by Tom Clancy
But by October the two Senate staffers I’d run into in March, now working with a retired Army general, had actually come up with a crazy plan to arm the “military branches” of these dissidents and insert them into Iraq with promises from us of air cover and special forces support. It was a recipe for disaster, which I referred to at the press conference as “the Bay of Goats,” adding further insult by calling the exiles “Gucci Guerrillas.”
These comments caused a furor, and during my Senate testimony later that day I faced several angry Senators who supported this ludicrous proposal.
Though I was severely chewed out by my bosses afterward, I received hundreds of letters and calls, and several articles were written, in support of my position.
The story does not end there. Washington is a vindictive town, and the two staffers swore revenge. They did not take it out on me, but on my political adviser, Larry Pope. When Pope was nominated for Ambassador to Kuwait, they were able to block a Senate vote on it. This petty act against a man who had nothing to do with my opinions was typical of the Washington politics that sickened me.
Nineteen ninety-eight ended with a bang with Desert Fox.
I knew we’d get no respite from the constant high-level tempo of operations in 1999.
In early January, the administration directed Tony Lake to make another effort (which we supported) to broker peace in the looming Ethiopia-Eritrea war; yet I knew we were not going to stop the impending fight. When the war actually began in the spring of 1999, we conducted an evacuation of American citizens (called “Operation Safe Departure”).
The war was bloody. World War One-style trench warfare and massive frontal attacks caused thousands of deaths.
After an Ethiopian victory at Badime (by which time the two belligerents had exhausted themselves on the battlefield), we worked with Tony Lake and the State Department to establish a peacekeeping force there. By the end of the year, a UN force provided a boundary demarcation team and peacekeepers to try to help resolve the dispute.
On the twenty-first of April, I traveled to Pakistan for several days of meetings with the new chief of staff, General Pervez Musharraf. The two of us connected quickly and easily. He was bright, sincere, and personable. A fervent nationalist who nevertheless leaned toward the West, he was as appalled as General Karamat over the ever-worsening corruption within the civilian government. He also understood the various, powerful Islamist currents running through his country, and saw them as the threats they were to bringing his country into the twenty-first century; yet he also understood that his country would never modernize and solve its myriad ills without the emergence of some kind of religious accommodation, and hopefully religious consensus.
It was a great meeting, despite the chill cast by our sanctions. As I was leaving, we both agreed to stay in close touch (we exchanged our home telephone numbers). Our friendship would later prove to be enormously valuable to both our countries.
In May, Pakistani forces made a deep incursion into an area called Kargil, on the Indian side of the Line of Control.
Though there was normally “fighting” near the Line of Control, the area for a long time had been quite stable. There’d be probes and shooting during the good months of the year, but nothing ever changed much; and in wintertime, everybody would pull back down into the valleys, and the two sides would create a “no-man’s-land.” As spring came, they’d go back up into their positions.
Every so often, somebody on one side would be a little late getting up to their spring position, and the other side could grab an advantage of a kilometer or so. It was like “Aha, I’ve gotcha!” on a tactical level. But it didn’t really change things.
This time, however, the Pakistanis waylaid the Indians and penetrated all the way to Kargil. This was such a deep, significant penetration that it wasn’t tactical; it threatened Indian lines of communication and support up to Siachen glacier.
The Indians came back with a vengeance. There were exchanges of fire, there was a mobilization of forces, there were bombing attacks, planes were shot down. Then the two sides started to mobilize all their forces all along the line; and it was beginning to look like the opening moves of a larger war. It got alarming.
I was therefore directed by the administration to head a presidential mission to Pakistan to convince Prime Minister Sharif and General Musharraf to withdraw their forces from Kargil.
I met with the Pakistani leaders in Islamabad on June 24 and 25 and put forth a simple rationale for withdrawing: “If you don’t pull back, you’re going to bring war and nuclear annihilation down on your country. That’s going to be very bad news for everybody.” Nobody actually quarreled with this rationale. The problem for the Pakistani leadership was the apparent national loss of face. Backing down and pulling back to the Line of Control looked like political suicide. We needed to come up with a face-saving way out of this mess. What we were able to offer was a meeting with President Clinton, which would end the isolation that had long been the state of affairs between our two countries, but we would announce the meeting only after a withdrawal of forces.
That got Musharraf’s attention; and he encouraged Prime Minister Sharif to hear me out.
Sharif was reluctant to withdraw before the meeting with Clinton was announced (again, his problem was maintaining face); but after I insisted, he finally came around and he ordered the withdrawal. We set up a meeting with Clinton in July.
In October 1999, the tension between the civilian and military leadership of Pakistan finally came to a head. The government was freely elected but outrageously corrupt. The military found itself between a rock and a hard place. If they let the situation continue, the rot could grow bad enough that the country would collapse — a very real possibility. But there was no way to change this situation according to the normal liberal democratic rules.
Sharif set in motion his own downfall by trying to fire General Musharraf, while Musharraf was out of the country, and to put the chief of intelligence in his place. He had originally given Musharraf the job under the misperception that Musharraf would be easy to control. He had not reckoned on the general’s integrity.
In response to Sharif’s move, the Pakistani army executed a coup.
While the coup was moving to its climax, Musharraf was flying home; and for him, success was a very near thing. His aircraft came back into the country low on fuel; but the airports, still under the control of Sharif’s forces, were closed to him. At the last possible moment, forces friendly to Musharraf took over the airport and the general landed.
Prime Minister Sharif was soon placed under arrest, and Musharraf declared his intent to clean up governmental corruption and install true democracy.
The coup did not play well in Washington, and I was ordered to cease communications with General Musharraf. Though I thought the order was stupid, I complied.
Every other year, we conduct a joint exercise with Egypt called “Bright Star.” It is the largest military exercise in the world.[82]
In November, I was in a reviewing stand with Secretary Cohen, participating in Bright Star, when my communicator announced that a call from General Musharraf had been patched through to my satellite phone (which was with me at all times).
I turned to Cohen. “What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“Take the call, but don’t make any commitments,” he said.
It was a personal call between friends, Musharraf explained (though, of course, we both knew that any conversation we had would have wider ramifications). He wanted me to know what had led to the coup and why he and the other military leaders had had no choice other than the one they took.
The point he made then was a powerful one: “Democracy and the ballot are both a sham when any government that results can offer everything they control up for sale. We’ve had a democracy of form, and not a democracy of substance. I want democracy in substance, I’ll work for that, no matter what it costs me.
“And there’s one more thing
I have to make clear,” he told me. “I don’t care what most others think about my motivations or intentions; but it’s important to me that you know what they are.”
I thanked him for his candor, and wished him well.
When I briefed Cohen on the call, I made it clear that it was more important than ever to stay connected to Pakistan. He understood what I was saying, but he didn’t think Washington would be convinced.
In December, Jordanian intelligence uncovered a massive plot to kill American tourists at the turn-of-millennium celebrations in Jordan and throughout the Middle East. The captured terrorists, who had links to Osama bin Laden, revealed that their immediate leaders were in Pakistan.
Calls soon came from the State Department and National Security Council: “Please call Musharraf and ask him to help.”
In response to my requests, Musharraf arrested the terrorists (and gave us access to them and to their confiscated computer disks)… and threw in several other favors.
“Now do something for Musharraf,” I told Washington. “Or at least let us reconnect.”
The answer was no.
I called Musharraf and told him how disappointed I was. “I know that cooperation isn’t popular in some circles of your own government and people, as well,” I explained. “I know what courage it took to do what you did for us. So it’s doubly embarrassing for me that I can’t give you anything in return.”
“I don’t want or expect anything for what I’ve done,” Musharraf replied. “Tony, I did it because it was the right thing to do.”
On my final trips to the region in the spring and summer of 2000, I was deeply moved by the reception I received from my many friends. Their expressions of appreciation for what we had done and the relationships we had built made me feel we were well on our way to stabilizing this volatile part of the world. I knew, however, that we had a long way to go. This was a dangerous neighborhood. The region needed to make many political, social, economic, and security reforms, but it needed time, space, and support (and, in some cases, prodding) to get these done. I felt we could help effect these changes by providing this help.
During my time at CENTCOM, every country except the Seychelles was continually under a terrorist threat. We had conducted a series of military actions against Iraq, while continuing to enforce sanctions against that nation. We had contained Iran and opened new relations with Yemen and the Central Asian States. We had dealt with wars in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Tajikistan. Our responses to crises in Pakistan, Africa, and elsewhere had ranged from humanitarian assistance, to evacuation of U.S. citizens, to mediation of disputes.
It was an incredible experience.
In the summer of 2000, I transferred command of CENTCOM to Army General Tommy Franks, and my thirty-nine-year career as a Marine ended.
But it was not the final chapter of my CENTCOM story.
On Thursday, October 12, 2000, Al Qaeda terrorists suicide-bombed the American destroyer USS Cole, then refueling in the harbor of Aden, Yemen. Seventeen young Americans were killed, and the Cole was out of action for years. Somebody had to take the blame for allowing this tragedy to take place. The buck had to stop somewhere.
Some people looked at an obvious target, the ship’s captain. But the folks who like to point fingers whenever bad things happen to our soldiers, Marines, airmen, or sailors wanted to hang somebody higher up. The finger landed on me.
Fine. That’s where the buck stopped.
So when the chief of naval operations tried to pin the bombing on me, I wasn’t surprised. He accused me of setting up the refueling station in Aden because I wanted to improve relations with Yemen.
That accusation brought on a call from Senator Warner of Virginia, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “Look,” he said, “I’m getting hammered by my constituents. They’re asking questions about the Cole. The American people need to learn the truth. We need to have the hearings. We’ve asked the Secretary of Defense and the top military to testify, but they will not appear. We can’t get them to come. That leaves you, Tony.” He apologized for that. “You need to come testify.
“It’s going to be hard,” he continued. “We’re going to put you through a lot… I’m going to put you through a lot.”
“I’ll do it,” I said. It was the only right thing to do.
I was grilled by fourteen senators, three hours under klieg lights (a lot of press was there), with no break (not even to piss). And I got hammered with questions.
Before I went in, I’d decided I would take full responsibility for this thing. I was the CINC and everything that happened in my AOR was my responsibility. If I didn’t, they’d dump it down on some poor son of a bitch like the captain of the ship. Somebody senior had to stand up. I remembered how hard they had hit General Peay for the Khobar Towers attack. When he tried to explain what happened during his testimony, they took it as waffling and not standing up to his responsibilities (which was far from the case). I was tired of admirals and generals trying to pass the buck. I was really upset with the chief of naval operations for trying to pin the blame on anybody else… it didn’t matter who. And I was enraged at the Washington blame game.
So I decided, “What the hell. The buck stops here.” And that’s what I said in my testimony: “I was the commander in chief who made the decision that we would refuel in there,” I told the senators. “I’m fine with that. If it was the wrong decision, you can hold me responsible for it.
“Now I’ll give you the circumstances, I’ll tell you what happened, and why I made the decision:
“Yes, it’s true that I wanted to improve relations with Yemen, but that was not the reason we chose to refuel in Yemen. We chose to refuel there for operational and not diplomatic or political reasons. It was the only practical port for our naval component to refuel their ships.
“The Navy has rules about fuel levels on their ships,” I explained. “In normal operations, they don’t let that level go below fifty-one percent.
“Ships traveling out of the Mediterranean could of course refuel in the Persian Gulf, but in many cases ships didn’t have enough capacity to get there without exceeding the fifty-one percent limit. That meant they had to find a refueling port between Suez and the Gulf. These were the possibilities: Djibouti, Eritrea, Jeddah, and Aden. That was it. Djibouti had been the Navy’s refueling port, but it was now a no-go. Eritrea was out because of the war with Ethiopia. Jeddah was out because we’d just had the bombings in Saudi Arabia. So there was no other choice.
“We looked hard at Aden. The Navy went in and vetted it, inspected it, and cleared it; and the Navy component for CENTCOM had the responsibility for security. We refueled twenty-eight ships during my tenure as CINC, and all without incident.
“Yet, having said that, there’s no getting around the risk. There is no risk-free place in that part of the world to refuel ships.
“If we’re going to have people out there, if we’re going to have people traveling around doing security assistance work, if we’re going to have forces on the ground training and exercising, if we’re going to have a presence out there day to day, responding to operations, in an environment that’s really hostile and where people are out to get us, and they’re watching our every move looking for an opportunity to hurt us, we’re going to have times when our people are going to get hurt.”
The senators walked out of that meeting satisfied with what I’d said; and it all ended there.
Later, to Tommy Franks’s credit, he stepped up to the plate and said, “I agree with General Zinni’s decision. I would have made the same one. It made military sense.”
The CENTCOM experience taught me a lot about the world and the role of our great nation in it. We could make a difference if we were committed to stand up to our obligations, not only as the last remaining superpower, but also as the last beacon of hope for many people on this planet.
Forty years as a Marine taught me that the only place to be is in the center of the ar
ena. You get knocked down out there and you make mistakes. But you also realize that it sure beats sitting in the grandstands criticizing those who have the guts to be out there. And every once in a while you can make a difference.
I adjusted, with some difficulty, to civilian life and retirement after four decades of service. I missed the Corps and the arena that gave me a tremendous sense of fulfillment. Little did I realize that another form of service awaited me.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WARRIOR PEACEMAKER
After nearly four decades in the United States Marine Corps, Tony Zinni found it hard to adjust to a different life. He knew he had to move on to another phase, yet months passed before the new phase happened. Until it did, he briefly tried the usual occupations open to retired generals — memberships on boards of directors, consulting on military and foreign policy matters, senior mentoring, teaching college courses, lecturing at military schools, speechmaking.
These early pursuits brought in a comfortable income; all of them were interesting, and a couple were personally rewarding. Despite these satisfactions, however, he knew something was missing. He was no longer taking part in the significant events he watched unfolding every day on the news. He had moved from the heart of the action to virtual irrelevance.
The media networks offered positions as an analyst and commentator; their offers were tempting — a chance to keep a hand in. But he rejected them, preferring not to be a military Monday-morning quarterback. He didn’t want to be yet another retired general blathering on the screen about the state of the universe.
“I really believe that once you retire, you retire,” he comments. “The way is forward, not back. So for me, I really felt that the worst thing I could do is try to semi hang on. I wanted to cut the cords and get on with a different life. Just put the old life aside.”