CARL STINER-BETWEEN THE WARS
Meanwhile, Carl Stiner was progressing through several key assignments: a tour with Army headquarters in Washington; a battalion command with the 82nd Airborne Division, where he was also division operations officer; study at the Army War College, and a Masters degree in public administration; a tour in Saudi Arabia, as the assistant project manager for training and modernizing the Saudi National Guard-a Special Forces — type assignment; brigade command at Fort Benning, Georgia; and in 1979, he and twenty-two other handpicked officers were sent to Saudi Arabia and Yemen to help the Saudis put out the civil war between North and South Yemen — another SF-type assignment.
After returning from Yemen, he was again assigned to the Pentagon to work for General Edward G. 'Shy' Meyer, the Army Chief of Staff.
On a Thursday afternoon toward the end of February 1980, General Meyer called Stiner into his office. 'When you come in tomorrow, Carl,' he said, 'I think you better wear your Class A uniform. And, oh, by the way, you better bring Sue in that afternoon. There's going to be a special ceremony.'
'What kind of ceremony?' Stiner asked.
'I am going to promote you to Brigadier General,' the General answered, 'and you are going to be assigned as the Chief of Staff of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, MacDill AFB, Florida.'
The RDJTF was created by President Jimmy Carter in response to a perceived slight against the Saudis and other friendly Arabs. All major nations except the Arabs had a standing U.S. unified command to look out for their security interests. 'Why not us?' the Arabs had told Carter. Two years later, the RDJTF became the United States Central Command, and assumed responsibility for U.S. security interests in Southwest Asia.
The next day, Stiner, wearing his Greens, brought Sue in for the 3:00 P.M. ceremony.
When it was over, Meyer told Stiner to report the next day — Saturday — to Lieutenant General P. X. Kelley, who was to be the commander of the not-yet-activated RDJTF.
At that meeting, Kelley told Stiner to leave for MacDill on Monday, write the activation order on the way down, and publish it when he got there. This would activate the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, effective March 1, 1980.
When Stiner showed up at MacDill, he was met by a total staff of four enlisted personnel, but over the next couple of months, these were augmented by 244 handpicked men — mainly officers from all the services. Stiner remained there until May 1982, during which time he and the staff formed and trained the most effective joint command in existence, and wrote and exercised three major war plans for Southwest Asia (one variant became the foundation for Operation DESERT STORM seventeen years later).
In June 1982, he was reassigned to the 82nd Airborne Division as the Assistant Division Commander for Operations, now working for Major General James J. Lindsay In August 1983, a call came for him to report the following day to General Jack Vessey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He had another deployment.
This time, Lebanon.
VIII
THE LEBANON TRAGEDY
In September 1983, Lebanon began a rapid and uncontrollable descent into hell.
Carl Stiner was present during the worst days of it. 'What came to pass in Lebanon defies logic and morality,' he says, 'but it clearly exemplifies what can happen when ethnic biases, religious differences, and security interests are used as a catalyst by outside powers for achieving political gain.'
In August of that year, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Jack Vessey, sent Brigadier General Carl Stiner to Lebanon as his man on the scene and to help implement the U.S. military assistance program (Stiner's experience as a military adviser in Saudi Arabia and Yemen surely was a big factor in generating this assignment). In that capacity, Stiner worked with Lebanese authorities to try to stop the nation's descent. They did not succeed, but not for want of skill, intelligence, and goodwill. The forces of chaos simply overwhelmed everyone else.
Though Stiner's assignment to Lebanon was not specifically a Special Forces mission, it shared many characteristics of such missions — including military advice at the tactical level, political management (both military and diplomatic) at the strategic levels, and the need for cultural sensitivity.
ROOTS
The tragedy of Lebanon was the result of forces long at work:
Following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey's defeat in World War 1, the League of Nations put Lebanon under temporary French control. France promised Lebanon complete independence in 1941, but was not able to grant it until 1943, and French troops did not leave the country until 1946.
Lebanon has a complex ethnic mix. At the time of its independence, the country was more or less evenly divided between Muslims and Maronite Christians, and the Muslims were divided between Sunnis and Shiites — the Sunnis were more moderate and prosperous, while the Shiites tended to be more radical and politically volatile. There was also a large, similarly volatile sect called the Druze, whose beliefs combine Christian and Muslim teachings; about 400,000 Druze now inhabit the mountainous area of Lebanon and Syria. Add these all together, with long-simmering feuds of every kind, and it was a recipe for trouble.
In establishing the Lebanese government in 1943, the French tried to stave off ethnic conflict by setting up a power-sharing arrangement that favored the Sunnis and the Maronite Christians — the most conservative and 'stable' of the Lebanese factions. The National Pact of 1943 used a 1932 census (probably the last census to reflect a near-even mix between Christians and Muslims) to determine the ethnic and religious makeup of the government. Key positions were filled by applying a formula derived from that census. The presidency was reserved for Maronite Christians, the prime minister position for the Sunni Muslims, and so on. The Shiite Muslims and Druze were left out of any position of meaningful responsibility.
By the time the government was established, the changing demographics — the sharp rise in Shiites, for instance — had already rendered the formula obsolete.
Despite the potentially unstable ethnic situation, Lebanon quickly flourished as a nation. With its two major seaports and its strategic location at the eastern end of the Mediterranean astride traditional trade routes, it soon became known as the gateway to the orient — and Beirut as 'the Paris of the Middle East.' Trading was the main engine of its economy. Major companies established offices, and Beirut soon became the banking center of the Middle East, with approximately eighty-five commercial banks.
In 1970, however, another chaotic element was added — the Palestinians.
