The American Military Response

to “peace” who were willing to allow Iraq to retain Kuwait. Hundreds of male hostages were even spread among strategic targets throughout Iraq to deter bombing of those sites.

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Though the hostages dominated news reports and much of the diplomatic maneuvering throughout the fall of 1990, in the end Saddam apparently decided that they were not going to help him achieve his goals. He announced their impending release on 6 December, and they had all departed Iraq by mid-December.

On 28 August, Saddam formally annexed Kuwait as Iraq’s 19th province, thus “restoring the branch to the tree.” There would be a great deal of talk and discussion over the next five months, but Iraq refused to withdraw, attempting instead to split the international community and subvert the Coalition opposing its invasion. Iraqi intransigence and the international community’s refusal to allow Iraq to benefit from its aggression drove events toward a military conclusion. As diplomacy continued over the coming months, the United States built up the forces required for the impending confrontation. The American Military Response

At the time, the Iraqi Army was commonly judged to be the fourth-largest military force in the world, and it was considered battle-hardened by the nearly decade-long Iran-Iraq War. The invasion of Kuwait had been extremely swift, and surprisingly effective; the problems the Iraqi military encountered were not widely known. In fact, events would prove the Iraqi military was largely a hollow shell, with demoralized, poorly trained troops greatly outnumbering the better-trained and better-equipped Republican Guard units. But in August 1990, this was not obvious, and Iraq’s historical willingness to use poison gas against its enemies increased the threat it represented.

In contrast, the American military in 1990 was relatively untested. The 1970s had been the nadir of American military effectiveness, with drug use and racial conflict reportedly common among American servicemembers. The military had an abundance of advanced weaponry, and service personnel had undergone a decade-long revitalization, but neither the equipment nor the troops had been tested in combat on a large scale.

The fiasco of the rescue attempt during the Iranian hostage crisis and the failure of the Marine deployment to Lebanon in the 1980s added to the specter of defeat lingering from the American experience in Vietnam, but there were some small-scale

Defense Imagery HD-SC-00-02946 Secretary of Defense Richard B. “Dick” Cheney gave military leaders great leeway in conducting the Gulf War. He later served as vice president under President George W. Bush.

conflicts that offered a glimpse of American capabilities. The invasion of Grenada in 1983, the invasion of Panama in 1989, and the air conflicts with Libya in the mid-1980s had all been successful operations despite some setbacks. Events would prove that the American military of the 1990s was the besttrained, best-equipped, and most professional large military in the world at that time, but those events were in the future as American military commanders considered how to make President Bush’s promise that Iraq’s aggression would not stand a military reality.

The American military was operating under a new organizational plan following the GoldwaterNichols Act of 1986. Prior to the act, the chain of command had flowed from the president through the service secretaries down to the service chiefs and on to the individual services. Interservice rivalry was built directly into the system. A direct response to the perceived failures in the system demonstrated during the Iran hostage crisis, the

The Chain of Command as Defined by the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986

President of the United States

Secretary of Defense

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Commander in Chief U.S. Central Command Other Combat Commands EUCOM, PACOM, etc.

Army Central Command (ARCENT) Navy Central Command (NAVCENT)

act’s most relevant changes impacted the chain of command.

The new system created a chain of command that ran through the secretary of defense to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (now designated as the president’s chief military advisor) to the geographic joint combatant commands (Pacific Command, European Command, Southern Command, and Central Command). The service chiefs were effectively removed from the chain of command; they were now “force providers” tasked with training, supplying, and supporting the forces dispatched to the geographic commands in order to fight the war. The Gulf War was the first test of this new system in a major conflict.

Three large personalities held the top positions under the president for the Persian Gulf conflict. Secretary of Defense Richard B. “Dick” Cheney was the senior civilian leader. A former congressman and the White House chief of staff under President Gerald R. Ford, Cheney was a strong proponent of the use of force to reverse the Iraqi invasion. He worked closely with General Colin L. Powell, USA, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Like most of the senior military officers involved in the Gulf War, General Powell was heavily influenced by his experiences in the Vietnam War. He was the developer of what has been dubbed the

Air Force Central Command (AFCENT)

Marine Corps Central Command (MARCENT)

“Powell Doctrine,” which might fairly be described as the military philosophy that underpinned the American military effort in the Gulf War. In theory, the doctrine set very high standards for the use of American military force, requiring massive domestic and international support for any military intervention and specifying a massive expenditure of military might to overwhelm any resistance.

The direct military commander, and the man who came to represent the Gulf War to the American public, was General H. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr., USA. In addition to his service during the Vietnam War, Schwarzkopf had been the senior Army officer for Operation Urgent Fury, the 1983 invasion of Grenada. In late 1988, he replaced General George Crist as the commander of U.S. Central Command.

The end of the Iran-Iraq War had led Central Command to reconsider likely threats in its theater, and under General Schwarzkopf this resulted in Internal Look, Central Command’s annual training exercise, examining the problem of defending the region from an aggressive Iraq in 1990. As already

*In practice, Michael R. Gordon and LtGen Bernard E. Trainor assert in The Generals’ War that Gen Powell insisted on extremely high force estimates in an attempt to dissuade the president from any military intervention over Kuwait.

Defense Imagery DA-SC-91-07109 The first African American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen Colin L. Powell’s two tours in Vietnam shaped his views on military affairs and the subsequent “Powell Doctrine.” Powell later served as secretary of state for President George W. Bush.

mentioned, this produced an odd sense of déjà vu in Central Command planners during the summer of 1990 as Iraq’s actions mirrored the conditions established in the exercise. Secretary of Defense Cheney took General Schwarzkopf with him to brief King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud in the 6 August meeting that led to Saudi Arabia agreeing to allow American forces to deploy to the Desert Kingdom to defend it against Iraq. Suitably modified, the plan Schwarzkopf put into play for building up forces in Saudi Arabia was essentially the plan from Internal Look 90.

Removed from the operational chain of command by Goldwater-Nichols, the Commandant of the Marine Corps in 1990 was General Alfred M. Gray Jr. As Commandant, General Gray had aggressively continued the reform efforts of the 1980s and added new training initiatives of his own. He preferred to be seen in combat fatigues and promoted a combat culture in the Marine Corps that made him popular with junior officers and enlisted men. He was also determined to create an intellectual culture in the Marine Corps by expanding officer and noncommissioned officer training and in 1989 publishing Fleet

Defense Imagery DA-SC-91-04130 Gen H. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr., USA, commanded U.S. Central Command during the Gulf War. After the war, Gen Walter E. Boomer recalled that there was a “tremendous amount of trust” on the part of Gen Schwarzkopf, who “always felt that he didn’t have to worry about us . . . he knew that part of his campaign, that part of his theater was okay.”

Marine Force Manual 1 (FMFM1), Warfighting, perhaps the most well-known Marine Corps manual published since the earlier Small Wars Manual.

The senior Marine operational commander for the Gulf War, Lieutenant General Walter E. Boomer, had recently been assigned as the commanding general of both U.S. Marine Forces Central Command and I Marine Expeditionary Force. General Boomer was a Vietnam War veteran like his fellow Gulf War commanders and was the commanding general of the 4th Marine Division, the Marine Corps Reserve command, in New Orleans, Louisiana, prior to his Gulf War command.

General Boomer and his family were traveling in two cars from New Orleans, his previous duty station, to Camp Pendleton, California, when he heard the news of Iraq’s invasion on 2 August. In a 2006 interview, he recounted the day’s events:

We were somewhere in west Texas, when I heard on the radio that Kuwait had been invaded. When we reached our planned desti-

Defense Imagery DM-SC-95-00050 As Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen Alfred M. Gray reformed and revitalized Marine training. Gen Gray fought in the Korean and Vietnam Wars and served as Commandant during the Gulf War.

nation that night, I asked Sandi [his wife] if she had been listening to the radio or the news, and she said, no they had been talking. She asked, “What happened?” I said, “Iraq invaded Kuwait.” Having been a Marine wife for a while she looked at me and said, “What does that mean?” I said, “Well, I don’t know but it probably doesn’t bode well in that the I Marine Expeditionary Force will probably be involved,” and it obviously was.

Official U.S. Marine Corps photo Then-LtGen Walter E. Boomer commanded U.S. Marine Forces Central Command as well as the I Marine Expeditionary Force. LtGen Boomer served two tours in Vietnam prior to his Gulf War command.

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