May 1945, and it was home to many types of Danish and NATO fighter/bomber aircraft during the Cold War years.

One of the most famous stories told by Danish forces stationed at the base today is that of a special reconnaissance mission flown from the base in the early 1960's. Photos taken from reconnaissance aircraft were the first to reveal missiles aboard Soviet ships bound for Cuba.

After the Cold War ended, like many U.S. military installations, Air Base Karup went under a realignment that moved fixed wing assets to other locations, leaving the base in 1993 with no permanent fixed wing "jet" aircraft. The base is currently home to a pilot training school and several helicopter squadrons.

With the majority of the local citizenry retired from working at the base, having an increase of activity in the area is a welcomed sign. "It's nice to have fighter noise around here again," said Maj. Rasmussen, recently assigned as the commanding officer of the Royal Danish Air Force Search and Rescue Squadron.

"Denmark has been a great experience," said Sgt. John Isaksen, flight equipment technician/plane captain for the Hell's Angels of VMFA-321. A native of Hampstead, N.C., Isaksen said this was his first visit to Denmark, and the deployment was full of new scenery and new culture.

Keeping the aircraft in the air was a challenge for all the Marines in the squadron. This deployment has been a "very big accomplishment for all of the shops," said Sgt. Tim Adkins, power line crew chief for the Crusaders. "We worked like a well oiled machine."

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...c6?OpenDocument

Letters
Write Review

The Review welcomes letters from readers and will print them as space permits. Letters may be edited for brevity and clarity. Unsigned letters cannot be used, but names of the writers may be withheld on request. Send letters to Rochester Review, 147 Wallis Hall, P.O. Box 270033, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627-0033; rochrev@rochester.edu.
Saluting Midshipmen . . .

Your profile of Ensign [Anne Marie] Regan ’03 [“Squared Away,” Fall 2003] was very well done. I recommended it to my 14-year-old daughter, who actually set down a J. R. R. Tolkien book to read it.

Naval ROTC friendships are strong. Our class of 1977—16 Navy and one Marine—is at work on a reunion, thanks to the efforts of one of our career officers.

We are including all who shared our college experience, not just those who graduated and received commissions, and call our directory “Freshman (NROTC) Class of 1973.”

We’ll send you a picture.
Mark Sturnick ’77
Hollandale, Wisconsin

Thank you for your profile of the Naval ROTC unit at the University. Rochester has a proud history and part of that history is entwined with the men and women who choose to use the great education that Rochester provides in service to our great country. I am very proud to be both a graduate of the University and a commissioned officer serving aboard one of the 12 greatest warships in the world, the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy.

Victor Davis Hanson, a columnist with National Review Online, perhaps describes an aircraft carrier best when he stated in his December 13, 2002, column that “Our aircraft carriers are this nation’s phalanxes, at once frightening weapons and symbols of American Freedom. . . . [I]n the far less comfortable but much more real world of the Kennedy, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and whites are indistinguishable in the manner in which they eat, sleep, and work, united as they are as Americans in a common cause, not separated by race, class, and tribe. African-American officers supervise whites, and vice versa. . . . Women fly planes that men service or the other way around or both. And recently graduated Naval Academy ensigns learn from tough men with tattoos and calluses who inhabit primordial places of fire and oil in the ship’s bowels or who work on the flight deck where a momentary lapse in concentration can get one disemboweled or vaporized in seconds. Our universities might do better to mothball Ethnic Studies and send the entire freshman class to the Kennedy for a semester.”

The University’s staff, students, and alumni can rest assured that through the efforts of the NROTC unit, Rochester graduates are making an immeasurable contribution to the freedom we all enjoy.
David Kemp ’91
Lt. Commander, U.S. Navy
USS John F. Kennedy
Naval Station Mayport, Florida

I was interested to read your article “Squared Away” and wanted to share my own personal link to the University’s NROTC program.

My father, Hanford Cohen, was a sonar operator in the Navy during WWII. After the war, he was asked to go to Rochester to teach in the newly formed NROTC program.

He greatly enjoyed his years at Rochester, and I grew up hearing stories of his time there. He had installed all the telephones and their wiring in the NROTC building and he remembers that before he left in 1949, he had to crawl through the building to document the wiring schematic, as it only existed in his head. He also had fond memories of the Rochester winters.

I chose Rochester, in part, because of my father’s stories of the place. He enjoyed returning to the campus when I was an undergraduate to see the many ways in which it remained the same and the many ways in which it had changed.
Lisa Janice Cohen ’84
Newton, Massachusetts
. . . Remembering Marines

I read the most recent issue of Rochester Review first with surprise and pleasure and then with a bit of incredulity.

The pleasure was over the report that the NROTC unit is now apparently an accepted part of the University—a big, big change from the early ’60s.

Then, I noticed the report that Guy Wyser-Pratte ’62 “was the only Marine-option cadet . . . in the early 1960s.” There are no and never were any “Marine-option cadets.” Members of the NROTC, Navy or Marine-option, are midshipmen. Your statement about “the only Marine” is only correct if the “early 1960s” ended in August 1962.

The Class of 1966, which arrived on campus in September 1962, graduated four Marines from the NROTC program. In addition to me, Bob Rivers, Andy Vaart, and Tom King were commissioned in June 1966. The Class of 1965, which came on campus in 1961, graduated at least two Marines out of the NROTC program, if my memory is correct.

You may hear from Bob and Andy in this regard, but Tom King was killed at Con Thien, Vietnam, in July 1967. I know exactly because I was on the radio talking to him trying to bring my battery’s fires to protect his unit and him at the time he was killed.

You might also have mentioned that Major Vic Ohanesian was the Marine option instructor in those days. You won’t hear from him either as Lt. Col. Ohanesian was also killed in Vietnam after his tour at the University.

The Wyser-Prattes, Kings, and Ohanesians of the University served their country well. It is a shame that the organ of their alma mater cannot even get the terminology straight nor the story complete.
Richard Hulslander ’66
Captain, U.S. Marine Corps (inactive)
Ransom Canyon, Texas
‘Midshipmen’ Mix-Up

As I picked up my mail, I glanced at the fall edition of Rochester Review and an oxymoron leaped off the cover: “NROTC Cadet.”

What?

Turning inside I found an article about Midshipman Anne Marie Regan ’03, the battalion commander of the NROTC unit during the 2002–03 school year.

The term “cadet” was used no fewer than 39 more times, including quotes attributed to (now) Ensign Regan.

Will journalists ever learn that the Navy is not the Army? That sailors are not soldiers and midshipmen will never be cadets?

I suspect that Rochester Review would not call a “professor” a “dean” just because the word is shorter. Also, it would have been nice to learn the title of Captain Gavin Lowder, who is quoted, but not identified as the commanding officer of the NROTC unit and professor of naval science.

Finally, technology must have really caught on at the NROTC unit, allowing responsibilities to enlarge greatly. Unlike my dinosaur days there in the ’50s, the battalion commander must now know the “whereabouts (of all other NROTC students) at all times.” GPS transponder on every student?

Oh no, now I get it. Ms. Regan had to know the whereabouts of all NROTC cadets at all times. Clever joke!
Robert Mumford Jr. ’57
Captain, U.S. Navy (retired)
Darnestown, Maryland

http://www.rochester.edu/pr/Review/V66N2/letters.html

Texan honored as hero, friend to the end

Submitted by: MCB Camp Pendleton
Story Identification #: 200584104338
Story by Sgt. Monroe F. Seigle



MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (Aug. 4, 2005) -- When Lance Cpl. Aaron Austin was growing up in the heart of Texas, he would put up a fight when anyone messed with the people he considered his friends or family.

Similarly, when insurgents on a rooftop threatened the security of his fellow Marines in Iraq, the warm-hearted Texan threw caution to the wind and entered the line of fire — ultimately fighting to his death and distinction as a certifiable Marine Corps hero.

The hard-charging machine gunner from 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, was posthumously award- ed the Silver Star July 22 in Amarillo, Texas. The award was presented to the Marine’s father, Doug Austin, by Sgt. Justin Rettenberger, 53 Area guard chief for the 1st Marine Divis-ion. Rettenberger was present on April 26, 2004, during the firefight in which Austin gave his life. He helped carry him out of the firefight after he sustained his fatal wounds.

“I will always remember Austin as a hero,” Rettenberger said. “He is the poster boy of Marine hero. The sacrifice he made enabled the other Marines to go home.

“Even as he died, he told me not to worry about him and to keep shooting at the enemy.”

The day after Austin passed away, his hometown of Sun Ray, Texas, put all flags at half-mast in honor of the fallen Marine.

When his father was presented with the Silver Star — the military’s third-highest award for battlefield valor — 14 months later, the Veterans of Foreign Wars set up a color guard ceremony. Sgt. Maj. William Skiles initially planned to present the medal, but decided to pass the honor to Rettenberger.

“I was Lance Cpl. Austin’s first sergeant for eight months,” said Skiles, now the top enlistedman at Medium Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 267. “That Marine was a real motivator and he enjoyed life. I felt that it was appropriate for (Rettenberger) to be the one to hand that Marine’s father the Silver Star.”

Skiles said one of the best parts of the ceremony was seeing the mother and father get some closure after losing their son.

According to his award citation, based on battlefield accounts, Austin’s platoon secured and occupied two buildings in enemy-occupied territory. Austin positioned his machine-gun team on the rooftop of the northernmost building. The platoon bolstered its defense and searched for enemy personnel.

At around 11 a.m., a “numerically superior” enemy force attacked Austin’s position from three directions.

Approximately 4,000 rounds of enemy machine-gun and small-arms fire — plus no less than 30 rocket-propelled grenades — rained down on the platoon for 15 minutes, the citation said.

The enemy fighters assaulted to within 20 meters of Austin’s platoon, threw hand grenades and sprayed AK-47 fire, according to the account.

During the hailstorm, Austin discovered many of his comrades had been injured. He whisked them into the building to ensure their medical treatment, the citation said.

Next, he rallied able-bodied comrades: “We’ve got to get back upon the roof and get on that gun (240G machine gun),” he said, according to the award ciation.

Austin, along with other Marines in his company, rushed to the rooftop defensive position, braving small-arms and rocket- propelled grenade fire the whole way. Austin led the way. When he reached the rooftop, he withdrew a hand grenade from his fighting vest and prepared to throw it, according to the account.

He changed positions to get a better look, exposing himself to intense enemy machine-gun fire. Several enemy bullets struck Austin in the chest, the citation said.

Despite his wounds, Austin threw his hand grenade. The resulting explosion disjointed the enemy and allowed the platoon to regain the upper hand, the citation said.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Jason Duty, who now instructs corpsmen in Great Lakes, Ill., was the first to administer medical attention to the mortally wounded Marine.

“All I could do was bandage him up and get him to the hospital as fast as I could,” Duty said. “He died in the back of the vehicle we were in. It was hard as hell for me to watch him die, and I do not care what anyone says, he is a hero and one of the best Marines I have ever met.”

Although painful for Austin’s mother to have lost her son, she said she understands the sacrifice he made and why he made it.

“I will always remember his loyalty and zest for life,” De’on Miller said. “I am so proud of him. I can say, ‘Why can’t it have been someone else instead of my son,’ but I know that what my son did saved some lives; and he gave me the best 21 years of my life, so I will thank God every day for the ones that he gave me.”

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...ghlight=2,enemy

Houston Marine receives Navy Cross
Submitted by: MCB Camp Pendleton
Story Identification #: 200456172127
Story by -



MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (May 6, 2004) -- Marine Pfc. Joseph B. Perez received the Navy Cross Medal from the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps, Gen. Michael W. Hagee, during an awards ceremony Thursday at Marine Corps Air-Ground Training Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif.

Perez, 23, a Houston, Texas, native, received the naval service's second highest award for extraordinary heroism while serving as a rifleman with Company I, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom April 4, 2003. The Medal of Honor is the highest military award.

Three other Marines received medals for valor at the same ceremony.

"They are the reflection of the Marine Corps type who's service to the Marine Corps and country is held above their own safety and lives," said Gen. Hagee, commenting on the four Marines who received medals during the ceremony. "I'm proud to be here awarding the second highest and third highest awards for bravery to these great Marines."

"These four Marines are a reflection of every Marine and sailor in this great battalion," said Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, Sgt. Maj. John L. Estrada.

1st Platoon came under intense enemy fire while clearing near Route 6 during the advance into Baghdad. Perez, the point man for the lead squad, and therefore the most exposed member of the platoon, came under the majority of these fires.

Without hesitation, he continuously fired his M16A4 rifle to destroy the enemy while calmly directing accurate fires for his squad. He led the charge down a trench destroying the enemy and while closing and under tremendous enemy fire, threw a grenade into a trench that the enemy was occupying.
While under a heavy volume of fire, Perez fired an AT-4 rocket into a machine gun bunker, completely destroying it and killing four enemy personnel. His actions enabled the squad to maneuver safely to the enemy position and seize it.

In an effort to link up with 3rd Platoon on his platoon's left flank, Perez continued to destroy enemy combatants with precision rifle fire. As he worked his way to the left, he was hit by enemy fire, sustaining gunshot wounds to his torso and shoulder.
Despite being seriously injured, Perez directed the squad to take cover and gave the squad accurate fire direction to the enemy that enabled the squad to reorganize and destroy the enemy.

"It is unreal, it is not what I expected, it is unbelievable," Perez said. "This is real weird for me, because, I am not big on special events," said Perez.

In effect since April 1917, and established by an Act of Congress on Feb. 4, 1919, the Navy Cross may be awarded to any person who, while serving with the Navy or Marine Corps, distinguishes himself/herself in action by extraordinary heroism not justifying an award of the Medal of Honor.

The action must take place under one of three circumstances: while engaged in action against an enemy of the United States; while engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing foreign force; or, while serving with friendly foreign forces engaged in an armed conflict in which the United States is not a belligerent party. To earn a Navy Cross the act to be commended must be performed in the presence of great danger or at great personal risk and must be performed in such a manner as to render the individual highly conspicuous among others of equal grade, rate, experience, or position of responsibility.

More than 6,000 Navy Crosses have been awarded since World War I.

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...ghlight=2,enemy

CETO hosts child-soldier seminar
Submitted by: Warfighting Lab
Story Identification #: 2002521141511




(May 21, 2002) -- The phenomenon of child soldiers affects every theater where U.S. forces may deploy. As many as seventy-five percent of conflicts worldwide may involve children engaged in the roles of soldiers. In January 2002, U.S. Army Special Forces Sergeant Nathan Chapman, the first American serviceman killed by hostile fire in Afghanistan, reportedly was killed by a 14-year old boy. Child soldiers are fighting and dying every day in Colombia, Chechnya, the Middle East, Africa and Sri Lanka, and in other conflicts throughout the world.

The Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities is sponsoring a seminar on June 11 to examine the exploitation of children as soldiers. Panelists will discuss ways that U.S. forces can better plan and deal with the child soldier phenomenon and limit unnecessary casualties. The seminar also will address the optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict.

When: Tuesday, June 11, 2002, from 9:00am to 3:00pm

Where: Liversedge Hall, 15 Liversedge Dr., Marine Corps Base, Quantico, Va.

Panelists:
Panelists include representatives from the Brookings Institution, the United Nations, the Embassy of the United Kingdom and the Office of the U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Representatives from Human Rights Watch, the International Rescue Committee and UNICEF, and a former child soldier have been invited to participate.

Who Should Attend:
· Personnel from the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Army and other military Services
· Representatives from other U.S. government departments and agencies
· Policymakers
· Members of the media

RSVP:
Please RSVP by June 1, 2002 to Leigh Uithoven at 703 784-0450, uithovenl@mcwl.quantico.usmc.mil or to Debi McCormick at 703 784-3452, mccormickdx@mcwl.quantico.usmc.mil. Seating is limited.

For information about lodging, directions, and a detailed schedule, see CETO?s website at www.ceto.quantico.usmc.mil or contact CETO at the numbers listed above.

Seminar Fee:
A seminar fee of $15.00 will be charged to cover seminar materials, lunch and refreshments. Please bring cash only to be collected at the registration desk. CETO also will entertain requests for funding support for USMC personnel.

Dress:
Dress is Summer Service ?C? or equivalent for military personnel and business attire for civilians.


http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...light=2,soldier