Battle Ready

Battle Ready Tom Clancy with General Tony Zinni (Ret.) and Tony Koltz Date: 24 May, 2004   —   $19.69   —   Book product page Rating:

I haven't read many biographies that interested me as much as this one. Tom Clancy's treatment of General Zinni's career starts in the middle with Zinni in command of Operation Desert Fox, President Clinton's strike against Iraq's suspected WMD sites in 1998. Of the attack, Zinni says, "None of the equipment of facilities targeted had been prepared for it. None had been moved (no shell game). All the targets had been hit -- hard." Zinni told his boss, General Shelton, "We've done about as much damage to the WMD program as we're going to do. Any more would just be bombing for bombing's sake." Hmm... I wonder why we never found any WMD or WMD facilities in Iraq.

Zinni's early career as a Marine officer in Vietnam is riveting; he was a Marine liaison with the South Vietnamese Marines. As the only American with these units, he immersed himself in the culture, learned to live off the land, and had quite a few amazing adventures including a naval battle in small fishing sampans, and literally walking into the middle of a gunfight between two feuding South Vietnamese military units to stop it. He ends his Vietnam tour on Okinawa stopping a race riot at a Marine base. It's a seriously fascinating and bizarre tale, in an Apocalypse Now kind of way. But without the drugs.

Clancy and Zinni then fast-forward through the eighties and get right to the Gulf War in 1991. Zinni was working at European Command. EUCOM was pretty much on the sidelines for the actual fighting, but Zinni got heavily involved in post-Gulf War Iraq, in particular with relief operations for the Kurds in northern Iraq. This part was really fascinating for me. I didn't realize that we actually invaded and occupied northern Iraq in order to secure it for the return of the Kurdish refugees. I had wondered how the Kurds in the north did so well against Saddam during the 90s, while the southern Shiites fared so poorly. Now I know.

During this phase of his career, Zinni learned how to integrate humanitarian and other non-governmental organizations with the military. This experience helped him greatly when he became the Marine commander in charge of Operation Restore Hope, President George H. W. Bush's humanitarian relief operation in Somalia. Zinni's account goes a long way toward making sense out of the prelude to the US Special Forces raid depicted in the movie, Black Hawk Down.

Zinni goes on to give a fascinating depiction of his time as Commander in Chief (CINC) of Central Command (CENTCOM). Under the Clinton administration, CINCs had the mission of establishing new relationships, improving stability, and countering emerging threats in their areas of responsibility. In other words, the CINCs job was to "engage" and "shape" their region, to create a friendly and peaceful area. One of the ways they did this was by sponsoring joint operations with local military forces to provide humanitarian relief to desperately poor areas in the region. Zinni says that this was traditionally the job of the US State Department, but in the 90s, the Republican Congress had so gutted their funding that the only organization able to provide those kinds of operations was the military.

Some people had accused CINCs of becoming the new proconsuls of the American Empire, but Zinni explains, "Though I've had many disagreements with the Clinton administration, its basic global strategy was right. I was out in the world and saw the needs, the newly emerging conditions, and how we can help change them. I also saw that if we failed to change them, we were doomed to live with the tragic consequences."

The first thing the newly installed Bush administration did was to limit the power of the CINCs and change their title and role to Combatant Commanders. And did anyone else notice during the Iraq invasion that CENTCOM now has administration-appointed political spin doctors standing next to the Combatant Commanders, making sure they stay "on message?" Zinni says, "This era of "spin" sickens me. I would never have accepted a White House "spin doctor" being assigned to my command to run our public affairs effort, as was done during the Iraq war." I guess GW is stealing the concept of Zampolit from the Commie playbook.

Zinni rounds out the book by presenting some (really good) ideas on the future of our military. He also comments on the Iraq invasion, "In the lead up to war and its later conduct, I saw, at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility; at worst, lying, incompetence, and corruption. False rationales presented as justification; a flawed strategy; lack of planning; the unnecessary alienation of our allies; the underestimation of the task; the unnecessary distraction from real threats; and the unbearable strain dumped on our overstretched military, all of these caused me to speak out. I did it before the war as a caution, and as an attempt to voice concern over situations I knew would be dangers, where the outcomes would likely mean real harm to our nation's interests. I was called a traitor and a turncoat." What a typical Bush tribute to a Marine and a true American who spent his life in the service of his country.