Decisions Are To Be Made, Not Received
By Amir Oren
It was spring, 1975, and an Israeli reporter made his way to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, a U.S. Army base which prides itself on being the home of the 82nd Airborne Division and the Army Special Forces.
The Yom Kippur War was over a little more than a year earlier. As it was about to end with a ceasefire between Israeli and Egyptian forces, friction between Washington and Moscow regarding the fate of the encircled Third Army in the Sinai threatened to take a Middle East conflict up to the Superpower level. All American military commands were put on heightened alert, Defcon 3, in a way visible – and especially audible – to the Soviets. One of the most prominent formations to gear into action was the 82nd Airborne, whose paratroopers are tasked with being prepared to spring to any contingency and pave the way to heavier and slower forces.
The tension quickky evaporated, but it was important for an Israeli audience to find out whether the Red Berets of the U.S. Army were really agile enough to be airlifted from the East Coast and jump into the Sinai desert, should the order come. The Department of Defense obliged and a visit was arranged for the New York-based Israeli journalist, a jump-qualified former combat correspondent who hoped to join the paratroopers out their plane’s door in training.
This was not to be, due to some bureaucratic- insurance – problem, but the visit in a facility named for Confedarate General Braxton Bragg – and now likely to be changed, as inappropriate – has yielded information and insights. In addition to the 82nd, there was also an eye-opening meeting with their neighbors, the Green Berets, Commando troops favoured by nusyaPresident Kennedy in the early 1960’s but later being shunned by the more traditional Infantry, Armor and Artillery ruling elites of the Army.
These junior officers and seasoned non-coms were quite crude, but the Commanding General of the 82nd, Maj-Gen Thomas Tackaberry, was impressive in his modesty. This troop leader, known for his unusual devotion to his men under fire in Vietnam when he commanded at the Battalion and Brigade level, did not presume to have more answers than the next retiree in Fayetteville, N.C., adjacent to the base, regarding what’s in store for America. As the Israeli and his hosts were speaking, South Vietnam came unglued, with Saigon falling into the North’s and Vietcong’s hands.
These memories all came to mind when the paratrooper-Ranger-Joint Special Operations Command leader who now sits in Thomas Tackaberry old seat landed at Kabul Airport to take charge of the hasty evecuation operation there. The same huge C-17 airlifters out of which Maj-Gen Chris “C.D.” Donahue and his troops (many of them female, some whose faces hint at Vietnamese descent) jump at Fort Bragg drop zones are bringing out Americans and Afghanis.
Donahue, who was all of four or five when Saigon fell, is considered an up-and-coming officer, with experience in command, staff and education. One of his colleagues praised him as skillful enough to find himself in the middle of the Sahara Desert and within two weeks set up a sardine cannery factory there. His Kabul mission is operational, not strategic, though the context is.
When General Tackaberry led the 82nd Airborne – and then was promoted and handed over his command to the first African-American in this position, Roscoe Robinson, Jr. – the U.S. Joint Force (but mostly the Army and Marines) was plagued by race, drugs and various demoralising problems, reflecting society at large. Americans wanted neither to serve – compulsory service, unequaly practiced, was only abolished in 1973 – nor to fight. Even those who kept wearing their uniforms demanded clear goals, doable missions and national support.
When President Reagan was in office, in what turned out to be the Cold War’s last decade, the Vietnam War generation started reaching positions of influence with “Never Again” determination. With Colin Powell’s help as Military Secretary, Caspar Weinberger formulated certain parameters for major use of force, should deterrence fail. A vital national interest had to be at stake, an exit strategy should be planned at the start, the mission must be properly military (not “presence” or “showing the flag”, which draw disasterous terror attacks) and a legislative and public consensus supporting the executive action.
In other words, it can no longer be a war of choice, based on intelligence assessment and a Presidential decision to preempt an imminent (non-Nuclear) attack. Having lost the electorate’s trust in Vietnam and Watergate, Presidents would have to absorb the first blow and retaliate, in order to convince the skeptics that it was unavoidable. A reactive rather than proactive policy.
Even when all the boxes were ticked, as in Desert Shield – Desert Storm, with Gulf oildoms feared falling and diplomacy exhausted, the parameters had to be checked against delivery. Public acclaim can soon turn to indifference and then condemnation. One had better cut not only one’s losses – this is easy to preach – but also one’s wins. This is why Powell talked GHW Bush into limiting their victory over Saddam Hussein before it becomes an occupation, with its bottomless investment of blood and treasure. A dozen years later, GW Bush tried the same trick by declaring “Mission Accomplished”, but his actions in occupied, de-Baathised Iraq, belied his words.
The Younger Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, fully justified in the first instance and much less so in the second, in order to destroy the perpetrators of 9/11 and avert future ones. This goal was indeed attained, for 20 years – not an eternity, but a sizeable period, comparable to the time between the two World Wars. It is not the prize which was in doubt, but the price. National leaders must periodically ask themselves whether the policies they initiated or inherited are still cost-effective. To go on just because the status quo is usually more politically tenable is the easy and expensive way out, or actually not out but digging in.
Joe Biden was correct and courageous in his Afghan decision, however chaotic and even catastrophic it may seem at the moment. Afghanistan may turn out to be another Vietnam, friendly towards the United Stated for its own reasons, and if not – so be it. The Americans could not prop it up forever.
Some five years into the massive American military involvement in South-east Asia, President Nixon proposed “Vietnamization” – gradually preparing the locals to take up, and keep up if they so wish, their fight. On some tactical levels it was successful, but a corrupt and inept regime failed its troops. The South Vietnamese Army collapsed, much like the 1940 French Army, or the 2007 Fatah force in Gaza when Hamas attacked it, or the Iraqi brigades in the next decade as Daesh began its campaign.
Quantitative measures are never enough. “Million-men Armies” can crumble like a bully hit at the knees. Motivation, morale, derermination, endurance, stamina, even technical and technological know-how are more important than numbers. Gulf Air Forces, with their shiny fighterplanes and Top Gun princely pilots, will not survive the withdrawal of foreign maintainers when war starts
And it cuts both ways. Not only in the U.S. should each mission be reassessed and priortized. The lesson for regional powers is that they, too, must each review their aspirations and obligatiions to find out whether their appetites are compatible with their food budgets and blood pressures.
No sinister cabal brought about the tarmac tragedy of Kabul. It was the terminus of two trends, local and global. During the Cold War, when the United Stated and the Soviet Union competed for influence in the poor and rugged country, each helped it seperately and self-servingly. The Americans paved a road East to West, the Soviets North to South, with the two oblivious to each other.
Israel’s lesson is not that Biden, his administration and his nation are untrustworthy. They are certainly to be trusted with acting according to their interpretations of their intersts, and in the final accounting, rationally and not emotionally. This is to be expected from the leading world power, whose changes in demography should also be analysed for foreign policy and national security indicators.
In five or seven years, General Donahue or one of his peers will be senior enough in a Joint Chiefs or CENTCOM position to give the President of the time his best military advice in a crisis, perhaps one involving Israel. The officer, mindful of Afghanistan 2021 much as Tackaberry was of Vietnam 1975, is surely going to remember the necessity of cooperating with allies, but will have to consider his own country and its priorities (China, Russia) first, while Israeli leaders do the same on their own.
The term “decision making” connotes an active process. People take data, add views and make a decision on what to do. For some reason, in Hebrew the connotation is passive. Kabalat Hachlatot – the reception of decisions. They are handed down, given, accepted, not made. Those who are not making their decisions will be doomed to receiving them from others.
By sheer coincidence, it so happens that the same or similar word, kabala or takbul (of a gift, perhaps of goats) is one of the probable roots of the name of those river and capital, Kabul.