Some of that education came by watching. John Vines was a charismatic leader, known in the Army for taking care of subordinates and putting tremendous thought into the leadership climate of his commands. Looking to overcome the common problem of getting candor from subordinates in a hierarchical organization like the military, Vines came to my office near the end of a long day with a plan. We were known to be close, and he calculated that if I strongly and openly disagreed with him in a large meeting, it would encourage others to do so. The appropriate venue came several days later in a meeting of about twenty-five commanders and staff. I waited for the right moment in the meeting and executed John’s guidance by speaking out strongly against his plan of action.
“Sir, doing it that way will be a serious mistake,” I said, looking at Vines, forthrightly proud of my candor.
Nicknamed “the Viper” earlier in his career and feared as well as loved, Vines appeared to be furious. Had he been wearing his combat equipment, his hand would have been slowly pulling his 9-mm pistol from its holster, his long bladed knife from its sheath, or both. He seemed to have forgotten our plan.
In an instant, albeit a very long instant, John smiled. He thanked me for my honesty and signaled to everyone that that was the kind of feedback most helpful to a commander. He reinforced the fact that good leaders defined the environment and created opportunity for candid discussion at the right moments.
I spent June 2001 in Camp Doha, Kuwait, in an army program that rotated brigadier generals there for monthlong tours as forward commanders for CENTCOM. At the time, this seemed absurd, guaranteed to cause turmoil through constant turnover of leadership. But the month I spent in the region—which included exploring Kuwait up to the Iraq border, touring the critical port facilities, and traveling to Qatar to visit prepositioned equipment sites—was a lesser version of Eisenhower’s mapping of World War I battlefields in 1929 or Patton’s tours of France. The month allowed me to look at ground that I would later tread.
A key theme of the month there was Osama bin Laden–related intelligence reporting that included threats of attacks against U.S. facilities in Kuwait. At the time, Al Qaeda’s 1998 embassy attacks in East Africa had once again been on the front page. On May 29, a jury in Manhattan had convicted four men for their role in the 1998 attacks, following a four-month trial that included ninety-two witnesses, 1,300 exhibits, and 302 counts against the accused. Two of those witnesses were former members of Al Qaeda, and the trial provided a window into the largely opaque organization. The next day, the Taliban, who were hosting bin Laden in Afghanistan, announced they would not send him to the American courts.
Prior to my trip, terror had seemed more an amorphous danger with countless sources, like air pollution, than a threat from a specific group with a charismatic leader. Being in the region and reviewing intelligence every day made me more aware of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda and gave the threat new meaning and urgency.
| CHAPTER 6 |
The Fight Begins
July 2001–October 2003
My world changed suddenly on a warm Tuesday morning in September. I’d again replaced Dave Petraeus, this time as chief of staff of XVIII Airborne Corps, and, along with my boss, Lieutenant General Dan McNeill, I went to conduct a daylight parachute jump from a C-130J aircraft, a new variant of the old workhorse with which we’d all grown up. After an orientation at Pope Air Force Base, we donned parachutes. As on every jump, the jumpmaster inspected us. His commands and steady movements followed a pattern I’d experienced hundreds of times before. He checked our helmets and the edges of our packs, then tugged and cinched our straps tightly across our shoulders and thighs.
That same morning, a group of men had instructions to do the same before they boarded an airplane in Boston. “Tighten your clothes well,” the man in charge, named Mohammad Atta, had instructed them in a set of guidelines. “And tighten your shoes well, and wear socks that hold in the shoes and do not come out of them.” The commands were meant to help make what they were about to do that morning—something they’d never done before and never would again—feel routine. They were liable to be nervous about getting into the air.