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COMMENTARY
July 9, 2003
Abizaid
As he takes charge of U.S. Central Command from the retiring Tommy Franks Gen. John Abizaid assumes the biggest field challenge of any U.S. officer since the Vietnam War. Gen. Franks did a superb job of liberating Iraq and deserves a chestful of medals; he put all his ducks brilliantly in order but it must be said he had ducks to put. It was the spiffiest invasion since Germany took France in 1940 (this is an aesthetic not a moral judgement) and left those who know a little military history smiling in recognition of a true craftsman. Central Command embraces everything from Sudan to Kazakhstan and Egypt to Pakistan excluding Syria and Turkey but very much including Iraq and Afghanistan. Of the five U.S. military world commands it must be the most impromptu; having the least fixed assets and the most passing trade. Superficially Gen. Abizaid will oversee a consolidation of the U.S. presence in which the number of permanent major U.S. military bases will increase from just two before 9/11 to perhaps the dozens of European or Pacific Command. The ways in which permanent forces are arrayed will be worth watching closely. President Bush and Defence Secretary Rumsfeld are cashing out of the antiquated 20th-century arrangements that left troops and heavy armoury stockpiled in Germany and Korea/Japan and reaching instead for something more nimble. Gen. Abizaid will preside over the creation of a fluid base-structure centred in Iraq projecting force through a fluid region. One of the U.S. President's great strengths is in the quality of his appointments -- though many of them drive his critics nuts for he chooses competence consistently over the soft hand-holding qualities. Gen. Abizaid' s good "optics" -- Lebanese parentage fluently Arabic-speaking -- may serve to conceal his real strengths for as he showed in Grenada Kosovo and elsewhere he has the markings of a very tough and resourceful battlefield commander when things need to be done. To which we might add Kurdistan one of the least publicized sectors of the recent Iraq war where Gen. Abizaid was calling the shots as Gen. Franks's deputy and where limited forces were deployed tellingly against carefully chosen targets to bring very quick results. It was a reprise for him for in the summer of 1991 Gen. Abizaid had directed Operation Provide Comfort which pushed Saddam Hussein's army back from occupied Kurdish areas after the first Gulf War and secured independent new Kurdish local administrations. A warrior not a public relations professional yet he has the one thing the good general cannot do without as any other person thrown into hard creative work -- a love for the subjects of his ministrations. Beyond his own Arab-American ethnicity Gen. Abizaid feels at home in the region and has a sincere respect for all that is best in the Arab culture and people. He has scholarly interests that go beyond the military which he pursued in Harvard and as an Olmsted fellow in Jordan. He genuinely loves the region -- but love is not just hugs and happyfaces and there is nothing na?ve or lovey-dovey about Gen. Abizaid. His remark upon assuming his responsibilities struck just the right note: "Centcom will continue to take the fight to the enemy on his ground. We will continue to do our work with our friends and allies to defeat our mortal enemies. We will defeat these terrorists who kill innocents. We will defeat these murderers who spare no faith." Now Gen. Abizaid will direct a war that will continue less and less visibly to the media and more and more beyond the cities of Iraq. For we are entering a new phase in which the U.S. uses ever smaller and better focused teams -- essentially intelligence operations that combine reconnaissance with firepower -- to leverage events in Iraq and throughout the Centcom region. The new Pentagon metaphor is to arthroscopic surgery -- discreet elimination of bad guys here and there and advancement of good guys with a minimum of song dance and fuss. The new military doctrine is of old provenance and looks back to the experience of everyone from Romans to British to the Americans themselves in the Philippines of a century ago in conducting operations beyond the pale of settled civilization. But the old tried and true methods of counter-insurgency are now being combined with technologies that promise much improved "lethality". Within Iraq itself the provocatively high public profile of the U.S. military will soon be lowered as by the end of this month interim Iraqi civilian authorities begin to take over many of the key policing duties the U.S. forces were stuck with after the liberation. This will make U.S. soldiers harder to find and the hitmen looking for them easier to trail. Native municipal governments are already in place in Baghdad and Najaf and the U.S. is getting good co-operation from the whole range of Iraqi political factions committed to building a democracy and preventing the return of Baathist thugs to power. This leaves the Americans to get on with their main task -- to keep moving; to be "light and lethal"; to find the enemy where he hides and kill him. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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