My Share of the Task(31)

                Formed in 1980 following the post–Eagle Claw Holloway Commission, the task force began as a small battle staff designed to command and control the complex special operations, like hostage rescue, that the commission concluded would be needed in the future. It envisioned a lean, secret team capable of avoiding the ad hoc approach that had hampered Eagle Claw from the start.

                In the beginning it was not welcomed by the subordinate units it would control. But by 1990 the task force had matured significantly. Its participation in the October 1983 invasion of Grenada had not been flawless, but it had legitimized the command. So too had action against a series of terrorist incidents like the Palestinian Liberation Front’s hijacking of the Achille Lauro in October 1985. But more than any other event, the task force’s central and impressive role in the invasion of Panama—six months earlier—had solidified its reputation and role.

                I joined the Operations Directorate, and as the Ranger representative in Current Operations, I shared a small office with Army, Navy, and Air Force special operators. Each day, we handled unit-related issues and helped coordinate forthcoming operational or training deployments. When the task force conducted exercises or real-world operations, we served as operations officers developing plans and then overseeing their execution.

                I was on a major exercise at Fort Bliss, Texas, on August 1, 1990, when our intelligence officer informed me that Iraqi forces were massing on Kuwait’s borders and an invasion appeared likely. A day later, Iraq bombed Kuwait City, and in less than a day Iraqi units had overrun the country.

                With their kingdom threatened, the Saudis received two offers for assistance. The first came during a visit from Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Central Command (CENTCOM) commander General Norman Schwarzkopf. On August 6, they met with the king, who approved deployment of a force that eventually totaled 543,000 U.S. and allied troops. They would soon be based in the kingdom, postured to protect Saudi Arabia and eject Iraq from Kuwait if and when necessary. But the arrival of American forces soon provoked ire and an urgent, competing pitch: In early September, Osama bin Laden, recently returned from Afghanistan, proposed to the Saudi king that he could have an army of one hundred thousand Muslims ready in three months to defend the Land of the Two Holy Places. Bin Laden’s option was smiled at—and dismissed.

                The rejection smarted for bin Laden. So too did the shame he felt at having Christians and Jews defend Muslims. Top Saudi religious authorities fell in line with the regime and sanctioned the American presence, but bin Laden did not. He founded a group in London that produced hundreds of pamphlets condemning the Saudi state, fell out of favor with the Saudi government, and underwent brief house arrest before moving his Al Qaeda group to Sudan the following year. While bin Laden’s first enemy had been communism—in Afghanistan, the Central Asian states, and then his father’s homeland of Yemen—his ire and the aims of his group now increasingly turned toward America.

                The task force did not deploy as part of the initial forces. Instead we planned and rehearsed for a mission to rescue American personnel held up in the U.S. embassy in Kuwait City. The Americans were not hostages in the strictest sense of the word. Iraqi forces had not taken control of the embassy, but their control of the city prevented the Americans’ safe extraction, so we were ordered to devise a rescue.

                Preparing for the rescue mission gave us something to do while conventional forces staged in Saudi Arabia. But when the embassy was evacuated and the Americans were repatriated on December 13, 1990, it looked as though our role in the crisis would be limited to reacting to possible Iraq-inspired terrorist attacks across the region.

                Like others, I speculated on why the task force’s part in Desert Shield, soon to be Desert Storm, was so limited. There were clearly challenges to incorporating its specialized skills into a huge conventional effort. Additionally, some leaders were uncomfortable with the force.

                The experience helped to shape my belief about what this unique force must be, and how it must operate. We needed better organizational and personal linkages with conventional forces, as well as with other agencies of the U.S. government. We’d have to open up more, educate conventional leaders about what we did, and importantly, we had to avoid even the appearance of elitist attitudes or arrogance.