[R-G] Admiral Fallon, Who Said "[An Attack on Iran] Will Not Happen on My Watch, " Resigns

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/11/fallon-resigns/>
Breaking: CentCom Chief Admiral Fallon Resigns

Secretary Robert Gates has announced that Centcom commander Adm.
William Fallon has submitted his resignation. Fallon was subject of a
recent Esquire article, which stated that the admiral could be
"relieved of his command before his time is up next spring," in favor
of a commander more amenable to war with Iran.

According to Gates, Fallon resigned because the fall-out from the
article. Gates said Fallon told him: "The current embarrassing
situation, public perception of differences between my views and
administration policy, and the distraction this causes from the
mission make this the right thing to do." Gates said he approved
Fallon's request to retire with "reluctance and regret."

<http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/05/fallon-bush-fire/>
Bush May Fire CentCom Chief Adm. Fallon, Replace With Commander More
'Pliable' To War With Iran

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called CENTCOM commander Adm.
William Fallon "one of the best strategic thinkers in uniform today."
Fallon opposed the "surge" in Iraq and has consistently battled the
Bush administration to avoid a confrontation with Iran, calling
officials' war-mongering "not helpful." Privately, he has vowed that
an attack on Iran "will not happen on my watch." [LINK:
<http://www.ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=37738>]

Unfortunately, this level-headed thinking and willingness to stand up
to President Bush may cost him his job. According to a new article by
Thomas P.M. Barnett in the April issue of Esquire [LINK:
<http://www.esquire.com/print-this/features/fox-fallon>] magazine (on
newsstands March 12), Fallon may be prematurely "relieved of his
command" as soon as this summer:

    [W]ell-placed observers now say that it will come as no surprise
    if Fallon is relieved of his command before his time is up next
    spring, maybe as early as this summer, in favor of a commander
    the White House considers to be more pliable. If that were to
    happen, it may well mean that the president and vice-president
    intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this
    year and don't want a commander standing in their way.

In the Esquire article, Fallon also said that he was in "hot water"
with the White House for meeting with Egyptian president Hosni
Mubarak. Fallon noted that such meetings are his job, and essential to
making sure that regional leaders don't get "too spun up" by the
administration's war rhetoric.

In today's White House press briefing, a reporter asked spokeswoman
Dana Perino about the Esquire piece. Perino refused to say whether
Fallon's position is secure until the end of his tenure, instead
attacking "rumor mills that don't turn out to be true."

<http://www.esquire.com/print-this/features/fox-fallon>
The Man Between War and Peace

As the White House talked up conflict with Iran, the head of U.S.
Central Command, William "Fox" Fallon, talked it down. Now he has
resigned.

1.

If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with
Iran, it'll all come down to one man. If we do not go to war with
Iran, it'll come down to the same man. He is that rarest of creatures
in the Bush universe: the good cop on Iran, and a man of strategic
brilliance. His name is William Fallon, although all of his friends
call him "Fox," which was his fighter-pilot call sign decades ago.
Forty years into a military career that has seen this admiral rule
over America's two most important combatant commands, Pacific Command
and now United States Central Command, it's impossible to make this
guy--as he likes to say--"nervous in the service." Past American
governments have used saber rattling as a useful tactic to get some
bad actor on the world stage to fall in line. This government hasn't
mastered that kind of subtlety. When Dick Cheney has rattled his
saber, it has generally meant that he intends to use it. And in spite
of recent war spasms aimed at Iran from this sclerotic administration,
Fallon is in no hurry to pick up any campaign medals for Iran. And
therein lies the rub for the hard-liners led by Cheney. Army General
David Petraeus, commanding America's forces in Iraq, may say, "You
cannot win in Iraq solely in Iraq," but Fox Fallon is Petraeus's boss,
and he is the commander of United States Central Command, and Fallon
doesn't extend Petraeus's logic to mean war against Iran.

So while Admiral Fallon's boss, President George W. Bush, regularly
trash-talks his way to World War III and his administration casually
casts Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as this century's Hitler
(a crown it has awarded once before, to deadly effect), it's left to
Fallon--and apparently Fallon alone--to argue that, as he told Al
Jazeera last fall: "This constant drumbeat of conflict . . . is not
helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war, and that
is what we ought to be working for. We ought to try to do our utmost
to create different conditions."

What America needs, Fallon says, is a "combination of strength and
willingness to engage."

Those are fighting words to your average neocon--not to mention your
average supporter of Israel, a good many of whom in Washington seem
never to have served a minute in uniform. But utter those words for
print and you can easily find yourself defending your indifference to
"nuclear holocaust."

How does Fallon get away with so brazenly challenging his commander in chief?

The answer is that he might not get away with it for much longer.
President Bush is not accustomed to a subordinate who speaks his mind
as freely as Fallon does, and the president may have had enough.

Just as Fallon took over Centcom last spring, the White House was
putting itself on a war footing with Iran. Almost instantly, Fallon
began to calmly push back against what he saw as an ill-advised
action. Over the course of 2007, Fallon's statements in the press grew
increasingly dismissive of the possibility of war, creating serious
friction with the White House.

Last December, when the National Intelligence Estimate downgraded the
immediate nuclear threat from Iran, it seemed as if Fallon's caution
was justified. But still, well-placed observers now say that it will
come as no surprise if Fallon is relieved of his command before his
time is up next spring, maybe as early as this summer, in favor of a
commander the White House considers to be more pliable. If that were
to happen, it may well mean that the president and vice-president
intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this
year and don't want a commander standing in their way.

And so Fallon, the good cop, may soon be unemployed because he's doing
what a generation of young officers in the U. S. military are now
openly complaining that their leaders didn't do on their behalf in the
run-up to the war in Iraq: He's standing up to the commander in chief,
whom he thinks is contemplating a strategically unsound war.

It's not that Fallon is risk averse--anything but. "When I look at the
Middle East," he says late one recent night in Afghanistan, "I'd just
as soon double down on the bet."

When Fallon is serious, his voice is feathery and he tends to speak in
measured koans that, taken together, say, Have no fear. Let Washington
be a tempest. Wherever I am is the calm center of the storm.

And Fallon is in no hurry to call Iran's hand on the nuclear question.
He is as patient as the White House is impatient, as methodical as
President Bush is mercurial, and simply has, as one aide put it,
"other bright ideas about the region." Fallon is even more direct: In
a part of the world with "five or six pots boiling over, our nation
can't afford to be mesmerized by one problem."

And if it comes to war?

"Get serious," the admiral says. "These guys are ants. When the time
comes, you crush them."

2.

It was Rumsfeld's fall that led to Fallon picking up his greatest and,
inevitably, final mission. Smart guy that he is, Robert Gates, the
incoming secretary of defense, finagled Fallon out of Pacific Command,
where he'd been radically making peace with the Chinese, so that he
could, among other things, provide a check on the eager-to-please
General David Petraeus in Iraq.

As the head of U. S. Central Command, his beat is the desert that
stretches from East Africa to the Chinese border--a fractious little
sandbox with Iraq on one edge and Afghanistan on the other and tens of
thousands of American boots already on the ground in both. Pakistan's
there in one corner, threatening to boil over and spill its nuclear
jihadists forth upon the world; in another, the Gaza Strip continues
to hum like a bowstring; and up north, the post-Soviet republics of
Central Asia, the 'Stans, rattle along under dictators who range from
the merely authoritarian to the genuinely insane. And right in the
middle lies Iran.

Where there's peace in the region, how do you keep it? Where there's
war, how do you contain it or end it? Where there are threats, how do
you counter them? For starters, you might want to make some friends.
Which is what Fallon was doing recently on a tour of his area of
responsibility.

It's late November in smoggy, car-infested Cairo, and I'm standing in
the front lobby of a rather ornate "infantry officers club" on the
outskirts of the old town center. Central Command's just finished its
large, biannual regional exercise called Bright Star, and today
Egypt's army is hosting a "senior leadership seminar" for all the
attending generals. It's the barroom scene from Star Wars, with more
national uniforms than I can count.

Judging by Fallon's grimace as his official party passes, I can tell
that the cover story in this morning's Egyptian Gazette landed hard on
somebody's desk at the White House. U.S. RULES OUT STRIKE AGAINST
IRAN, read the banner headline, and the accompanying photo showed
Fallon in deep consultation with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Fallon sidles up to me during a morning coffee break. "I'm in hot
water again," he says.

"The White House?"

The admiral slowly nods his head.

"They say, 'Why are you even meeting with Mubarak?' " This seems to
utterly mystify Fallon.

"Why?" he says, shrugging with palms extending outward. "Because it's
my job to deal with this region, and it's all anyone wants to talk
about right now. People here hear what I'm saying and understand. I
don't want to get them too spun up. Washington interprets this as all
aimed at them. Instead, it's aimed at governments and media in this
region. I'm not talking about the White House." He points to the
ground, getting exercised. "This is my center of gravity. This is my
job."

Fallon was quietly opposed to a long-term surge in Iraq, because more
of our military assets tied down in Iraq makes it harder to come up
with a comprehensive strategy for the Middle East, and he knew how
that looked to higher-ups. He also knows that sometimes his statements
on Iran strike the same people as running "counter to stated policy."
"But look," he says, "yesterday I'm speaking in front of 250 Egyptian
businessmen over lunch here in Cairo, and these guys keep holding up
newspapers and asking, 'Is this true and can you explain, please?' I
need to present the threats and capabilities in the appropriate
language. That's one of my duties."

Fallon explains his approach to Iran the same way he explains why he
doesn't make Al Qaeda the focus of his regional strategy as Centcom's
commander: "What's the best and most effective way to combat Al Qaeda?
We tend to make too much or too little a deal about it. I want a more
even keel. I come from the school of 'walk softly and carry a big
stick.' "

Fallon is the American at the center of every circle in this part of
the world. And it is a testament to his skill, and to the failure of
American diplomacy, that so much is left for this military man to do
himself. He spends very little time at Centcom headquarters in Tampa
and is instead constantly "forward," on the move between Iraq,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and all the 'Stans of Central Asia.

He was with Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf the day before he
declared emergency rule last fall. "I'm not the chief diplomat of this
country, and certainly not the secretary of state," Fallon says in
Kabul's Green Zone the next night. "But I am close to the problems."
So, he says, that leaves him no choice but to work these issues, day
in and day out.

Late that night, I am sitting with Fallon deep in the compound that
encompasses the presidential palace and the International Security
Assistance Force. We are alone inside the cramped office of ISAF's
chief public-affairs officer.

Fallon had spent several hours with "Mushi" the day before in
Islamabad, discussing his impending decision. The press coverage would
emphasize how Fallon had sternly warned Musharraf not to impose
emergency rule. But on this night, the admiral seems neither alarmed
by the move nor resigned to its more negative implications. As he
talks, Fallon casually takes off the elastic bands that clamp his camo
pants to his regulation tan boots. He's beat after a long day that
included meetings with President Karzai and a helicopter trip to
Khost, Osama bin Laden's pre-9/11 Afghanistan stronghold. But it was
the martial law next door in Pakistan that is the focus of the world.
Fallon has been through this before.

"I didn't do any preaching," Fallon says about his talks with
Musharraf. "In a previous life here, I had two extra constitutional
events: a coup in Thailand, and a head of the military took over in
Fiji. So I talked to the president for quite a while yesterday, both
with the ambassador and then alone. He walked me through his rationale
for what he was going to do and why he was going to do it and why he
thought he had to do it. We talked about what planning he'd done for
this, the downsides of this, what could happen, and how that could
screw up a lot of things. At the end of the day, it's his country and
he's the boss of it, and he's going to make his decision."

Before he walked into that room in Islamabad, Fallon had plenty of
calls from Washington with instructions to pressure Musharraf down
another path.

"I'll talk to him," Fallon replied. "There's an awful lot of china
that could break. So I'll do it in a professional manner, because I
still have to work with him."

As the admiral recounts the exchange, his voice is flat, his gaze
steady. His calculus on this subject is far more complex than anyone
else's. He is neither an idealist nor a fantasist. In Pakistan, he has
the most volatile combination of forces in the world, yet he is deeply
calm. "Did I tell President Musharraf this is not a recommended course
of action? Of course. Did I tell him there are very negative effects
that this could have? Of course. Is he aware of these? Yes.

"He's made his calculations. He feels very strongly that he's
responsible for his country. His alternative is to step down. That
would not be the most helpful thing for his country."

Why not?

"It's a very immature democracy. Look at the history of the place.
It's rough. Musharraf knows his country. He knows what he's got. Their
factions, their tribes. There's that group of folks that wants nothing
more than to start war with India, another group that wants to take
over the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas], another group
that wants to take over part of Baluchistan. He's got a tough road.
Most guys in his position do."

As for Washington's notion that Benazir Bhutto's return to the country
would fix all that, Fallon is pessimistic. He slowly shakes his head.
"Better forget that."

Less than two months later, of course, his rueful prophesy will be
confirmed when Bhutto is murdered by militants in Rawalpindi.

Meanwhile, Fallon argues that with U. S. plans in the offing to arm
Pashtun tribes against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the FATA, now would
not seem to be the time to be pushing the democracy agenda in
Pakistan.

When Fallon asked Musharraf, "How long do you expect to have to do
it?" the general answered, "Not long." And twenty-four hours later,
Fallon counseled patience. After all, he said, think about how strong
America's military relationship is with Egypt despite Hosni Mubarak's
twenty-seven-year "emergency rule."

But that doesn't mean the relationship building remains limited to
just Musharraf, and so the rest of Fallon's long day in Islamabad was
spent networking with General Ashfaq Kayani, former head of Pakistan's
much-feared Interservices Intelligence agency and new chief of army
staff. If Musharraf were ever to step or be pushed aside, Kayani is a
leading contender to replace him.

But more to the point for Fallon, Kayani becomes the operational point
man for any increased collaboration between the U. S. military and the
Pakistani army to tackle the issues of the FATA, which a Centcom
senior intelligence official calls "the huge elephant in the closet."

That's putting it mildly. The tribal region is where, according to our
own National Intelligence Estimate last year, Al Qaeda was
reconstituting its operational capacity, and was now in its strongest
position since 9/11.

As with Pakistan, Fallon keeps his powder dry when he deals with Iran.
He doesn't react like Pavlov's dog to inflammatory rhetoric from
inflammatory little men. He understands the basic rule of
international diplomacy: Everybody gets a move.

"Tehran's feeling pretty cocky right now because they've been able to
inflict pain on us in Iraq and Afghanistan." So the trick, in Fallon's
mind, is "to try to figure out what it is they really want and then,
maybe--not that we're going to play Santa Claus here or the Good Humor
Man--but the fact is that everyone needs something in this world, and
so most countries that are functional and are contributing to the
world have found a way to trade off their strengths for other
strengths to help them out. These guys are trying to go it alone in
this respect, and it's a bad gene pool right now. It's not one with
much longevity. So they play that card pretty regularly, and at some
point you just kind of run out of games, it seems to me. You've got to
play a real card."

And when the real cards finally get played, that's when Fallon will double down.

3.

The first thing you notice is the face, the second is the voice.

A tall, wiry man with thinning white hair, Fallon comes off like a
loner even when he's standing in a crowd.

Despite having an easy smile that he regularly pulls out for his many
daily exercises in relationship building, Fallon's consistent game
face is a slightly pissed-off glare. It's his default expression.
Don't fuck with me, it says. A tough Catholic boy from New Jersey, his
favorite compliment is "badass." Fallon's got a fearsome reputation,
although no one I ever talk to in the business can quite pin down why.
There are the stories of his wilder days as a young officer, not the
partying stuff but more the variety of rules bent to the breaking
point, and he's been known as anything but a dove in his various
commands, which makes his later roles as champion for engagement with
both China and Iran all the more strange.

In keeping with the naval-officer tradition of emasculating bluntness,
Fallon can without remorse cut the nuts off peers and subordinates
alike. But it is more the intimation of his ferocity than its exercise
that has the greatest effect. And Fallon has recently discovered that
his reputation can leave him open to stories that might sound true but
are not. Last fall, it was reported in the press that Fallon had
called General Petraeus an "ass-kissing little chickenshit" for being
so willing to serve as the administration's political frontman on the
Iraq surge. The old man had told reporters that it hadn't happened
like that--that that's not the way he operates, and, in fact, any time
he talks with Petraeus, there are only two men in the room--the
admiral and the general--and their exchanges remain private. And when
they're not in the same room, "We e-mail each other constantly and
talk by phone just about every day." Just the two of them, he says. No
outsiders observing. The press sources had an overactive imagination,
Fallon said. Now when the subject comes up, he dismisses it with a
wave of his hand.

"Absolute bullshit," Fallon tells me.

Fallon and his executive assistant, Captain Craig Faller, say that
they both suspect "staff agitation" to be behind the story.
Interservice rivalry is mighty strong, and Admiral Fallon is the first
navy man to be head of Centcom, so it's not hard for them to imagine
somebody from the Army stirring the pot.

Fallon says the tip-off that the story was bogus was the word
chickenshit. "My kids called me up laughing about that one, saying
they knew the story wasn't true because I never use that word."

So put Fallon down as a "bullshit" and not a "chickenshit" kind of guy.

And in truth, Fallon's not a screamer. Indeed, by my long observation
and the accounts of a dozen people, he doesn't raise his voice
whatsoever, except when he laughs. Instead, the more serious he
becomes, the quieter he gets, and his whispers sound positively
menacing. Other guys can jaw-jaw all they want about the need for
war-war with . . . whomever is today's target among D. C.'s many
armchair warriors. Not Fallon. Let the president pop off. Fallon
won't. No bravado here, nor sound-bite-sized threats, but rather a
calm, leathery presence. Fallon is comfortable risking peace because
he's comfortable waging war. And when he conveys messages to the
enemies of the United States, he does it not in the provocative cowboy
style that has prevailed in Washington so far this century, but with
the opposite--a studied quiet that makes it seem as if he is trying to
bend them to his will with nothing but the sound of his voice.

So when, during a press conference in Astana, Kazakhstan, Fallon
whispers, "The public behavior of Iran has been unhelpful to the
region," with his pissed-off glare and his slightly hoarse delivery,
he is saying, I'm not making you an offer; I'm telling you what your
options are right now.

"Iran should be playing a constructive role," he continues. "I hear
this from every country in the region."

Translation: I've got you surrounded.

He'd rather not do it, but if he has to go to war, there won't be any
anguish. Whatever qualms Fallon had about using force were exorcised
long ago in the skies over Vietnam.

"I try to be reasonably predictable to my own people and very
unpredictable to potential adversaries," he tells me.

No wonder Fallon sticks out like a sore thumb with the neocons, who
have the unfortunate tendency to come off as unpredictable to their
allies and predictable to their enemies. Which is the opposite of
strategy. He knows this stuff cold, because he's had his hand on the
stick for a very long time. The oldest of nine kids, Fallon's old man
was a mailman in Merchantville, New Jersey, following his World War II
stint in the Army Air Corps. As a boy, Fallon delivered newspapers,
bagged groceries, worked in the local Campbell's Soup plant, and would
become the first in his family to attend college. His dad's military
experiences, along with those of several of his mom's brothers,
naturally pushed him in the direction of West Point.

But his local congressman screwed up his application, and so Fallon
chose the naval ROTC program at nearby Villanova, a Catholic haven
that has produced three Centcom commanders. More than thirteen hundred
carrier landings later, Fallon began his long climb through various
combat command experiences--including Desert Storm and Bosnia--to the
pinnacle of his profession: four four-star assignments that include
vice chief of Naval Operations, commander of the Atlantic Fleet, and
then boss of Pacific Command and Central Command in rapid succession.

Sitting in his Tampa headquarters office last fall, I asked Fallon if
he considered the Centcom assignment to be the same career-capping job
that it'd been for his predecessors. He just laughed and said, "Career
capping? How about career detonating?"

At the time, I took that comment to be mere self-effacement. I have
since come to think that Fallon was deadly serious.

Weeks later, back in that hotel lounge in Kazakhstan, after a brutal
eighteen-hour day of wall-to-wall summits and meetings, Fallon is in a
more pensive mood, admitting that he never expected to stay this long
in the service. At sixty-three, he's one of the oldest flag officers
in uniform, and if you count his ROTC time, he's been in for a
whopping forty-five years total. And at this cookie-cutter chain hotel
deep in the 'Stans, Fallon wears an expression that is equal parts
fatigue and bewilderment. "I expected to be running a start-up company
by now," he says.

But something else came up.

4.

When the Admiral took charge of Pacific Command in 2005, he
immediately set about a military-to-military outreach to the Chinese
armed forces, something that had plenty of people freaking out at the
Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. The Chinese, after all, were scheduled
to be our next war. What the hell was Fallon doing?

Contrary to some reports, though, Fallon says he initially had no
trouble with then-secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld on the subject.
"Early on, I talked to him. I said, Here's what I think. And I talked
to the president, too."

It was only after the Pentagon and Congress started realizing that
their favorite "programs of record" (i.e., weapons systems and major
vehicle platforms) were threatened by such talks that the shit hit the
fan. "I blew my stack," Fallon says. "I told Rumsfeld, Just look at
this shit. I go up to the Hill and I get three or four guys grabbing
me and jerking me out of the aisle, all because somebody came up and
told them that the sky was going to cave in."

But Fallon stood down the China hawks, because as much as military
leaders have to plan for war, Fallon seems to understand better than
most the role they also have to play in everything else beyond war.
And like a good cop, Fallon doesn't want to fire his gun unless he
absolutely has to. "I wouldn't have done what I did if I didn't think
it was the right thing to do, which I still do. China is our most
important relationship for the future, given the realities of people,
economics, and location. We've got to work hard and make sure we do
our best to get it right."

For Fallon, that meant an emphasis on opening new lines of
communication and reducing the capacity for misunderstanding during
times of crisis. But beyond that, it meant telling the Chinese, "If
you want to be treated as a big boy and a major player, you've got to
act like it."

If you want recognition of your power, then you have to accept the
responsibility that comes with such power. That's the essential
message Fallon delivered to the Chinese, and if that meant he was out
of line with the Pentagon's take on rising China, then so be it. If it
seemed as though Fallon was downplaying the threat of North Korea's
missiles, it was because he preferred pushing a regional response that
signaled a united front but still left the door open for North Korea
to come in from the cold.

Fallon now brings the same approach to Iran in Central Command: "I
want to go through something positive rather than a negative like
Iran, which is a real problem." To that end, and right on the heels of
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates's meetings with Middle Eastern
ministers of defense, Fallon held a similar summit of Persian Gulf
chiefs of defense in Tampa earlier this year, something Centcom has
never attempted before.

Could Iran be a participant in something like this down the road?

"Oh, absolutely, eventually. It's like the Chinese," he says. "It
would be great if Iran turned into a team that decided to play ball in
the end."

So how does something like this happen?

How do you turn Iran into a responsible regional player? How can the
United States even approach Iran when the regime seems populated by
only hard-liners and ultraconservatives?

You start down low, says one of Fallon's senior intelligence
officials. For example, there's the shared interest in stemming the
flow of narcotics from Afghanistan to Iran. "Iran has a huge drug
problem," so that's "a potential cooperative area." More recently, the
Iranians promised to stop the flow of munitions into Iraq, arguably
contributing to the dramatic decrease in U. S. casualties from
roadside bombs. After three sets of talks with the Iranians last
summer that went nowhere, another round is being teed up. To Fallon,
this sort of engagement is crucial, given America's overall lack of
experience in dealing with Iran.

"I don't know as much as I'd like about Iran," he says. "You've got to
go elsewhere, to people in other countries. There aren't many
Americans who've had extensive experience with these guys. So that
puts us both at a disadvantage. Plus they're secretive--intentionally
so--about us. It makes it more of a challenge."

Early in his tenure at Pacific Command, Fallon let it be known that he
was interested in visiting the city of Harbin in the highly controlled
and isolated Heilongjiang Military District on China's northern border
with Russia. The Chinese were flabbergasted at the request, but when
Fallon's command plane took off one afternoon from Mongolia, heading
for Harbin without permission, Beijing relented.

The local Chinese commander was beside himself. It was the first time
in his life he had ever met an American military officer, and here he
was at the bottom of a jet ramp waiting for the all-powerful head of
the United States Pacific Command to descend. Then, to his horror, he
realized that Fallon had brought his wife, Mary, along for the trip.
Scrambling to arrange the evening banquet, the Chinese commander
brought his own wife out in public for the first time ever.

When the time came for dinner toasts, after the Chinese commander
thanked Mrs. Fallon for coming, the admiral returned the favor by
thanking the commander's wife for her many years of service as a
military spouse. The commander's wife broke down in tears, saying it
was the first time in her entire marriage that she had been publicly
recognized for her many sacrifices.

And there was peace in our time.

5.

Fallon is what is called a "four-star action officer," meaning he
tries to do too many things himself. He spends no more than a week
each month in Tampa, Centcom's headquarters. Captain Faller jokes that
if it weren't for federal holidays, Fallon's staff wouldn't know what
a day off even was.

Fallon travels at least three weeks out of each month, spending, on
average, two weeks in theater, meaning the Middle East, the Horn of
Africa, and Central Asia. He travels to Iraq and Afghanistan every
month like clockwork.

It's an unseasonably warm early-winter morning in Kabul, and Fallon is
out in the field, walking his beat. And short of the president of the
United States himself, this convoy is the richest and most opportune
terrorist target in the world at present. So everybody wears the heavy
armor. Weighed down by a helmet that feels like twenty pounds--applied
directly to my forehead--and a desert-camo flak jacket that's
decidedly heavier, I climb into the back of an armored Suburban
that'll play third-on-a-match in Fallon's three-vehicle convoy. We are
told to expect a bumpy ride, as ours is the vehicle that will
routinely swerve from side to side to position itself to ram any
vehicle that might approach the command vehicle from the side.

It's like riding in a car with the biggest asshole in the world behind
the wheel. We almost pass Fallon's vehicle--time after time--only to
slam on the brakes, slip back behind, lurch over to the other side,
and do the same thing. A word of advice: Don't do this on a heavy
breakfast. Fallon's personal enlisted aide, strapped in next to us,
says our driver is actually being fairly mellow, on the admiral's
orders. That's good to hear, as the streets are full of women and
children on foot.

Thirty minutes after we've left the maze of barricades that line every
entrance into the Green Zone, giving the place a sort of Maxwell Smart
sense of never-ending doors, we arrive at a military airport where two
Black Hawk UH-60's await. I ride with Fallon's senior aides in the
second one. I am strapped into a four-part harness, the body armor
keeping me well cocooned. Minutes after takeoff, as is the universal
custom among military personnel, everyone but the
personal-security-detail soldiers is asleep.

I scan the moonscape that is the mountains west of Kabul.

Traveling at high speed, we've been dipping ever so gently around the
mountains as we travel to Bamiyan Province, ancient home to the giant
Buddhas that are no more--parting shots from the once and future
Taliban. I can spot Fallon's Black Hawk out the window, framed from
above by the sky and below by the barrel of a large machine gun
sticking out of our helicopter's side. It's manned by a rather short
fellow whose face is almost completely obscured by his Star Wars blast
shield.

The view is amazing and reminds me why banditry and smuggling remain
dominant industries here. Every road seems to lie at the bottom of a
narrow, meandering ravine, and every walled compound looks like a fort
out of America's Wild West days. Most of the time, the only things
moving across this barren landscape are the shadows from our helos.

We alight from the Black Hawks after touching down on a strip of
asphalt located in the center of the wide, flat plain that is Bamiyan
Valley. Immediately your eyes are drawn to the dominant geological
feature: cliff walls as high as skyscrapers that run along the
valley's northern edge as far as the eye can see. Carved into the
stunning vertical cliff are two empty frames, each running fifteen or
so meters deep into the rock. Here stood the gigantic stone Buddhas
carved hundreds of years ago by monks who lived in a warren of caves
connecting the statues.

We're met at the landing zone by the Kiwi colonel, Brendon Fraher, who
leads a small unit of New Zealand's finest civil-affairs specialists
operating out of a small fort a few clicks away. The camp is home to a
Provincial Reconstruction Team manned by the Kiwis, who work hand in
glove with U. S. State Department, U. S. Agency for International
Development, and ISAF personnel in coordinating coalition
reconstruction aid to this province.

As we head to a convoy of armored Ford F-350 pickups, Fallon says that
Fraher reports two enemy rockets landed nearby yesterday, but other
than that, all's quiet. We speed off to meet the only female
provincial governor in Afghanistan. Pulling up to the local government
building, we pile out of the pickups and file into a large receiving
room blanketed by modest Persian rugs and surrounded by even more
modest couches. Just inside, we strip off the helmets and vests and
heap them into a pile of fabric-covered metal and ceramic in the
corner, all of it too heavy to hang on any coatrack.

Fallon--who's done this sort of thing so often, he seems to glide
through the protocol--zeroes in on Governor Habiba Sarabi, a
middle-aged woman of average height who's dressed in a reform sort of
way--head covered but face exposed. Despite all our accompanying
security, you've got to believe she's the biggest Taliban target in
the room.

Tea is served and formal greetings are exchanged with no need for
translation, as the governor speaks English with calculated fluency, a
skill she demonstrates a half hour into the meeting, when Fallon makes
clear that he wants to hear her complaints.

It's a tricky moment for Sarabi, because she's basically critiquing
Western aid and the military agencies represented by the officials
surrounding her now. It's like bitching about your parents in front of
Child Protective Services: Strike the right note and you might
suddenly find yourself free of them for good.

Speaking about a road long-promised by Kabul and the coalition that
would connect this isolated valley to Afghanistan's central circular
artery, the Ring Road, she suddenly blurts out, "This is three years
that the Bamiyan people have been waiting for this road!"

Fallon aggressively queries the assembled officials in order, running
from the deputy chief of mission at the U. S. embassy to the USAID
leader to the ISAF officers and, finally, the local Kiwi PRT
commander. Each offers a typically complex, bureaucratic response in
turn. Glancing at the governor, I can almost feel her anger rising.

With obvious passion, Sarabi interrupts the proceedings with a stream
of complaints about the length and complexity of USAID's planning
process. This is where her fluency in English suddenly falters, as
Sarabi's sentences start trailing off, leading the assembled officials
to fill in the blanks.

"It is very . . . "

"Long?" chimes in the USAID official.

"And there is such a lack of . . . ahh." Sarabi raises a finger to her
chin, scanning the far wall as if the word lingers there.

"Coordination?" offers the deputy chief of mission.

"It all makes me so incredibly . . . how do you say?"

"Mad?" one officer suggests.

"Depressed?"

"Angry?"

It's almost like an auction now as the bids keep rising. I'm just
about ready to toss in my personal favorite, "pissed off," when Fallon
weighs in with "frustrated"--no question mark.

Sarabi turns toward the admiral, a sly smile passes across her face.

Fallon starts probing yet again, this time cutting off officials, as
their answers obscure rather than illuminate.

Emboldened, the governor piles on with a new complaint: Every winter,
a local river becomes impassable for a local migratory tribe that is
then stranded outside the valley.

Fallon asks the deputy chief of mission, "Are you aware of this?"

The DCM replies, "No, I wasn't, and I promise to look into that."

Fallon's on a roll now, and the governor is beaming, but his efforts
soon head into a bureaucratic cul-de-sac that no one in the room can
fix. Kabul's central government simply does not prioritize this
heartland province. Fallon asks the senior American ISAF officer if
the coalition could arrange a Bailey pontoon bridge just for the
winter months. In return, he gets a complex answer about past surveys.

Fallon cuts him off and turns to the governor. "I tell you what, I'm
not getting a satisfactory answer here. I'll be honest. I don't think
we can do anything for you this winter. However, I will try to get,
from many miles away, a screwdriver big enough to push this process
for next year."

The governor immediately thanks Fallon for his promise.

Fallon doesn't forget details like that. Six months earlier, he
noticed that the American flag flying outside the Hyatt hotel in
Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, was frayed. He had told one of the defense
attachés at the U. S. embassy to get it replaced. The beaten-up flag
was still there when we arrived. It's late on the fifth straight day
of nonstop travel that has taken Fallon's entourage from Florida to
Qatar to Pakistan to Afghanistan and now to Kyrgyzstan. Tomorrow,
Tajikistan, where he'll have to put up with the Putin clone who is
president. So at the moment, maybe the flag is not all that's frayed.
His gaze fixed on it, Fallon quietly repeats his order, his voice so
low and so quiet that you can almost hear somebody's next promotion
getting axed.

6.

Unlike his Arabic-speaking predecessor, Army General John Abizaid, Fox
Fallon wasn't selected to lead U. S. Central Command for his regional
knowledge or cultural sensitivity, but because he is, says Secretary
of Defense Gates, "one of the best strategic thinkers in uniform
today."

If anything has been sorely missing to date in America's choices in
the Middle East and Central Asia, it has been a strategic mind-set
that consistently keeps its eyes on the real prize: connecting these
isolated regions in a far more broadband fashion to the global
economy. Instead of effectively countering the efforts of others
(e.g., the radical Salafis, Saudi Arabia's Wahhabists, Russia's
security services, China's energy sector) who would fashion such
connectivity to their selfish ends, Washington has wasted precious
time focusing excessively on transforming the political systems of
Iraq and Afghanistan, as though governments somehow birth functioning
societies and economies instead of the other way around.

Waiting on perfect security or perfect politics to forge economic
relationships is a fool's errand. By the time those fantastic
conditions are met in this dangerous, unstable part of the world,
somebody less idealistic will be running the place--the Russians,
Chinese, Pakistanis, Indians, Turks, Iranians, Saudis. That's why
Fallon has been aggressively hawking his southern strategy of
encouraging a north-south "energy corridor" between the Central Asian
republics and the energy-starved-but-booming Asian subcontinent (read:
Islamabad down through Bangalore and then east to Kolkata), with both
Afghanistan and Pakistan as crucial conduits.

On this trip, he's been shepherding a new bridge that links isolated
Tajikistan with Afghanistan. The potential here is huge: Tajikistan is
95 percent mountainous and extremely food dependent. Its main asset is
its untapped hydroelectric capacity. Afghanistan presents just the
opposite picture--food to export but most of the country lacks an
effective electric grid.

So what should America be pushing first in both states? Free-and-clear
elections for massively impoverished populations, or whatever it takes
to get Tajikistan's resource with Afghanistan's resource? Which path,
do you think, would scare the Taliban and Al Qaeda more? To Fallon,
there isn't even a question to answer.

But this part of the world is defined by its fortresses, and is not
known for willingly connecting to the outside world. Tajikistan's
powerful security chief, Khayriddin Abdurahimov, had been doing his
best to gum up the works on the just-finished bridge, which he allowed
to open for business only four hours a day. Having just achieved
control of the country's border-security agency, Abdurahimov believed
the bridge made the country vulnerable to Afghanistan's dangerous
drugs and nothing more.

On the eve of Fallon's arrival, President Emomali Rahmon intervened
and extended the bridge's operating schedule to eight hours a day,
admitting to Fallon in their first summit that he needs to do more to
champion the economic potential.

But Fallon doesn't stop there. Immediately following his meeting with
Rahmon, he meets face-to-face with the highly secretive Abdurahimov,
who almost never meets with foreign officials.

Just as with Musharraf, Fallon does not preach. He suggests, he
encourages, he cajoles, he offers, and he debates, but he does not
preach--save the gospel of economic connectivity. Even there, he is
not eager to appear competitive with any regional power. "I don't want
to create the impression that we're just replacing the Russians," he
says.

He just wants a damn bridge.

Fallon gets his bridge.

7.

Fallon's got a spread in a little town in Montana. The streams of this
town seem to be full of eighteen-inch fish that he says he'd like to
take a crack at someday soon. But the fish of Fallon's town are safe
for the moment.

While Condoleezza Rice and the State Department manage a vague endgame
on the two-state solution in Palestine, Gates and Fallon have begun
the regional-security dialogue that's truly regional in scope.

The rollback of Al Qaeda seems to be both real and continuing, save
for the border region of Pakistan. And to gain greater flexibility to
plan for the region, Fallon says that he is determined to draw down in
Iraq. One of the reasons Fallon says he banished the term "long war"
from Centcom's vocabulary is that he believes real victory in this
struggle will be defined in economic terms first, and so the emphasis
on war struck him as "too narrow." But the term also signaled a long
haul that Fallon simply finds unacceptable. He wants troop levels in
Iraq down now, and he wants the Afghan National Army running the show
throughout most of Afghanistan by the end of this year. Fallon says he
wants to move the pile dramatically in the time he's got remaining,
however long that may be. And he gets frustrated. "I grind my teeth at
the pace of change."

Freeing the United States from being tied down in Iraq means a
stronger effort in Afghanistan, more focus on Pakistan, and more time
spent creating networks of relationships in Central Asia. With Syria
and Lebanon recently added to Centcom's area of responsibility, look
to see Fallon popping up in Beirut and Damascus regularly. And he says
he is more than willing to take on Israel and Palestine to boot, which
for now remains a bastard stepchild of European Command.

The Persian Gulf right now is booming economically, and Fallon wants
to harness that power to connect the failed states that pockmark the
landscape to the outside world. In this choice, he sees no
alternative.

"What I learned in the Pacific is that after a while the tableau of
failed, failing, or dysfunctional states becomes a real burden on the
functional countries and a problem for their neighborhood, because
they breed unrest and insecurities and attract troublemakers very
well. They're like sewers, and they begin to fester. It's bad for
business. And when it's bad for business, people tend to start
restricting their investments, and they restrict their thinking, and
it allows more barriers, so we're back to building walls again instead
of breaking them down. If you have to build walls, it means you're
moving backward."

Fallon has no illusion about solving the Middle East or Central Asia
during his tenure, but he's also acutely conscious that with
globalization's rapid advance into these regions he may well be the
last Centcom commander of his kind. Already Fallon sees the
inevitability and utility of having a Chinese military partnership at
Centcom, and he'd like to manage that inevitably from the start rather
than have to repair damage down the line.

"I'd like to continue to do things that will be useful to the world
and its inhabitants," he says. "I've seen a lot of good things, and
I've seen a lot of stupid things."

And then there is Iran. No sooner had the supreme leader Ayatollah
Khamenei signaled a willingness to deal with any American but George
W. Bush, and no sooner had Fallon signaled America's willingness to
refrain from bombing Tehran, than a little international incident
occurred.

Just the kind of incident that doughy neocons dream sweetly about.
Right after the new year, three American ships were passing through
the Strait of Hormuz, exchanging normal greetings with Gulf State
navies, checking them out as they passed. The same with the Iranian
navy. And then, suddenly, small Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps
boats started speeding toward the American ships, showing, the admiral
says, "very stupid behavior, showboating, and provocative taunts.
Given that it was a small boat that did in the USS Cole, this was very
dangerous behavior."

The Iranians dropped boxes in the water, simulating mines.

"Remember," he says, "my first day on this job, I was greeted by the
IRGC snatching the British sailors, and so it was a sense of here we
go again. You wonder, Are they really acting on their own, because the
pattern seems clear."

Fallon's eyes narrow and his voice becomes that whisper: "This is not
how a country that wants to be a big boy in the neighborhood behaves.
How are we supposed to take these guys seriously as players in the
region? You'd like to deal with them as big-league players, but when
they do this, it's very tough."

As before, there is the text and the subtext. Admiral William Fallon
shakes his head slowly, and his eyes say, These guys have no idea how
much worse it could get for them. I am the reasonable one.

And time will tell whether being reasonable will cost Admiral William
Fallon his command.

Find this article at: http://www.esquire.com/features/fox-fallon

--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>