Customer Reviews

Battle Ready (Study in Command)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

For the serious, this book absolutely merits a careful reading, together with Dana Priest's "The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military," and--for a fuller and free overview--my varioius reviews on emerging threats, strategy and force structure, and why our current "military only" approach to foreign policy is ineffective.

There are some tremendous gems in this book, some of which I summarize here.

1) Zinni is mpressive in his grasp of grand strategy, of the urgency of understanding the threat, devising a full approach that mixes and matches *all* instruments of national strategy, and that focuses--as Zinni learned to focus in Viet-Nam, on the hearts and minds of the people rather than the force on force battles (a means to an end, not an end in themselves).

2) Zinni's understanding of war comes across very early in the book when he describes the six completely different wars that took place in South Viet-Nam, each with its own lessons, tactics, and sometimes equipment differences--nuances that conventional military policy, doctine, and acquisition managers back in the US still do not understand: a) Swamp War, b) Paddy War, c) Jungle War, d) Plains War, e) Saigon War, and f) DMZ War.

3) Zinni has read SLA Marshall on "The Soldier's Load", and he notes that the equipment that the South Vietnamese carried was lighter and better for their needs--the US military-industrial complex burdens our Armed Forces with overly heavy things, too many of them, that actually impair our ability to fight. Perhaps even more fascinating, Zinni sees that buying equipment for our troops locally cuts the cost by 4/5th. Not what your average US contractor wants to hear, but precisely what I as a taxpayer am looking for--with the added advantage that this puts money into the local economy and helps stabilize it.

4) Within the center of the book, there are rich lessons about war-fighting and peace-making that will stand the test of time. Most impressive is Zinni's focus on pre-emptive relationship building across the region.

a) Relationships matter, and relationships forged in advance go a very long way in avoiding misunderstanding and defusing crises. If you have to fight, relationships are the single best means of reducing the fog of war and assuring good integration of effort across cultures, nations, and armies.

b) Speed and mixed forces matter. Zinni was the master, in four different timeframes, of using speed and properly mixed forces to achieve effects not possible with larger forces arriving late. In Viet-Nam he worked with "the Pacifiers", especially reinforced company-size units that had been specially augmented with flamethrowers, extra machine guns and mortars, and their own engineers and scouts, all trained for instant deployment. At Camp Hansen, during the times of race riots, he learned the value of a fast, big guard force *combined with* constant and open dialog with the troops in distress. In humanitarian operations, he learned that rapid delivery of food tended to rapidly reduce the violence--get the food flowing fast, and reap the peace benefits. And finally, in developing the Marine Corps variant of special operations capable forces (not to be confused with the uniquely qualified Special Operations Forces), he developed the original capabilities of doing special things "from the sea."

c) Non-state entities, both tribal threats and non-governmental organizations, are the heart of the new battle. Repeatedly Zinni comments on how poorly we do in terms of thinking about strategy, operations, and tactics for the sub-state war, and how badly we do at intelligence about tribes, and at coordinating with non-governmental organizations. Zinni finally discovered the true value of Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations as a flag officer, and ended up nurturing the creation of Civil Military Operations Centers, and a new language, such as "Humanitarian Relief Sectors" instead of "kill zone."

5) Zinni makes some other observations throughout the book that are relevant now.

a) His respects Clinton as a quick study. Without disparagement, he makes it clear that Sandy Berger and Bill Cohen were mediocrities. He admired James Baker, who tried to do Marshall Plan kinds of things and could not get the beltway crowd to see the light. He is cautionary on General Wayne Downing (who went on with the Rendon Group to sponsor Chalabi--Zinni, on page 343, makes it clear he knew Chalabi was a thief and liar as early as 1998). He is admiring of Ambassador Bob Oakley.

b) With respect for foreign capabilities, among the insights are the integrity and capability of Pakistani and Bangladeshi troops, who maintained and then returned US complex equipment in better condition than it was received, with every single tool in every single kit present and accounted for; Italian military field hospitals; African troop tactical fighting discipline and capability.

6) The book wraps up with Zinni's recommendations for change, all of which are on target: use retired Service and theater chiefs to constitute the Joint Chiefs of Staff, rather than the Service Chiefs with their parochial interests; earmark budgets for the theater commanders--inter-agency budgets; create an inter-agency strategy and operations center to make the government, not just the military, "joint."

Zinni's final observations deal with ethics and the obligation to avoid spin and always speak the truth. Zinni is smarter than the current crop of military leaders, who mistake loyalty to specific individuals with loyalty to the Constitution. He also differs from them in understanding that Operations Other than War (OOTW) is where it is at and will be for the foreseeable future.

Missing from the book is any reference to national and military intelligence, other than one small section where he notes it simply was not reliable and not available at the tribal level. Also missing from this book are any references to John Boyd, Mike Wylie, Bill Lind, or G.I. Wilson, all four of whom were, in my opinion, the legs of the intellectual stool that Zinni constructed for himself over time.

This is a serious book.

This book is a fascinating look at the life of a great General. However it is General Zinni's criticism of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld that has people lining up to praise or attack this book on purely ideological grounds. I've got to tell you, that is foolish no matter what "party" you subscribe to.

Look Tom Clancy is a die-hard Republican and a friend to Ronald Reagan. Zinni is a retired Marine general and former CentCom commander (which covers Iraq along with the rest of the middle-east). Zinni was highly regarded in the Bush administration who appointed him to several key jobs, including a role as special envoy to the President to the middle-east. If President Bush trusted Zinni enough to have him speak on his behalf to the leaders of key middle-eastern countries, he's clearly somebody Bush respected.

If these two guys are so moved by what Rumsfeld has done that they will criticize him publicly - maybe we should listen. If we disagree, we had better understand why, because we are disagreeing with two highly respected men with a deep understanding of military affairs. Forget all the trashy "anti-Bush" books being written out there. This isn't anti-Bush, these are two voices that Americans can trust who (in their minds at least) are trying to save the United States military from a disaster in Iraq. If anything it is anti-Rumsfeld in places, but they certainly have well qualified criticism.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with them (I supported going to war in Iraq) but so far Zinni's predictions on what would happen in Iraq have been dead on. It is his success in seeing what was coming that leads me to take a second look at what he has to say. I know personally I've been pretty wrong about what I thought would happen, and Zinni's been pretty right. Maybe we need to calm down, turn off the rhetoric, and listen to what these men have to say.

And if you came here to praise or bash this book based on politics, don't waste our time. Try reading the book first.

General Zinni is simply stating publicly what our present military leaders have been fuming about in private for months. They are furious that the iraq occupation has turned into a fiasco, and that detailed and common sense proposals for post-war iraq were pointedly ignored by Rumsfeld et al., even though they were coming from the top brass in the military and the state department.

Also, to say that Zinni is simply just another left-wing propogandist is laughable. He supported and voted for George Bush in 2000, and like a growing number of republicans, he now regrets that support.

That a former CENTCOM commander should be making these criticisms of our current commander-in-chief should give every conservative in this country pause for thought.

Tom Clancy lives up to his reputation...he has chalked up another best seller. "Battle Ready," is a stirring narrative of Anthony Zinni's legendary 40-year Marine Corps career.

Clancy's eloquent certification of Major General Zinni's military credentials provides a formidable platform for a very tough critque of the intellecutual authors of the United States invasion of Iraq. Moreover, Clancy's well-known hawkish convictions adds volume to Zinni's powerful charge that the Bush administration failed the American people.

The former United States Central Command Commander in Chief points many fingers...and backs it up with solid facts. Zinni is a classic gentleman and officer and like many other Marines I know from Philadelphia...he tells it like it is. To this end, Zinni has articulated the most powerful charges I have ever seen a retired Marine Corps officer use against an administration at war. Highly recommended.

Bert Ruiz

Number four in the Commander series, and maybe the best one yet. In his inimitable style, Clancy gives a penetrating analysis of the career of General Zinni, former head of Central Command and a forty-year vet. Concludes with an unflinching commentary on the war in Iraq, and given the experience and expertise talking here, is really difficult to dismiss the numerous errors identified in both the run-up to the war, the basic strategy underlying the war, and the failures since, but gives largely praises for General Franks performance. Particularly critical of Bush insiders taken in by the Chalabi sect, this book may alienate some with a political ax to grind, but those will likely have difficulty refuting the points made by Clancy and Zinni.

"Listen to General Zinni," Richard Reeves wrote in the Baltimore Sun, February 1999. "The man is speaking both sense and truth." To listen to Gen Zinni through the 400-plus pages of Battle Ready is to hear four decades of wisdom built through lifetime study and massive application of common sense. Zinni likens his profession to the clergy: "I'm a Catholic," he says. "In my faith, we think of the priesthood as a calling--a `vocation,' requiring total dedication. I looked at the `call to arms' the same way. The warrior profession is a calling, and requires the same kind of dedication the priesthood does."

Zinni is an operator. His baptism came in Vietnam. His first tour was in 1967 as an advisor to a Vietnamese Marine Corps battalion. His epiphany came at the end of his second tour in 1970. He had been one of LtCol Mick Trainor's rifle company commanders in 1st Battalion, 5th Marines when three AK-47 rounds ripped through his flak jacket and ended his tour. A wounded corporal asked Zinni why they were in Vietnam. Zinni gave him the party line--"To stem the Communist tide." He regretted it afterward:

"After I walked away from Corporal Maui, I swore that from then on no troops of mine would ever again get such a ... answer from me. They'd know from me why we were fighting. And if I felt something was wrong that put the lives of our troops in needless risk, I swore that I would speak out, never hesitating to put my own career on the line for doing what was right by my men."

Zinni's animation, charisma, and candor mask his complexity. He is more than a South Philadelphia street fighter. "If you cannot solve the problem, make it bigger," Gen Eisenhower once said. That is Zinni: He doesn't think outside the box; his box is just bigger. "You have to be open to each new and very different reality," he says. "It's wrong to use models and to think stereotypically about problems and issues." The idea of disbanding NATO, says Zinni, recalling his time in the EUCOM J-3, was a back azimuth. "We needed to enlarge it."

What was wrong with the end of the Cold War, Zinni saw in EUCOM, was the absence of vision--the absence of something similar to the Marshall Plan after World War II. The Cold War was a bipolar world order; in its aftermath, says Zinni, the world needed "a new structure that would create new balance, control, and justice. The alternative--the disorder--would unleash uncontrollable horrors ... a chaos of failed states armed with WMD and exporting terror."

Decision-making is the core of military competence. Battle Ready is effective military biography-memoir because it shows how Zinni thinks and decides. He is at once an intuitive and analytical thinker, focused always on the situation and mission-not strict adherence to established doctrine and procedure. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, visited Zinni in northern Iraq during Kurd relief operations. "Tell me the truth," Powell asked Zinni. "What kind of control do you really have here? Is it Operational Control?"

"Sir," said Zinni, "what we really do is HAND CON (Handshake Control). We work out our problems on the fly and shake hands on the deals. We don't have time to do anything else."

It is not hard to trace Zinni's influences. He grew up in Philadelphia, the son of blue-collar Italian immigrants. Military service came with citizenship. After Vietnam, Zinni returned to Camp Lejeune, expecting the war to have inspired institutional self-examination and study. That was not the case. "The captains were more interested in war fighting than the senior officers," he remembers. "I expected there would be far more focus on the core of our profession-how to fight. This was my passion. I thought it would be the passion of every Marine. It wasn't." Zinni, to his good fortune and professional development, found a lifelong like-minded mentor through his friend and fellow captain, Jack Sheehan:

"Jack's commander really knew the stuff the gung ho younger officers were living and breathing and spending every spare moment talking about-landing plans, tactics, small units, patrol formations, weapons employment, and all that stuff. He'd had a long stretch in Vietnam, five or six years, and his operational skills were legendary; and like all the best leaders, he'd read everything."

That officer was Alfred M. Gray. A decade later, LtGen Gray, LtCol Zinni, and LtGen Trainor--Zinni's old battalion commander from Vietnam--would all contribute to the formation of the MEU(SOC) program. Zinni's tour as guard officer on Okinawa in the early 1970s--spent quelling gang violence and race riots among Marines--hatched his career involvement with non-lethal means of conflict resolution. He learned diplomacy from Ambassadors Richard Armitage in the Middle East and Robert Oakley in Somalia.

I could have done without Tom Clancy's name on the dust jacket. This is not a biography written by Clancy; this is a memoir, dictated by Zinni to Clancy and chief writer Tony Koltz. What we wind up with is, essentially, a transcribed interview. But Richard Reeves was right: We should listen to Gen Zinni. He is still telling the truth and making sense.

Tom Clancy who has many admirers in the military criticizes Bush and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Clancy says he almost "came to blows" with a leading war supporter, former Pentagon adviser and neo-con Richard Perle. The master of such million-selling thrillers as "Patriot Games" and "The Hunt for Red October" is adding to the criticism of the Iraq war, and not only through his own comments.

"Battle Ready," is a collaboration with another war critic, retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni. "Battle Ready" looks at Zinni's long military career, dating back to the Vietnam War, and includes harsh remarks by Zinni about the current conflict and the President. Zinni has openly attacked the war and Clancy acknowledges his own concerns.

But even as an envoy, Zinni spoke out against invading Iraq, regarding it as disastrous for Middle East peace and a distraction from the war against terrorism. Zinni says getting rid of Saddam Hussein was not worth the price of our brave soldiers and the enormous tax burden for generations to come.

"He's a bad guy. He's a terrible guy and he should go," Zinni said. "But I don't think it's worth 800 troops dead, 4,500 wounded - some of them terribly - $300 billion of our treasury and counting, and our reputation and our image in the world, particularly in that region, shattered." Clancy states that, `Some of the people the President listens to bother me greatly. How many times does someone have to be wrong before the President wises up?"

Neither Zinni or Clancy would commit to vote for Bush in the coming election. Zinni, a registered Republican who voted for Bush in 2000, said he could not support the president's re-election. I'm a Republican, but I will vote for Nader or Kerry before I vote for Bush again.

Some page turners and memorable reads I recommend: I just read a copy of Edgar Fouche's 'Alien Rapture,' which also blew me away. Fouche was a Top Secret Black Program `insider', whose credibility has been verified over and over. I recommend anything by Ken Follett, especially "The Pillars of the Earth", all of DeVille's novels, and Dan Brown's novels are all great reading. Want to be shocked, check out Dr. Paul Hill's 'Unconventional Flying Objects' which NASA tried to ban. "Against All Enemies" by Clarke; "Worse Than Watergate" by Dean, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them" by Franken are also worth reading. Check out the reviews on these books.

In the summer of 1994, I attended a change-of-command ceremony at Camp Pendleton for the I Marine Expeditionary Force. A new 3-star was about to take command prematurely for someone of his seniority. He hadn't even been a division commander, a 2-star billet. The fast-tracking general was Tony Zinni and the rest of his career continued to rocket. Other reviewers have commented on every aspect of his book, including his lack of support for the invasion of Iraq, so I will focus on two parts that impressed me deeply. I do agree with several others that having Tom Clancy as a co-author was distracting and unnecessary. The alternating first and third-person narratives were uneven at times. Thus the 4-stars. But then again, "Battle Ready" is not a literary selection.

The first part was Zinni's 1967 tour as an adviser (called "co van" for "trusted friend" with the Vietnamese Marine Corps). Many accounts have been published about Marines in Vietnam but only handful has come from advisers; the very best Marine officers were selected for advisory duty. Other "co vans" include Gens. Boomer, Hoar, and Myatt--on the Army side, McCaffrey, Powell and Schwarzkopf. All of these men experienced a different Vietnam War than those who fought in American units.

Why is Zinni's advisory experience relevant now? Marine advisers are mentoring Iraqis, and they could only dream their counterparts fought like the South Vietnamese. There's no hubris in Zinni's observations. He understood the Americans' lack of cultural knowledge, including his own early on: "The advisers' job was not to give the Vietnamese Marines tactical advice (they had more fighting experience than most Americans, and it was their country...American commanders were all in a hurry. They wanted to end the war on their one-year tour of duty. Vietnamese [Marine] commanders realized they would be in it for the duration."

The last chapter, Chapter Eight titled "The Calling," is a classic leadership primer-observations made over the distinguished 40-year career of Zinni, a Marine warrior, scholar and leader. As a former Marine, I found his last paragraph most touching: "I have been all over this globe and exposed to most of the cultures on it. I am fascinated by them. I love the diversity. I want to understand them and embrace them. I could never understand prejudice or rejection or the sense of superiority that drive the hatemongers of the world. I lived through a tumultuous period of our history when our own minorities broke from second-class citizenship into full participation in this wonderful dream we call America. I have been proud of their accomplishments and contributions. They have proven the bigots wrong and made our nation greater. I hope the dream we have struggled to realize can be extended to the rest of the planet."

General, it was my privilege to serve under commanders like you. Semper fi!

Of the four "Commander's Series" books marketed under the Tom Clancy name, this is the best. It would appear that many people are dissapointed in the book, as it doesn't match up with what they've heard of it, but looking on its own merits, it does stand up. The book does a good job of integrated Zinni's Vietnam experiences with his later command experiences, and with his post-military career, integrating lessons learned into a cohesive whole.

Zinni's thoughts and experiences with the Mideast peace processes are especially interesting and relevant. These alone are worth the price of admission.

As other reviewers have pointed out, it is somewhat annoying that most everyone he talks about is introduced as "the best", or "the brightest", or "a quick study". But, a careful reading shows up exceptions where the usual hyperbolic praise is omitted, notably for certain very public figures. And this lack of praise is therefore doubly illuminating.

Perhaps the most interesting viewpoint expressed in the book is least talked about: The relevancy of the Powell doctrine. Zinni states that the Iraq war: where the US faces a clear enemy in the form of a well-defined nation-state willing to face a frontal, traditional military assault; will be an anomoly in the years to come. Most future conflicts, Zinni asserts, will not be as clear-cut as to come under the Powell doctrine, so we better start planning now how to deal with these.

Though Zinni's comments on the second Iraq war are pretty short in the book, he does mention his distrust of Ahmed Chalabi, and his opposition to supporting him and the so-called "Bay of Goats". After the book was published, these concerns were proven out, in spades.

Both authors of this book, Clancy and Zinni, started out as Bush supporters. The point is not so much that they oppose a war with Iraq, it is that they oppose Bush's conduct of the war. Here are 10 criticisms Zinni makes (via the Center for Defense Information):

"And I think that will be the first mistake that will be
recorded in history, the belief that containment as a policy
doesn't work. It certainly worked against the Soviet Union,
has worked with North Korea and others.

"The second mistake I think history will record is that the
strategy was flawed. I couldn't believe what I was hearing
about the benefits of this strategic move. That the road to
Jerusalem led through Baghdad, when just the opposite is
true, the road to Baghdad led through Jerusalem. You solve
the Middle East peace process, you'd be surprised what kinds
of others things will work out.

"The third mistake, I think was one we repeated from
Vietnam, we had to create a false rationale for going in to
get public support. The books were cooked, in my mind.

"We failed in number four, to internationalize the effort.

"I think the fifth mistake was that we underestimated the
task . . . You are about to go into a problem that you don't
know the dimensions and the depth of, and are going to cause
you a great deal of pain, time, expenditure of resources and
casualties down the road.

"The sixth mistake, and maybe the biggest one, was propping
up and trusting the exiles, the infamous "Gucci Guerillas"
from London. We bought into their intelligence reports.

"The seventh problem has been the lack of planning . . . And
I think that lack of planning, that idea that you can do
this by the seat of the pants, reconstruct a country, to
make decisions on the fly, to beam in on the side that has
to that political, economic, social other parts, just a
handful of people at the last minute to be able to do it was
patently ridiculous.

"The eighth problem was the insufficiency of military forces
on the ground. There were a lot more troops in my military
plan for operations in Iraq.

"The ninth problem has been the ad hoc organization we threw
in there. No one can tell me the Coalition Provisional
Authority had any planning for its structure.

"And that ad hoc organization has failed, leading to the
tenth mistake, and that's a series of bad decisions on the
ground. De-Baathifying down to a point where you've
alienated the Sunnis, where you have stopped having
qualified people down in the ranks, people who don't have
blood on their hands, but know how to make the trains run on
time . . .

"Almost every week, somebody calls me up, if it's not Mark
Thompson it's somebody else, and says "What would you do
now?" You know, there's a rule that if you find yourself in
hole, stop digging. The first thing I would say is we need
to stop digging. We have dug this hole so deep now that you
see many serious people, Jack Murtha, General Odom, and
others beginning to say it's time to just pull out, cut your
losses. I'm not of that camp. Not yet. But I certainly think
we've come pretty close to that.

"I would do several things now. But clearly the first and
most important thing you need is that UN resolution. That's
been the model since the end of the Cold War, that has given
us the basis and has given our allies the basis for joining
us and helping us and provided the legitimacy we need."

Read it and weep. Weep for our brave young men and women who died unnecessarily. Weep for our country's lost honor. And weep for the lost opportunity to bring peace to the middle east.