by Tom Clancy
CHALLENGES AND DILEMMAS
The recent conflicts in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq have also posed unique dilemmas for military forces in what is commonly referred to as the postconflict or stabilization phase. Current military doctrine, training, equipment, and procedures do not adequately address the missions required by the war now being waged against radical Islamic terrorists and their state sponsors.
In 1991—even though the local populace welcomed our liberating forces, even though the Kuwaitis had large cash reserves that could be used to rehabilitate themselves, and even though Kuwait’s Arab neighbors, like Saudi Arabia, made great efforts to provide for the immediate needs of refugees and thousands of Iraqi prisoners of war — it was a struggle to stabilize postwar Kuwait. Our Air Force had to get the International Airport running as soon as possible to support the airlift bringing in emergency supplies, while our Navy did the same for the port and adjacent waters mined by the Iraqi Navy. Civilian contractors rushed to Kuwait to extinguish the fires burning fiercely in the oil fields. But the role of rehabilitation fell mainly on the U.S. Army, a force that was trained and configured to fight tank battles and capture territory. Our Army had to ensure adequate food, water, utilities, transportation, police protection, and security forces were available so the citizens of the razed and looted country did not suffer inordinately. Though Lieutenant General John Yeosock, Commander 3rd Army, took control, and his forces worked tirelessly to ensure the pain and suffering of Kuwaitis was minimized, it nevertheless took many months to bring normalcy to the nation that had suffered so horribly from seven months of Iraqi occupation.
The same tasks arose after Serbian military forces were driven out of Kosovo, after the Taliban and Al-Qaeda military were defeated in Afghanistan, and after Saddam Hussein’s rule over Iraq was broken. But in those countries we faced a very different situation. There the populace had mixed views about our postconflict presence, capabilities available to restore basic services were limited, and in many locations the security situation was tenuous. Though the international community supported the postconflict efforts, in each case the chief responsibility fell once again on the U.S. military — primarily on its Army.
It was recognized early in the planning for the second war against Iraq that the postconflict tasks would be huge. Our experience in postwar Germany in 1945 provided a model for ensuring that members of the former regime, who had directly participated in Saddam’s reign of suppression and terror, would not escape judgment nor be placed in new positions of authority. Our military police had the doctrine and training to handle large numbers of prisoners of war. Our logistics teams, engineering battalions, and medical cadres knew how to quickly bring support to a country ravaged by war. What we lacked was an appreciation of the extent our efforts would be frustrated by terrorists who saw postwar Iraq as their battleground, by former regime members who fought fiercely to seize back control of the country, and by a people traumatized by an evil dictator’s decades of rule.
Our efforts were often also hampered by a lack of cooperation and coordination among various U.S. government and international agencies. Many turf battles in Washington, Europe, and the United Nations migrated to Iraq. Though valiant efforts were made, all soon learned that postconflict is the most difficult phase in this type of war. Serious mistakes were made, which made the job even more difficult.
The most notable problem was the handling of prisoners in facilities where it is impossible to separate the military prisoner from a terrorist from a common criminal from an innocent person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Pictures of the shameful abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the American-run Abu Ghraib prison made sensational news, and were used to castigate our country by everyone opposed to our interests, to our efforts in Iraq, or to the war there.
There is no excuse for the actions of those who abused the prisoners. But their criminal behavior was investigated fully, and those charged were tried and punished in accordance with the Code of Military Justice.
The larger question is: How could this have happened? The answer: We as a military are ill-prepared to conduct the missions thrust upon us after the battles have been won. Abu Ghraib is a sterling example of how the military needs to change to meet the demands of postconflict stabilization.
The prison at Abu Ghraib was filled to capacity. The inmates were mixed with legitimate prisoners of war, terrorists, common criminals, and innocent citizens (including women and children). Our Military Police are trained to process and contain those prisoners of war who bring with them standards of conduct, a chain of command, and protections under the Geneva Convention. Undertrained for the task they were sent to perform, they guarded murderous individuals and vile sexual deviants, along with innocent men, women, and children. To further complicate this explosive environment, there was a need to interrogate the prisoners in order to assist in the fight to provide security to the countryside outside the prison walls, as well as to identify those individuals who should be released immediately. Meanwhile, the internal organization of our Military Police and Military Intelligence hampered the coordination and cooperation between these two disciplines, while long tours of duty in the region led to rotation policies that resulted in a lack of unit cohesion, inexperienced or weak leadership, and inconsistent procedures. All of this blew up after those Military Police at Abu Ghraib, who were responsible for the criminal abuse, tried to excuse their behavior as part of a process to extract intelligence information from their Iraqi prisoners. Neither was it helpful when hostile critics attempted to portray this crime as typical of all the military, or as a result of political policies they believed wrong.
What should be the lesson learned from Abu Ghraib? Our military, and even our government beyond the Pentagon, must examine our capabilities in order to bring together the elements needed to stabilize another postwar situation such as we find in Iraq today.
★ Historically the church and the military are highly resistant to change. The dogmas of both are etched in stone; their self-images are articles of faith, not of reflection; and their leaders are more concerned with preservation of the institution than with change. The military can no longer remain that inflexible. Technology, the challenges it must confront, and the means by which it plies its trade are simply changing too rapidly to allow it to maintain those traditions. Today’s wars are fought in a revolutionary manner, with new capabilities emerging every few months. The pace of information technology revolutions is even quicker. Land, sea, air, and space vehicles become obsolete more rapidly than in the past, and in some cases even before they can be deployed, as new materials are invented, microprocessors shrink in size and balloon in capacity, and new countermeasures are created to offset advantages in armor, speed, stealth, or range.
Technology is not the only consideration that demands rapid and constant change in our military. As the United States military forces prove their prowess in battle, potential enemies take note and later tailor the threats they pose to our vital interests in ways that take advantage of holes and weaknesses they perceive in our capabilities. The guided weapon of the terrorist is a human being with an explosive vest ready to die for his cause. The B-2 bomber of a radical Islamic terrorist is a B-767 filled with fuel and flown into the Pentagon. The battlefield is no longer the deserts of Iraq but the minds of young Islamic people forced to choose how they see the world and what their place is in it.
A huge role remains for military forces to protect our country’s vital interests and its citizens, but the challenges and the threats to those interests are changing almost more rapidly than our military forces can adapt to them. The need to change, and the pace of that change, are the greatest challenge our military forces face today. Fortunately, because we live in a free and profoundly diverse society, and because of our ability to master technology and our willingness to be self-critical, our nation and our military are highly adaptable. We will confront the changes and institute the needed reforms.<
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to all the men and women who flew over the Gulf and performed such magnificent feats, as well as those who supported them on the ground and on the water. Thanks, too, to G. P. Putnam’s Sons, for letting me do these four books on command — it’s been a real learning experience. And thanks to you, Chuck — the right man in the right place at the right time.
TOM CLANCY
The folks who deserve acknowledgments from me are Tom Clancy, who collaborated with me and got me hooked up with William Morris, who didn’t want me but learned to love me. To John Gresham, who got me started with lots of clerical help and shared enthusiasms. And to Tony Koltz, who asked the right questions, told me how sorry a writer I am, and procrastinated sufficiently to mean I am working on this four years after I was ready to go.
CHUCK HORNER
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Atkinson, Rick. Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1993.
Cohen, Eliot A., dir. The Gulf War Air Power Survey. Washington: Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, 1993. Five Volumes and a Summary Report.
Coyne, James P. Airpower in the Gulf. Arlington, Virginia: The Air Force Association, 1992.
Creech, Bill. The Five Pillars of TQM: How to Make Total Quality Management Work for You. New York: Truman Talley Books/Dutton, 1994.
Gordon, Michael R., and Gen. (Ret.) Bernard E. Trainor. The Generals’ War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf. Boston/New York: Little, Brown Co., 1995.
Hallion, Richard P. Storm Over Iraq: Air Power and the Gulf War. Washington: Smithsonian, 1992.
Khaled bin Sultan. Desert Warrior: A Personal View of the Gulf War by the Joint Forces Commander. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.
Kitfield, James. Prodigal Soldiers: How the Generation of Officers Born of Vietnam Revolutionized the American Style of War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Levins, John. Days of Fear: The Inside Story of the Iraqi Invasion and Occupation of Kuwait. London: Motivate Publishing, 1997.
McMaster, H. R. Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.
Powell, Colin L. My American Journey. New York: Random House, 1995.
Schwarzkopf, Gen. (Ret.) H. Norman. It Doesn’t Take a Hero: The Autobiography. New York: Bantam, 1992.
Tennant, Lt.-Col. J. E. In The Clouds Above Baghdad: The Air War in Mesopotamia 1916–1918. Nashville: The Battery Press, 1992. Originally published 1920.
Ullman, Harlan, and James P. Wade et al. Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance. Washington: The Center for Advanced Concepts and Technology, 1996.
Примечания
1
Later F-15 models could be used in other roles, as well.
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2
Born Margaret, but called Pud from childhood. Ellen and Mary Lou were the other sisters. Chuck was the only son.
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3
After he finished gunnery school, Horner intended to apply for a regular commission, the type academy graduates got; but before he could get his paperwork together, the Air Force changed the procedure. In the new dispensation, a board selected the ones they wanted instead of letting people apply directly. Later, while he was stationed at Lakenheath in England, Horner was called into his squadron commander’s office one day and asked if he would accept a regular commission, since a board had selected him for one. “Sure,” he answered. And so he was resworn into the Air Force in 1962.
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4
In World War I, World War II, and Korea — even though some fighters carried bombs — the fighter’s primary weapon was its gun, and most fighter actions were gunnery actions: air-to-air and strafe of ground targets. Hence, when a young pilot went to school to learn how to be a fighter pilot, he went to gunnery school. There he would also learn to drop bombs, even nuclear bombs, and shoot missiles.
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5
The mechanics had installed one of the pulley reels upside down, so both ailerons moved in the same direction. This made them flaps and not roll controls. And this made the rudder the only roll control the pilot had. His aircraft was going too slow, however, for it to generate the control moment he needed to use the rudder to keep the wings level.
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6
An Immelmann is half a loop with a roll on the top. The roll allows you to return to level flight after you’ve reversed your direction. If you want to make the loop smaller, you pull more Gs in the climb, but that means your airspeed at the top is slower.
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7
When Horner entered the Air Force, there were about 900,000 people on active duty, of which about 130,000 were officers, and about 70 percent of those were rated. Today there are about 350,000 in the Air Force, with about 70,000 officers, of whom about 20 percent are rated.
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8
FACs work on the ground with Army units as liaison with close air support fighter-bombers.
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9
The NG stands for “new guys.”
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10
If MiGs got into a bomber fight, the bombers would jettison their bombs and fight them. Even if the MiGs didn’t shoot anyone down, the bombers still jettisoned the bombs… which meant they were ineffective. In order to counter this air-to-air fighter threat, the practice was to dedicate a few fighters to patrolling the area, so for insurance a few fighters were designated MiG CAP (Combat Air Patrol).
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11
That is, he set himself up with relation to the flight leader’s plane so that the leader’s wingtip light was on the star painted on the side of his jet. This means Horner was flying in the right position fore and aft and up and down. Then all you had to do to make sure the flight stayed in close formation was to hold this position and keep the same distance out, usually so his wings didn’t overlap.
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12
Fortunately, Tastett bailed out and lived, then spent years in the Hanoi Hilton.
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13
Roger Myhrum, we should mention, is now retired. After the war, he went on to fly with the F-5 squadron at Williams AFB training Saudis and Iranians, but after that Horner lost track of him.
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14
For combat awards, the Air Medal stands below the DFC, but above the Air Force Commendation Medal, which is usually given for excellence in job performance to company-grade officers. Though it isn’t really a major award, at the time the Air Medal was highly respected. Since the last war was Korea, by 1965 very few medals had been handed out since the early 1950s.
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15
This was not always the case. When he returned to Korat in 1967, Horner served under an old-time fighter commander, Colonel, later Brigadier General, Bill Chairasell. Chairasell used his most experienced squadron commanders to lead, no matter what their rank — a practice of which Chuck Horner seriously approved.
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16
Horner himself stayed on at Korat beyond 100 sorties, because he enjoyed combat. Others stayed on beyond 100 sorties because they wanted to help the unit out. But by 1967, he wasn’t aware of anyone who felt they were going to win this war. When I asked him what we could possibly have done to set up an acceptable end state, this was his answer: “Our overall strategic aim, as far as I can make out, was to devastate the North so badly that they would surrender any hopes of interfering in the South. Naïve. If we had really wanted to show the North Vietnamese we were serious, we probably should have shut down Haiphong and Hanoi, invaded below Haiphong, and cut the country in half lower down. In fact (though we didn’t know it then), as it turned out, all we really had to do was befriend Ho. Seems he wasn’t part of a monolithic Communist plot, and hated the Chinese more than
anyone else. Since as it turns out we really didn’t have any loyalty to the South Vietnamese people anyway, perhaps we could have brokered a deal after the French pulled out. But that is twenty-twenty hindsight on my part.”
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17
The Wild Weasels amassed more medals per aircrew (pilot or his EWO) than any other unit in the war.
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18
Later, White Fang was shot down over North Vietnam and stoned to death by villagers. He and his EWO, Sam Fantle, were picked up by the Army and told to run for it across a field. If they were fast enough, the Army would protect them from the villagers. Fantle was fast enough to make it across the field. But White Fang was older than the rest of the Weasels (he had been a flight officer at the end of World War II) and didn’t make it. He had a wife and son. His wife died years later from cancer.