by Tom Clancy
I’d heard no explosions, but I told my chief of staff, Colonel John Moffett, to check on the tracks.
“They’re all in the water,” he reported, “and none have been hit by fire.”
I sat back in relief.
By that time, we found ourselves in huge swells, and the swaying of the track and the water pouring through the overhead hatches started to make the Marines sick. A helmet they passed around soon filled. I think I was the only one who did not silently “donate” to the pot. I guess the tremendous feeling of relief kept me straight.
Earlier, I hadn’t worried much when the track hesitated and stuttered as it roared down the beach. But now we were losing power, and smoke was starting to fill our track. John poked his head up into the commander’s cupola, then came down and reported that we had a transmission problem and were going to be taken under tow by another track. I put my hand down on the deck: if incoming water was kept no more than about a foot deep, the bilge pumps were working… It wasn’t and they were.
Soon we could feel the tow, and we all relaxed some. But then it stopped. John poked his head back into the cupola, soon reporting that the tow vehicle was now also dead in the water, and we were both drifting back to the beach.
I stuck my head out and could see the headlights of the technicals back there.
Just then, Corporal Deskins, the track commander, stuck his head down into the troop compartment. “Sir,” he said to me, “here’s the situation. We are on fire and drifting back to the beach. The track that’s towing us is also on fire and drifting back with us. The other tracks have headed back to the ship and we can’t raise anybody on the radio. We have fired flares but have not seen any safety boats. We can see the enemy on the beach.” He then paused and smiled. “But don’t worry, sir. Our machine guns work better on the beach.”
We then popped the overhead hatches and all the Marines climbed on top of the tracks. It was very tricky there, with the swells crashing over the vehicles, but, eventually, a small Navy safety boat responded to the flares, spotted us, and came alongside. Moving troops in high seas from the track to the cramped boat was a sporty event. It was quickly overloaded, and a larger craft had to come to help. After the troops were safely transferred to the other boats, I turned back toward the beach looming against the dark horizon. There the lights of Mogadishu silhouetted the technicals, signaling each other with their headlights.
The four-man crew led by Corporal Deskins were the last troops aboard the track.
“We have to get them aboard so we can move out,” the safety boat officer was telling me, “or else we might be swamped.”
But when I asked Corporal Deskins to abandon the track and get into the boat, he scurried away from us. “Sir, we will never abandon our track,” he said.
I looked at John. He smiled and shook his head. I turned to the boat officer. “We’re just going to hang on,” I said, “and hope a larger landing craft gets here before we hit the beach.”
It did, and so did a number of tracks racing out to rescue us. We had managed to avoid an unplanned return to Somalia.
Earlier, the other tracks had gone on to the ship, thinking we were under tow; but when they were told of our situation, the entire track platoon raced to the well deck and splashed their tracks back out to the sea to come get us.
As I was climbing from the boat to the larger craft, I was handed a hot cup of coffee from the Navy chief in command of the craft. For the first time that night, I realized I was soaking wet and cold and bone-tired. I looked at my watch. We’d left the beach five hours ago; the intensity of the events afterward made that time seem like minutes.
The craft pulled into the well deck of the Belleau Wood early in the morning. As the ramp went down, I realized I’d have to wade through waist-deep water up the ramp. At the top of the ramp was the massed press pool, with cameras snapping. I smiled at the chief. “You’re going to make me wade up to those cameras, aren’t you?”
He smiled back. “Just like MacArthur, sir.”
Later, up in the command center, a briefing confirmed that we were all accounted for. I then reported to Scott and General Peay, “Mission accomplished.”
I went to my stateroom, showered, and collapsed in my rack. When I woke the next morning, the ship was gently rocking. We were on our way to Kenya. The fifth and final phase, redeployment, was under way. Remarkably, we had suffered no casualties in this operation. The exhaustive planning had paid off. I was proud of all my forces.
We docked in Mombasa on the sixth of March; and I flew off with my staff back to Camp Pendleton.
Two weeks later, Secretary of Defense William Perry spoke at an awards ceremony at the Pentagon. “We live in an imperfect world and we can never make it perfect,” he said, “but we can attain moments of perfection. Operation United Shield was such a moment.”
Leaving Somalia was an emotional moment. We left a lot of sacrifices and dashed hopes on that beach… but learned significant lessons from the Somalia experience. I am convinced it could have been better had we run this complex undertaking with more skill and thoughtfulness.
CHAPTER SIX
CENTCOM
In August 1996, the new commandant of the Marine Corps, General Chuck Krulak, nominated Tony Zinni as deputy commander in chief (DCINC) of U.S. Central Command,[70] located at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida.
Leaving command of I MEF was hard, yet Zinni welcomed the opportunity to continue to serve. At the higher levels of the military hierarchy, it’s either move to a new position or retire. CENTCOM was in fact a particularly welcome assignment… “It’s where the action is,” he thought. “It’s operationally oriented; and I’m already familiar with the command from my Somalia experiences and I MEF,” which was assigned to CENTCOM as a responding unit when required. He quickly supplemented his initial store of knowledge by plowing through more than fifty books on the history and culture of the region.
When Zinni arrived at CENTCOM headquarters early in September, he did not find a happy place. The command had just suffered the worst terrorist attack on U.S. facilities since the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut. A suicide truck bomb had killed nearly twenty Americans at Khobar Towers, an Air Force barracks in eastern Saudi Arabia (CENTCOM had also suffered a bombing of one of its security assistance facilities in Riyadh). The tragedy weighed heavily on the command, cast a dark cloud over the remainder of General Binnie Peay’s tour as commander in chief of CENTCOM… and directly affected Zinni as DCINC when General Peay tasked him to oversee the implementation of the hundred-plus recommendations put forward by a fact-finding commission chaired by retired Army General Wayne Downing. It was clear that the terrorist threat was growing ever more dangerous and that force protection was becoming a dominant theme for America’s military leaders.
The Downing Commission recommendations ranged from the relocation of units to the establishment of more stringent security; and there was a lot of pressure to get them implemented. Some of the recommendations were straightforward, such as adding security forces, putting up barriers, and other forms of physical security. Some took more time. For example, the commission recommended reducing the number of “accompanied tours” in the region, which are tours of duty for which military personnel can bring their families. This recommendation was not well received, especially for those in assignments such as security assistance billets, which require people to stay in one place for at least two or three years to be effective. Nevertheless, a blanket decision was made to drastically reduce the number of accompanied tours. Most people would now be rotating out after a year… which was about the time it took to get up to speed. (This policy was eventually partially reversed.)
Downing had also recommended moving CENTCOM headquarters out to the region. But when the command looked hard at setting up a major headquarters in that part of the world — at all that it would take to make the move; to set up the security; to take care of the military construction, the politics, the families and sc
hools — the expenses were so great that the issue was deferred.
Instead, CENTCOM settled on setting up a rapidly deployable forward headquarters, with forward elements of the headquarters of its subordinate commands — ground, air, naval, and special operations — in place. (For the invasion of Iraq in 2003, General Tommy Franks set up his forward headquarters in Qatar, which was one of the locations that had previously been designated for a CENTCOM forward headquarters.)
Good or bad, the Downing Commission recommendations could be dealt with in a straightforward, professional way. But the commission report went further than that; it assigned blame, which took the fact-finding process into more questionable territory. There is a fine line between assessing responsibility, assessing blame, and scapegoating. When the report was issued, blame for the “failures” that had allowed the attack to succeed was dumped primarily on CENTCOM and the commander at Khobar Towers.
This was not a completely irrational judgment: The commander has to carry ultimate responsibility for what goes on in his command. The buck has to stop somewhere.
On the other hand, the military exists to handle situations that are by definition high-risk. You want to reduce those risks as much as possible, but there is a point at which reducing risks also greatly reduces the effectiveness of the military. Total safety and total security are not conditions of the military life.
You can reduce risk to the point of absurdity: “Don’t cross streets. You’ve got lousy drivers out there.” And you can build — and cower in — impregnable bunkers.
Tony Zinni:
During the Downing Commission’s investigations, the commission’s approach to the command was open and nonjudgmental. But the Downing report was another thing. The tone of the report was much more fault and blame assigning than was warranted. And worse, many of the security steps that we were forced to implement impacted negatively on our mission.
What bothered me about the report (but the problem goes far beyond that, as I have made clear in later testimony to Congress) is its failure to understand that we live in a risky world. We have been stalked by terrorists. And they’re still after us. Yet in order to do our mission, we have to take risks. The only one hundred percent safe way to avoid them is not to go there. But if we’re going to be in the region, and we’re going to do our job, there is risk involved. We’re going to expose troops.
The mood back in the United States has been deeply frustrating, and that is: We have to make our force presence in the world one hundred percent safe for our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. And if one soldier, sailor, air-man, or Marine is injured or lost to a terrorist activity, then we have to find somebody on our side to blame for it.
I can’t think of a more dysfunctional way to run military operations.
The job of implementing Downing Commission findings consumed much of Zinni’s time during the next year — and after.
In the meantime, CENTCOM was a beehive of activity.
Containing Iraq was always a primary order of business; several flare-ups with Saddam after the Gulf War had required military responses. Usually these occurred while enforcing the no-fly and no-drive zones in Iraq. Iraqi tankers, however, were also smuggling sanction-busting oil down the gulf. U.S. Maritime Intercept Operations had grabbed a number of smugglers; but most had proved very hard to stop; they avoided American naval patrols by using Iranian territorial waters (and paying tolls to the Iranians).
The command had continued the longtime U.S. containment policy toward Iran (the other regional hegemon); and tensions there remained high. U.S. naval forces in the Gulf daily confronted hostile and aggressive Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard naval forces; their harassments and provocations could easily have sparked major confrontations.
The Gulf was not the only hot spot. There were others in East Africa and Southwest Asia. And the forever-crisis between Israelis and Palestinians impacted every country in the region, though it was not itself in CENTCOM’s AOR. The command constantly had to reevaluate and adapt itself to ever-changing realities and challenges.
After the Gulf War, Marine General Joe Hoar, the CENTCOM CINC who followed General Norman Schwarzkopf, launched a major effort to create strong relationships between the U.S. and friendly nations in the region; and built a solid foundation for military cooperation.
General Peay added to this foundation by enhancing America’s force presence in the region. This had to be done carefully; basing U.S. military forces there jarred local sensitivities. He skirted that problem by structuring a force that combined prepositioned equipment and rotational units,[71] spreading the forces throughout the Gulf area, using joint facilities to conduct operations,[72] and placing a select few headquarters of subordinate commands in the region to run day-to-day operations. These actions demonstrated America’s intent to share the military burden and gain local cooperation and support for its military missions… while not building U.S. bases in the region or basing dedicated forces there. As an added benefit, they allowed flexibility in the size and composition of U.S. forces.
These new directions created far greater capabilities for meeting the emerging challenges in this vital area of the world. Tony Zinni was the beneficiary of the innovative and tireless work of Generals Hoar and Peay.
From his first day on the job, Zinni got himself up to speed militarily by immersing himself in briefings, intelligence reports, and conversations with commanders who had experience in the region. But he knew this was not enough. There was nothing like being there. He already knew how important it was to see a place firsthand, and to spend enough time there to build critical relationships.
General Peay made frequent trips to the region. While he was away, Zinni stayed behind, keeping the home fires burning, as the nature of his job dictated (the CINC goes forward and the DCINC stays back). Yet each time Peay returned, his increased insight and wisdom amazed Zinni. You can’t acquire such things from briefings and readings at headquarters.
Several months after his arrival at CENTCOM, Zinni at last made a trip to the region. His primary orientation was to check out the forces — what were out there, what they were doing, seeing them on the ground, getting briefs. But he also visited senior military commanders and national leaders.
During his visit, he attended a number of social events with Arabs… he would attend many others over the next years. People in that part of the world don’t sharply distinguish business from social.
Zinni:
In the Arab world, they conduct business far more casually than we do at home — or in Europe, the Pacific, and other places where I’d served. In America or Europe, the meetings are structured. There’s a timetable and an agenda. You limit small talk — and feel guilty when you indulge in it. You tick off items that must be covered. And once they’re covered, you instantly move on.
That’s not the way Arabs like to do business. They don’t jump directly into the “big issues”; they prefer a far more casual mix… and not because they don’t understand the issues. Rather, it’s the way they connect and take the cut of a man. Personal relations and trust built out of friendship are more important than just signing paper agreements. They’ll sit around a room and drink coffee, eat some nice food, laugh a little, and have an easygoing conversation about their families, hunting, the weather, or anything else that doesn’t seem terribly important. In time, they’ll subtly work their way toward the business at hand and deal with it. But don’t try to rush them.
When Westerners have tried that — even CINCs — it’s led to problems.
Our way of conducting business just doesn’t work there. When we try it, we’re not well received. Yet politeness, graciousness, and hospitality are so inbred in Arabs that we may not recognize that they’ve turned off to us. They will always be polite to guests. Hospitality is more than just a nice civility in that part of the world; it’s a duty and obligation. To be inhospitable or impolite is a sin. On the other hand, they really take to people who like their kind of
personal interaction. But doing that right is truly an art.
An art I’ve always enjoyed practicing.
It’s interesting to watch Washington insiders out there dealing with Arabs. In Washington, everyone is comfortable with formality. That’s how they do business. It goes with the pin-striped suits.
During one of our crises with Saddam Hussein, Secretary Cohen and I went to several countries in the region to obtain permission to bomb Iraq. Okay, our way of doing things: You hand them the paper and they read the fine print and sign on the dotted line. No problem… Only, that’s not how Arabs operate. They don’t directly tell you yes or no. They have ways of signaling their intention, but the signals aren’t clear unless you understand them.
In one country, Secretary Cohen pressed and pressed and he got nowhere; they didn’t want to give an answer. But as we were leaving, they said, “You must always know we are your friends.”
After we walked out, Cohen said, “Did we get an answer?”
“Yes, we did,” I said. “We can do it.”
“I didn’t hear that.”
“Yes, in the end when they told you they’d always be our friends, that was their answer. That meant they were telling you to go ahead and do it. Don’t make an issue of it.”
In another country, we were told, “Please, don’t ask us to do this.”
This really meant: “Do what you’ve gotta do. No one’s going to interfere. But don’t ask us the question that we don’t want to answer, either way.”
Americans are of course always looking for the hard-and-fast no-yes.
In many other cultures, such as the Israelis’, people are frank, blunt, and to the point; and they see anything less than that as a sign of less than full friendship. With good friends, you should be that honest and open. You’re only polite to people you’re not close to or don’t like.
