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.
