My Share of the Task(30)
After their planning meetings in August, Al Qaeda officially got to work on September 10, 1988. From the beginning, the group looked for a specific person to join its vanguard army. Testing would cull the “best brothers” from the Arab volunteers; they would need to be obedient and determined. “Trusted sources” would vouch for their integrity and the security of the organization. Al Qaeda soon began to field such candidates and trained them at a new base—separate from the conventional one. Many of the first recruits and advisers to bin Laden were hardened Egyptians, who would remain a powerful faction within the movement.
* * *
In late June of 1989, almost exactly thirteen years after we had left West Point, Annie, Sam, and I loaded our car and drove back to school, this time to Rhode Island.
For an army major in 1989, going to the Command and Staff College was important. Only about 50 percent of all officers were ever selected for resident attendance, most to the Army’s school at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. It served as the first significant culling process of the officer corps. Few officers not chosen would later command at the battalion or higher levels.
I was happy to be selected for school but surprised when the Army notified me that instead of attending the Army Command and Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, I’d be going to the Navy’s version in Newport, Rhode Island. It proved to be a great year.
Sited in scenic Narragansett Bay, the Naval War College was academically stimulating beyond anything I’d yet experienced. Unlike more structured programs with long class hours, the Navy emphasized extensive reading punctuated by limited but focused seminars. I’d always loved to read, and the instructors pushed me into the works of Clausewitz, Homer, and others that helped build a firmer foundation of knowledge.
It was also a good year to be studying the past and future worlds. The February withdrawal of the Soviets from Afghanistan after nine years of bitter fighting, the Tiananmen Square massacre in China, Solidarity’s electoral success in Poland, and the November fall of the Berlin wall created the most fluid international environment of my lifetime. We were forced to think broader than a lockstep Cold War view of the world, and to consider strategy in a more traditional multipolar sense. For a year we had time to do that.
Classes were only four days each week; I played on the class basketball team with Tim McHale and Ray Odierno; I prepared for and ran the Boston Marathon on Patriots’ Day; and Annie, Sam, and I enjoyed exploring New England.
There was one personal disappointment. On the morning of December 20, I awoke to run before class and saw news announcements of Operation Just Cause, an American intervention into Panama spearheaded by the Rangers I’d left just six months earlier. I wasn’t surprised, but after thirteen years as an officer and over a year of direct participation in the planning and rehearsals, it hurt to miss the operation.
It is difficult to explain a soldier’s feeling about missing a combat action. Soldiers don’t love war but often feel professional angst when they have to watch one from the sidelines. Reports of the Rangers’ performance gave me pride but also guilt and embarrassment that I wasn’t there.
Annie let me feel sorry for myself for a few days. Then, standing one evening in our small kitchen, she drew herself up to her full five feet six inches, looked me in the eye, and asked point-blank, “Are you going to get over this? Because you missed it. It wasn’t your fault, but you did. And if you can’t get past this, then you’d better get out of the Army.”
It was the proverbial two-by-four to the forehead, swung as only Annie can. I wanted sympathy, but it was the last thing I really needed. I still loved being a soldier, so I told her I’d buck up.
* * *
In June of 1990 we graduated and I headed for another tour at Fort Bragg, this time to a joint special operations task force.