Stardate 20030625.1319

(On Screen): After the botched attempt to rescue the American hostages in Iran, there was a major attempt to find out what the hell had gone wrong with the US military. It had been demoralized for years after Viet Nam in any case, and the hostage rescue mission was no indication that anything had improved.

The rescue mission had been planned at the very top levels of the US military establishment; literally by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And one thing which came out later was that the only way they could get consensus on a plan was by making sure that everyone got to play. The commanders of each of the four branches demanded that at least some of their own people be involved in it; no one wanted to be left out.

But if that made political peace in the JCS, it didn't result in a very good plan. The real problem was that interservice politics had become a stumbling block, preventing effective military operations. The branches of the military were almost more concerned with competing with each other than they were with competing against enemy militaries.

Over the last 20 years, one of the biggest and most important revolutions in our military has been the adoption of a much more unified way of looking at things, where the branches of the military thought of themselves as being part of a team instead of as being individual stars. It's been a traumatic change, especially in the Air Force, which had long held an institutional opinion that air power alone could win wars. Having previously been part of the Army, the Air Force as an institution wanted to forge a separate path from the Army.

In fact, the USAF did pretty much win in Yugoslavia all alone. But that's because of the peculiar political situation there at the time. Given that the purpose of a military is to advance by force the political goals of the nation, what you want is a wide range of capabilities, where you use such capabilities as are appropriate for any given problem.

One of the reforms which was implemented was strongly pushed by Senator Barry Goldwater. Congress passed a bill establishing a series of regional commands, and in case of actual conflict somewhere in the world, all of the forces in that region would be placed under that command. They were not coalition-commands (like the JCS); there was a single commander in each case and irrespective of which service he came from, all the services worked for him. And he was explicitly tasked to use what he needed, from whatever service made sense, in order to carry out whatever mission he was assigned. He was not required to make sure everyone got to play (and indeed was actively discouraged from doing so unless it actually made sense militarily).

Those regional commands included NORTHCOM (North America), SOUTHCOM (South America), EUCOM (Europe, Soviet Union, most of Africa) and PACOM (Pacific region, plus China and India and SE Asia). And there was also CENTCOM, which covered the middle east, NE Africa, Iran, Pakistan, and some of the Islamic 'stans. It covered the smallest area, the armpit of the world.

Top generals or admirals were given these commands, and while any of them was a good assignment, CENTCOM was traditionally thought of as being the worst of the lot, sort of the booby-prize. And yet, the US has fought three major wars since this system was inaugurated in the mid 1980's, and all three happened in CENTCOM's area.

No one wants to fight a war, but wars happen and it is the job of our military officers to be ready for them and to try to make sure that if we fight that we'll win. So they train for war, and that's their career. If you're a flag officer, your job is to command in war. And that's what's happened with CENTCOM. Which is why all of us know who Norman Schwarzkopf and Tommy Franks are, but no one has ever heard of Ralph Eberhart or Thomas Fargo. (However, if things heat up in Korea, we'll all come to know Admiral Thomas Fargo, because he currently commands PACOM.) So as a practical matter, it may be that CENTCOM turned out to be the prize assignment. If you're a flag officer and there's a war, do you want to be involved in it, or stand on the sidelines and cheer?

After commanding two extraordinary military campaigns, Tommy Franks is retiring. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were distinguished not just by the fact of their rapid and overwhelming success, but also because of the radical tactics used operationally in each. All the services cooperated, and inter-service friction was minimized. They were a team, and the team won convincingly. The two wars in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan were a spectacular vindication of the unified regional command concept and of the way the branches of our military have worked to integrate their operations. It reflects well on all of them.

General Franks is being replaced by his deputy, General John Abizaid. Congress is holding hearings today in order to decide whether to approve him for the position, but it's a foregone conclusion that they'll accept him. From the sound of it, he's superbly qualified. He was heavily involved in the operations of both recent wars, and they would not have considered him if he hadn't demonstrated that he was at least competent in the command skills needed for the position. (That's hard to test in peacetime, but he's been through two wars, and his quality has already stood out.)

But