America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (67 page)

 56.
“Statement by Joint Chiefs’ Chairman,”
The New York Times
(July 4, 1988).

 57.
David Evans, “One Must Question the Current Value of Military Medals,”
Chicago Tribune
(April 6, 1990).

 58.
John M. Broder, “U.S. Downs Iran Airliner,”
Los Angeles Times
(July 4, 1988).

 59.
Weinberger,
Fighting for Peace
, 426, 428.

 60.
“The Naval Gap in the Persian Gulf,”
The New York Times
(September 12, 1988).

 61.
“From Nasser to Khomeini,”
The New Republic
(August 22, 1988).

 62.
“Iran: Not in Vain,”
National Review
(September 2, 1988).

 63.
“The Real Winner,”
National Review
(September 16, 1988).

7. No Clean Ending

 1.
Reinhold Niebuhr,
The Irony of American History
(New York, 1952), 2–3.

 2.
For a concise description of Iraq’s severe economic predicament, see Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh,
The Gulf Conflict, 1990–1991
(Princeton, 1993), 37–41.

 3.
Freedman and Karsh,
Gulf Conflict,
45–48.

 4.
George Bush, National Security Directive 26, “U.S. Policy Toward the Persian Gulf” (October 2, 1989).

 5.
Thomas Friedman, “Bush, Hinting Forces, Declares Iraqi Assault ‘Will Not Stand,’ ”
The New York Times
(August 6, 1990).

 6.
Schwarzkopf,
It Doesn’t Take a Hero
, 305.

 7.
The 9/11 Commission Report
(Washington, D.C., 2004), 57.

 8.
Schubert and Kraus, eds.,
Whirlwind War
, 78. This is not to imply that the deployment unfolded without complications. But the problems encountered were of a type that the U.S. military has traditionally possessed a particular aptitude for solving, especially when provided with an open checkbook.

 9.
Schwarzkopf,
It Doesn’t Take a Hero
, 348.

 10.
In all likelihood, Saddam never had any intention of advancing into Saudi Arabia. Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor,
The Generals’ War
(Boston, 1995), 65.

 11.
Only Jordan, Yemen, and the Palestine Liberation Organization professed support for Iraq, although none possessed any meaningful ability to assist.

 12.
“Anyone” did not include Israel. See note 31 in this chapter.

 13.
Ultimately, the U.S.-led military coalition included thirty-two countries. Yet of that number the majority contributed fewer than one thousand troops each. Washington saw Egyptian participation as key. It came at a price. In return for President Hosni Mubarak’s promise to join the coalition, the United States forgave $10 billion of Egyptian debt.

 14.
According to Dick Cheney, U.S. expenditures related to the Second Persian Gulf War equaled $61.1 billion, with foreign governments covering $53.7 billion of that total. Richard B. Cheney,
In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir
(New York, 2011), 228. Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait all kicked in multi-billion-dollar contributions.

 15.
For one account of Powell’s reservations, see Gordon and Trainor,
Generals’ War,
129–31.

 16.
Cheney,
In My Time,
198.

 17.
Henry S. Rowen, “Inchon in the Desert—My Rejected Plan,”
The National Interest
(Summer 1995), 35.

 18.
Henry Rowen, an academic then serving as an assistant secretary of defense, first dreamed up the Western Excursion, also known as Operation Scorpion. Retired lieutenant general Dale Vesser helped flesh out the concept. Rowen recalls Scorpion’s genesis in his essay “Inchon in the Desert—My Rejected Plan,” 34–39. Rowen’s own concerns focused less on how to liberate Kuwait than on how “to keep Scuds from being launched against Israel.” Missile attacks against Tel Aviv, he feared, would “kill hundreds of thousands of people in Tel Aviv or Haifa.” Israeli retaliation would undermine the anti-Saddam coalition. So Scorpion was primarily a plan to defend Israel.

 19.
“Oral History: Richard Cheney,”
Frontline,
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/cheney/1.html
, accessed December 28, 2014.

 20.
George H. W. Bush, “The President’s News Conference on the Persian Gulf Crisis” (November 8, 1990).

 21.
Schwarzkopf,
It Doesn’t Take a Hero,
381.

 22.
By February 1991, U.S. troop strength in the Persian Gulf peaked at over 533,000. Schubert and Kraus, eds.,
Whirlwind War,
157.

 23.
Granted, a cynic might argue that the governing issue was whether voting for war or against it was more likely to advance the individual member’s political ambitions.

 24.
Sara Fritz and William J. Eaton, “Congress Authorizes Gulf War,”
Los Angeles Times
(January 13, 1991).

 25.
Dan Balz and Rick Atkinson, “Powell Vows to Isolate Iraqi Army and ‘Kill It,’ ”
The Washington Post
(January 24, 1991).

 26.
Schwarzkopf,
It Doesn’t Take a Hero,
381, emphasis in original.

 27.
Bush had coined the phrase in a speech to Congress shortly after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. George Bush, “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis and the Federal Budget Deficit” (September 11, 1990).

 28.
Brigadier General Ward LeHardy quoted in Otto Friedrich, ed.,
Desert Storm: The War in the Persian Gulf
(Boston, 1991), 121
.

 29.
Speicher was classified as missing in action. In a September 2002 speech to the UN General Assembly making the case for war against Iraq, President George W. Bush included the pilot’s unresolved status in his bill of indictment against Saddam Hussein. During the Third Gulf War, U.S. Marines recovered Speicher’s remains, thereby confirming that he had been killed in action in January 1991.

 30.
Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress
(Washington, D.C., 1992), 157, 160, 168, 170, 184. See also Thomas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen,
Revolution in Warfare?
(Annapolis, 1993), 10–13, 18–19. This is the summary volume of “Gulf War Air Power Survey,” commissioned by the U.S. Air Force after the Second Gulf War.

 31.
Keeping Israel on the sidelines militarily had been a U.S. priority from the very onset of the crisis. Washington feared that any Israeli military action against Iraq—by no means implausible, given that Israel had attacked Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981—would shatter the anti-Saddam coalition. So the Bush administration pleaded for Israeli self-restraint. Pocketing various promises of security assistance, the government of hardliner Yitzhak Shamir agreed—within limits—to sit tight. The handful of Scuds falling on Tel Aviv and Haifa on January 18—more followed on successive days—tested those limits. In Washington reducing the Scud threat emerged as an urgent priority, one to which Schwarzkopf was largely oblivious—Israel did not even fall within CENTCOM’s jurisdiction. Describing himself as “furious,” Cheney ordered Schwarzkopf to adjust his priorities. The U.S. also hurriedly dispatched Patriot missile batteries to Israel, providing a semblance of defense. Israel obligingly stayed out of the war. Had the Scuds mounted chemical rather than conventional warheads, a different outcome would have been likely. Cheney,
In My Time,
215.

 32.
Conduct of the Persian Gulf War,
173–74. The quotation is from Lieutenant General Walt Boomer, senior Marine commander. “Oral History: Walt Boomer,”
Frontline,
pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/boomer/1.html
, accessed December 31, 2014.

 33.
Schwarzkopf,
It Doesn’t Take a Hero,
361. While commanding the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War, McClellan had proved exceedingly reluctant to engage the enemy. An exasperated President Lincoln remarked, “If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time.”

 34.
“Oral History: Colin Powell,”
Frontline,
pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/powell/1.html
,
accessed December 31, 2014.

 35.
Conduct of the Persian Gulf War,
189–91.

 36.
U.S. estimates of Iraqi forces had ranged up to 545,000 troops. In all likelihood, by February 24, somewhere in the vicinity of 200,000 to 222,000 Iraqi troops remained in the field. Compare Schwarzkopf,
It Doesn’t Take a Hero,
385, with Keaney and Cohen,
Revolution in Warfare?,
93.

 37.
“Oral History: H. Norman Schwarzkopf,”
Frontline,
pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/schwarzkopf/1.html
, accessed January 5, 2015.

 38.
Richard M. Swain,
“Lucky War”: Third Army in Desert Storm
(Fort Leavenworth, Kan., 1994), 230. The U.S. Army’s official history of the Second Gulf War, Swain’s book remains the best overall account of that conflict.

 39.
Swain,
“Lucky War,”
207. Franks, wanting more, repeatedly petitioned to have the 1st Cavalry Division, initially the theater reserve, also put under his control.

 40.
Swain,
“Lucky War,”
229.

 41.
Swain,
“Lucky War,”
250. The phrase refers to the practice of some World War I generals to exercise command from comfortable mansions far removed from the fighting front, thereby losing touch with the realities of trench warfare.

 42.
Swain,
“Lucky War,”
264.

 43.
John D. Gresham, “Gulf War 20th: The Battle of 73 Easting and the Road to the Synthetic Battlefield,”
Defense Media Network
(February 22, 2011).

 44.
Schwarzkopf,
It Doesn’t Take a Hero,
468.

 45.
Colin Powell,
My American Journey
(New York, 1995), 521.

 46.
Powell,
My American Journey,
521.

 47.
Schwarzkopf’s end-of-war briefing is available at
youtube.com/watch?v=wKi3NwLFkX4
, accessed January 2, 2015.

 48.
George H. W. Bush, “Address on the End of the Gulf War” (February 27, 1991).

 49.
Swain,
“Lucky War,”
124.