“General Glosson was a great boss,” he went on to explain, “and he treated us with respect; but we didn’t work with him. We had to work with our counterparts in your air force; and with them I was reluctant to speak, and they were not interested in what some Arab who had never been to war had to offer.”
By February, of course, the two Saudis had become full partners in the Black Hole team, but I realized what a high hill they’d had to climb to overcome the inherent prejudices of the Americans.
I thought back then to the beginning of the war, when Sheikh Mohammed from the United Arab Emirates had flown to Riyadh with his two planners in order to ensure that the largely American staff accepted them. I recalled the first time I had met Colonels Khalid and Faris as they and the Sheikh had nervously ridden down the elevator with me to go meet Buster.[74] Because their Chief of Staff had trusted them to ensure that their fledgling air force was well represented in our councils of power, they were proud, almost arrogant; yet they were also afraid. You could see it in their eyes as they entered this den of Americans — violent, self-assured people who liked to call Arabs “ragheads” behind their backs, and whose movies about terrorism always seemed to feature bad guys who looked very much like they did.
It was Ayeesh who made me ponder the importance of this coalition and how hard it was to form it and sustain it.
? What set this coalition apart from other military associations of states was not the nobility of their cause. Certainly the mission of the Allies who liberated occupied nations in World War II was measurably more important on that scale. What set this coalition apart was the attitude of the Americans.
It all started with the President. George Bush instinctively knew the role he had to play, and it was far from the interventionist role that had characterized the attitude of his predecessors in Vietnam. It was not his role to dictate the contribution of others, to tell them how they would fit into an American war. Rather, George Bush’s experience as head of the CIA and Ambassador to China and the United Nations had taught him that Americans did not have all the answers and that others could contribute more than just the lives of their fighting men. For that reason, he had sent Dick Cheney to Jeddah in August to ask King Fahd what he thought we should do after the invasion of Kuwait. And as the days dragged on, the Coalition grew stronger, not weaker, despite the difficulties that countries of such diverse cultures and interests experienced working side by side. In large measure, that was because the American President did not throw his weight around. He listened and sought counsel from the others.
As a result, the men and women from other Coalition states did not receive secret phone calls from their capitals warning them to watch the Americans, telling them to be careful lest the United States military lead them down the path taken in Vietnam.
The Americans needed this Coalition as much as those fighting to defend their countries in the Gulf needed us.
At the end of the Cold War, there remained a single superpower, the United States. How long she will remain so, only God knows, but for now we are it. This is a very dangerous thing. Our economy dominates the economies of other nations. Or as the Saudis (whose riyal is tied to the dollar) say, “When America gets a cold, we get pneumonia.” If the President of the United States decides to bomb another nation, who can stop him? Sure, other nations can condemn our actions, and Russia retains the means to rain thousands of nuclear weapons on North America. But the size, economic strength, and military power of the United States is without equal.
Therefore, it is incumbent on the American president to walk carefully and to think before acting, as unintended consequences of military action — no matter how noble the cause — can have far-reaching effect.
This is why the Gulf Coalition and the way it was formed and maintained is so important. The cause was noble — to free Kuwait. The Americans were needed, because of their military power and leadership roles in organizations such as the United Nations. But the Americans needed the other Coalition partners: to provide bases and ports for access; to provide soldiers, sailors, and airmen to confront a huge Iraqi military machine fighting on their own soil; but most of all, to provide counsel and legitimacy for a superpower that, left to its own devices, could fall into a pit of quicksand like Vietnam.
Because of the divergent cultures, self-interests, and experiences of its partners, the Coalition was hugely difficult to form and maintain. The biggest divergence was between Americans and Arabs.
The four-decade-plus existence of NATO provided common experience for American, Canadian, French, Italian, and English members of the Coalition. And for airmen, integration was further eased because they all spoke English and (as noted earlier) flight operations are task-organized. Thus, they could fight in the same piece of sky and work as one, using the common Air Tasking Order as guidance while retaining prerogatives appropriate to their national identities.
By way of contrast, the Gulf Cooperation Council nations did not share an experience like those from NATO. More important, they did not have the combat experience of Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War. Thus, they entered the fight as an equal partner who did not feel equal. More important still, their air forces were young. If it was troubling to a young USAF pilot to wonder how he would do his first time in combat, consider how troubling it must have been to an Arab fighter pilot to wonder how he would do his first time in combat.
In fact, the Arabs had nothing to worry about on that score.
Let’s look at the record.
In their brief combat in a life-or-death losing cause, the Kuwaiti Air Force did very well. When the Iraqis came across the border that night long ago in August, the air force of Kuwait rose to meet them.
A key ingredient of the Iraqi plan had been to capture the emir of Kuwait and his family, so the invaders could establish a puppet government and legitimize their theft of the nation and its people. In advance of the attacking tanks, Iraqi special forces, some of Saddam’s best-trained, best-equipped, and most loyal troops, were flying in helicopters to Kuwait City to surround the royal palace, overwhelm the royal guard, and capture the emir.
It didn’t happen. KAF fighter aircraft and surface-to-air missiles shot down thirty-three of the Iraqi vanguard.
Though the fight was over quickly, and Kuwaiti air bases were overrun by tanks early the next morning, the KAF had bought the time the emir needed to flee to Saudi Arabia. Having saved their emir, the KAF fighters had to turn themselves and flee to Saudi Arabia. While they were bitterly ashamed of their defeat, they had fought well and now only wanted another chance to avenge the unholy occupation of their land and to liberate their wives and children in occupied Kuwait. Men like Lieutenant Colonel Al-Samdan, who represented his nation in the TACC, had only one fear — that the Coalition would not go to war, that Kuwait would not be freed, and that they could never go home to their families.
For the other GCC nations, the choices were less clear.
The year before, Bahrain had received brand-new F-16s, the world’s premium multirole aircraft, after its pilots and ground crews had operated F-5 fighters for years. Though F-16s are easy jets to fly and maintain, it is difficult to maximize the full capabilities of this amazing aircraft’s avionics suite. In the USAF, years of training are required before pilots are capable of using the F-16 to its fullest. The Bahrainis didn’t have a year, and they didn’t have homegrown leaders who had fought in Vietnam to guide them.
But they did have “Saint”—the call sign used by an American who had left the USAF and taken a job in Bahrain as an instructor pilot. I cannot use his real name. A typical fighter pilot, Saint loved flying more than anything else. So when the chance came to fly with the Bahrainis — to fly daily, with no paperwork other than filling out grade sheets — he jumped at it.
When Iraq invaded Kuwait, the emir offered his nation’s squadrons of F-5s and F-16s to the task of aiding Kuwait, and he asked Saint to help.
This request meant problems for Saint. As an American citizen and not a member of our military forces, it was legally forbidden for him to take part in another nation’s combat operations. So when the Iraqis threatened Bahrain, he should have joined those who fled the region. Instead, he stayed on where he was needed, training pilots.
After the war began, Major Hamad, the commander of the Bahraini Air Force, was faced with a dilemma: His air force was eager to enter the war; his pilots were well trained; he had some of the best-maintained jets in the world; but he had no one with combat experience — no one with the self-confidence that combat instills. He didn’t have to look far for a solution.
He went to Saint and asked him to help get them started, and Saint was not only delighted to help, he was
