A journalist's generation-spanning take on the US military's long
march from humiliating defeat in Vietnam to decisive triumph in the
Persian Gulf. Kitfield keeps his absorbing narrative at a human
level by using the lives of senior Air Force, Army, Marine Corps,
and Navy officers who were first blooded in Southeast Asia during
the 1960s and '70s to recount how America's armed services managed
to redeem themselves over the past two decades. Among other
important developments, he documents the ways in which observations
of the Arab-Israeli clash of 1973 helped trigger internal reforms
that produced innovative new doctrines on how the military should
operate on a variety of fronts, including battlefields. The end of
the draft, appreciably larger defense budgets, a thoroughgoing
reorganization of the Pentagon's command structure (to curb
interbranch rivalries and mandate cooperation), and the more
effective training of high-caliber recruits also prepared the armed
forces to perform with lethal efficiency in the Persian Gulf. The
author makes it clear, however, that the road to victory was long
and hard, with setbacks along the way in Beirut, where scores of
Marines died at the hands of a lone terrorist, and in Desert One,
the remote venue where a mission to rescue Americans held hostage
by Iranian extremists came to grief. The US military also had to
deal with drug abuse in the ranks, the integration of women into
the services, public apathy, media suspicion, racial strife, and
strategists fixated on putative threats posed by the erstwhile
Soviet bloc in Central Europe. Kitfield ends his account with
Clinton's arrival in the White House, so he does not address the
impact on combat-readiness of peacekeeping deployments to Haiti,
Kuwait, Rwanda, and Somalia - which, of course, might prove quite
another story. Worldly-wise perspectives on a major shift within a
government branch historically known for its rigid adherence to
tradition. (Kirkus Reviews)
This volume chronicles the US military's revitalization by
following the lives of five senior commanders who led the Allies to
victory in Desert Storm: Colin Powell, Chuck Horner, Barry
McCaffrey, Stan Arthur and Walt Boomer. From the disarray in the
aftermath of Vietnam to the prowess and efficiency displayed in
Desert Storm, the US armed services reinvented themselves.
General
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