During my time at CENTCOM, every country except the Seychelles was continually under a terrorist threat. We had conducted a series of military actions against Iraq, while continuing to enforce sanctions against that nation. We had contained Iran and opened new relations with Yemen and the Central Asian States. We had dealt with wars in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Tajikistan. Our responses to crises in Pakistan, Africa, and elsewhere had ranged from humanitarian assistance, to evacuation of U.S. citizens, to mediation of disputes.
It was an incredible experience.
In the summer of 2000, I transferred command of CENTCOM to Army General Tommy Franks, and my thirty-nine-year career as a Marine ended.
BUT IT was not the final chapter of my CENTCOM story.
On Thursday, October 12, 2000, Al Qaeda terrorists suicide-bombed the American destroyer USS Cole, then refueling in the harbor of Aden, Yemen. Seventeen young Americans were killed, and the Cole was out of action for years. Somebody had to take the blame for allowing this tragedy to take place. The buck had to stop somewhere.
Some people looked at an obvious target, the ship’s captain. But the folks who like to point fingers whenever bad things happen to our soldiers, Marines, airmen, or sailors wanted to hang somebody higher up. The finger landed on me.
Fine. That’s where the buck stopped.
So when the chief of naval operations tried to pin the bombing on me, I wasn’t surprised. He accused me of setting up the refueling station in Aden because I wanted to improve relations with Yemen.
That accusation brought on a call from Senator Warner of Virginia, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “Look,” he said, “I’m getting hammered by my constituents. They’re asking questions about the Cole. The American people need to learn the truth. We need to have the hearings. We’ve asked the Secretary of Defense and the top military to testify, but they will not appear. We can’t get them to come. That leaves you, Tony.” He apologized for that. “You need to come testify.
“It’s going to be hard,” he continued. “We’re going to put you through a lot. . . . I’m going to put you through a lot.”
“I’ll do it,” I said. It was the only right thing to do.
I was grilled by fourteen senators, three hours under klieg lights (a lot of press was there), with no break (not even to piss). And I got hammered with questions.
Before I went in, I’d decided I would take full responsibility for this thing. I was the CINC and everything that happened in my AOR was my responsibility. If I didn’t, they’d dump it down on some poor son of a bitch like the captain of the ship. Somebody senior had to stand up. I remembered how hard they had hit General Peay for the Khobar Towers attack. When he tried to explain what happened during his testimony, they took it as waffling and not standing up to his responsibilities (which was far from the case). I was tired of admirals and generals trying to pass the buck. I was really upset with the chief of naval operations for trying to pin the blame on anybody else . . . it didn’t matter who. And I was enraged at the Washington blame game.
So I decided, “What the hell. The buck stops here.” And that’s what I said in my testimony: “I was the commander in chief who made the decision that we would refuel in there,” I told the senators. “I’m fine with that. If it was the wrong decision, you can hold me responsible for it.
“Now I’ll give you the circumstances, I’ll tell you what happened, and why I made the decision:
“Yes, it’s true that I wanted to improve relations with Yemen, but that was not the reason we chose to refuel in Yemen. We chose to refuel there for operational and not diplomatic or political reasons. It was the only practical port for our naval component to refuel their ships.
“The Navy has rules about fuel levels on their ships,” I explained. “In normal operations, they don’t let that level go below fifty-one percent.
“Ships traveling out of the Mediterranean could of course refuel in the Persian Gulf, but in many cases ships didn’t have enough capacity to get there without exceeding the fifty-one percent limit. That meant they had to find a refueling port between Suez and the Gulf. These were the possibilities: Djibouti, Eritrea, Jeddah, and Aden. That was it. Djibouti had been the Navy’s refueling port, but it was now a no-go. Eritrea was out because of the war with Ethiopia. Jeddah was out because we’d just had the bombings in Saudi Arabia. So there was no other choice.
“We looked hard at Aden. The Navy went in and vetted it, inspected it, and cleared it; and the Navy component for CENTCOM had the responsibility for security. We refueled twenty-eight ships during my tenure as CINC, and all without incident.
“Yet, having said that, there’s no getting around the risk. There is no risk-free place in that part of the world to refuel ships.
“If we’re going to have people out there, if we’re going to have people traveling around doing security assistance work, if we’re going to have forces on the ground training and exercising, if we’re going to have a presence out there day to day, responding to operations, in an environment that’s really hostile and where people are out to get us, and they’re watching our every move looking for an opportunity to hurt us, we’re going to have times when our people are going to get hurt.”
The senators walked out of that meeting satisfied with what I’d said; and it all ended there.
Later, to Tommy Franks’s credit, he stepped up to the plate and said, “I agree with General Zinni’s decision. I would have made the same one. It made military sense.”
The CENTCOM experience taught me a lot about the world and the role of our great nation in it. We could make a difference if we were committed to stand up to our obligations, not only as the last remaining superpower, but also as the last beacon of hope for many people on this planet.
Forty years as a Marine taught me that the only place to be is in the center of the arena. You get knocked down out there and you make mistakes. But you also realize that it sure beats sitting in the grandstands criticizing those who have the guts to be out there. And every once in a while you can make a difference.
I adjusted, with some difficulty, to civilian life and retirement after four decades of service. I missed the Corps and the arena that gave me a tremendous sense of fulfillment. Little did I realize that another form of service awaited me.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WARRIOR PEACEMAKER
AFTER NEARLY FOUR DECADES in the United States Marine Corps, Tony Zinni found it hard to adjust to a different life. He knew he had to move on to another phase, yet months passed before the new phase happened. Until it did, he briefly tried the usual occupations open to retired generals—memberships on boards of directors, consulting on military and foreign policy matters, senior mentoring, teaching college courses, lecturing at military schools, speechmaking.
These early pursuits brought in a comfortable income; all of them were interesting, and a couple were personally rewarding. Despite these satisfactions, however, he knew something was missing. He was no longer taking part in the significant events he watched unfolding every day on the news. He had moved from the heart of the action to virtual irrelevance.
The media networks offered positions as an analyst and commentator; their offers were tempting—a chance to keep a hand in. But he rejected them, preferring not to be a military Monday-morning quarterback. He didn’t want to be yet another retired general blathering on the screen about the state of the universe.
“I really believe that once you retire, you retire,” he comments. “The way is forward, not back. So for me, I really felt that the worst thing I could do is try to semi hang on. I wanted to cut the cords and get on with a different life. Just put the old life aside.”
The day he packed up his uniforms for good—a chore he had put off for months—was one of the bleakest of his life. The uniforms went into his attic; his sword went to his Marine officer son during his retirement ceremony. Yet this was a liberating pain; it was the opening he needed to finally accept that
he had to move on.
About this time, wise counsel came from an old and respected Marine Corps friend, Paul VanRiper, a retired lieutenant general who had settled near Zinni’s new home in Virginia:
“The best way to manage your time is to divide your life into thirds,” he told Zinni. “One-third has to pay your mortgage, put food on the table, and cover whatever else you need to keep your household and family going. You’re not that old”—Zinni retired in his late fifties—“so look at doing work that you’re okay with, and brings home a decent paycheck.
“The second third comes from doing work you love, where the pay isn’t all that important. You might get some compensation; but that’s not the point. Whether these things bring in good money or not, this part of your life is about doing things you enjoy doing, things that excite you, inspire you. You can’t wait to do more.
“The final third is about whatever you want to put back. It’s work you do pro bono, because it’s the right thing to do; you have an obligation to do it. You feel required to give the service to your country, or to institutions—like the Marine Corps—that you have a close affection for.”
And that is exactly what Zinni tried to do.
After trying those various “normal” occupations open to retired generals, he moved on to more satisfying ways to pay the bills. He took care of the first third primarily by carefully choosing positions in businesses that had ethics, practices, and leadership of the highest caliber.
For the second third, he began teaching at William and Mary College. The pay wasn’t great, but he loved the wonderful faculty, loved being around the students, loved teaching, and loved passing on his experience to another impressive generation.
Early in 2001, he was contacted by Professor Steven Spiegel, the director of the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) at the University of California San Diego. The IGCC ran a series of workshops, sponsored by the Defense Department, that brought together prominent people from the Middle East to discuss arms control and security. Spiegel asked Zinni to join this effort as a consultant; and of course Zinni accepted. It was an opportunity to reconnect with the peacemaking and conflict resolution process that had grown into a significant part of his life during the second half of his Marine Corps service. A dream began to emerge.
At the end of July, he took part in the first of what would become several IGCC workshops. Held in Garmisch, Germany, it brought together an impressive group of serving and retired government officials and academics from Middle Eastern countries to discuss the peace process. Though, of course, Zinni had followed these issues when he was CINC at CENTCOM, and discussed them at length with regional leaders, he found himself gaining significant new insights.
And then for the third third—the “putting back” into the people and the institutions that were important to him—Zinni made sure he gave talks and classes at the Marine Corps University at Quantico, and at local high schools whenever the opportunity arose.
The thirds plan allowed Zinni to put some structure into the life of a retired general, but it did not yet solve the problem of filling what was still missing—some way to take positive part in significant events out in the world . . . without butting in. He was ready if he was needed and called.
The call came. And another.
The first, in the summer of 2001, was from his old friend and boss, and now Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage: “Would you be interested in taking on a peace mission in Indonesia?”
This was followed a few weeks later by a second call from another State Department official: “Would you be interested in taking on a peace mission in the Middle East?”
THE WISE MEN
In Indonesia, a bloody dispute had been under way for twenty-five years between the national government and an independence movement in the oil-rich province of Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra. The call from Armitage was an invitation to take part in a mission under the guidance of the Henri Dunant Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HDC) in Geneva, Switzerland.
The HDC realized a dream of Henri Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross, to establish a humanitarian center devoted to conflict resolution and mediation. It gave special attention to internal conflicts—problems within and not between nations. The latter are normally best handled by international organizations such as the UN or regional collectives of nations, but sovereign states get nervous when international bodies meddle in what they take to be internal affairs—as in the case of rebellions or separatist movements. Such conflicts are probably best resolved by private organizations, which have no agenda and no ulterior interests.
Though Zinni was unfamiliar with Indonesia and its multitude of troubles, and had never heard of Aceh or the HDC, he was eager to take on the mission. This was interesting. It could add a significant new angle of vision to what he already knew about peacemaking and conflict resolution.
Tony Zinni:
I learned long ago that finding new angles in peacemaking really matters, because—paradoxically—each peacemaking situation is unique. No matter how much experience you have, each conflict brings its own unique requirements. You have to develop a process distinctive to it. Sure, you can maybe call on or modify previous experiences, but there are no models, formulas, or formats that will necessarily help you reach your goals.
A lot of people think you can know exactly how to go about the process and become predictive. I learned you can’t. You can’t take some model off the shelf and hammer it to fit. It doesn’t work that way. What happens is this: Gaining more experiences builds up your experience base and your understanding of the possibilities, and that shows you how to combine, mix-match, develop, and modify from past experiences to fit the unique situation you’re in. Experience doesn’t give you any big answers. It shows you how to be creative.
HE TALKED over the mission at a meeting with Armitage and Karen Brooks, a member of the National Security Council. There he learned that the State Department and the NSC had come up with an innovative idea to create a new element in negotiations: a group of Wise Men—people of significant international stature, senior diplomats and military men—who would stand above the negotiating process and advise all sides.
In tough negotiations, mediators always get dragged into the process. They become viewed as biased by one or both sides, or sometimes become too deeply involved in contentious issues to “step above” the heated exchanges. No matter how hard mediators try to maintain and protect their neutrality and objectivity, both sides transfer fears and hopes onto them, attack them, and blame them. It always happens.
The function of the Wise Men was not to change the process but to back it up. If the mediators were getting hit by stones from all sides, they lived with it, rolled up their sleeves, waded into the mud, and did the dirty work. The Wise Men stood above it all, there to be called on by both sides or by the mediators for advice, recommendations, consultation, or intervention.
The HDC jumped at the idea.
At that point, they had chosen three Wise Men for the Indonesia mission—Surin Pitsuwan, a retired Thai Foreign Minister; Budamir Loncur, a retired Yugoslav Foreign Minister; and Lord Eric Avebury, a Member of the British House of Lords. They now wanted a fourth, an American with military stature—someone with peacekeeping experience, who could handle issues such as how to monitor mechanisms and observers on the ground, and who could talk to the Indonesian military—who everyone thought would be the toughest group to bring into the peace process. Zinni was the obvious choice.
“This is great!” Zinni told Armitage and Brooks. “It’s just the kind of thing I want to do.” He agreed to take on the mission with State Department support, but only as an unpaid private citizen working with the HDC, thus ensuring his independence.
That set the machinery moving.
State Department briefs followed, detailing the history of the struggle, current intelligence about what was happening on the ground, the state of the negotiations, the U.S. position on the issues,
and background on the HDC.
Zinni followed up on that by reading everything he could find on Aceh online and from local bookstores and libraries. He was surprised at the amount of information that was out there:
Indonesia is unique among nations. For one thing, it’s big. It spreads across thousands of islands, some of them among the largest in the world, that cover thousands of miles from east to west and many time zones. It’s extremely diverse in geography, population, and ethnic identity. In religion it’s predominantly Muslim (usually of a moderate kind), but there are also many Buddhists. All of these factors would make the country very difficult to govern; but add to that corruption, dictatorships, all kinds of divisive political issues, and a blanketing atmosphere of turmoil; and further add to that internal struggles with provinces in distant parts of the country—like East Timor (now independent), Papua New Guinea, and Aceh—that want to break away and gain independence; and you have a nation that’s never far from catastrophic fission.
In spite of the confusion and diversity, the political scene in Indonesia is surprisingly straightforward—more or less evenly divided between hard-liners and moderates. On the issue of separatism, the moderates wished to end the struggles through peaceful negotiations that would eventually allow areas such as Aceh some freedom and autonomy from the central government. The hard-liners—including much of the military83—would have none of that, and preferred an increased crackdown to end the conflict once and for all. Already, the military and police operations in response to the uprising had turned the beautiful and resource-rich province into a battle zone.