When I peruse the conquered fame of heroes and the victories of mighty generals, I do not envy the generals.
-- Walt Whitman
It may come to pass that when the story of the gulf war is sifted and studied, the achievements of four-star Army General H. (for nothing) Norman Schwarzkopf will rank with those of Montgomery and Eisenhower and Alexander the Great -- or George McClellan and William Westmoreland. It is too early to predict how well or badly the war may go. Many battles are yet to be fought; many men are yet to die; thousands of innocent people are yet to suffer; a sure peace is yet to be forged.
What is known now is that the man who commands the vast military might of the allied coalition has prepared all his professional life for his role. Fortunately, he is by all accounts a passionately engaged leader of considerable talents and, what's more, possessed of a startling, prophetic mind.
As long ago as 1983, Schwarzkopf foresaw the possibility that the U.S. might one day find itself at war in the Middle East if an unfriendly nation succeeded in taking over a neighbor. Two years ago, as boss of the U.S. Central Command (which covers some North African countries and areas farther east), Schwarzkopf set out on his own to design a contingency plan. "He always believed that the big eruption would come in the Middle East," says his sister Sally. "He took the job at Central Command with the idea that he might well have to fight." Five days before Saddam Hussein launched his invasion, Schwarzkopf and his staff happened to be running an exercise predicated on the possibility that Iraq might overrun Kuwait. All that was necessary after that was for Schwarzkopf to polish his plan. It became the model for Operation Desert Shield.
Now that the shield has become a storm, Schwarzkopf is running the show as commander of the allied forces. Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson, fancying themselves cunning battlefield tacticians, liked to direct their generals hither and thither. George Bush, Dick Cheney and Colin Powell know better. Desert Storm, says Cheney, "is basically Norm's plan. It's fundamentally Norm's to execute."
And so he does. After directing -- on perilously short notice -- the biggest buildup of U.S. forces since Vietnam, Schwarzkopf is orchestrating a complex war machine comprising forces from 28 allied nations totaling 675,000 troops, hundreds of ships, and thousands of airplanes and tanks, all fully equipped and operating, says the Pentagon, right on schedule.
At the same time, Schwarzkopf has demonstrated the talents of a first-rate - diplomat, achieving cohesion not only among the traditionally rivalrous U.S. military services but also among the Arab and Western allies with all their conflicting interests. He is especially careful in his dealings with the Saudis. Only last week King Fahd, worried about an attack on Riyadh, wanted reassurance from the top. Schwarzkopf went to the palace and advised Fahd that his main concern was the possibility that Saddam could fire Scud missiles with chemical warheads at the capital. That was not much in the way of reassurance, but at least the King got straight talk.