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

[Nicole Johnson]

Excellent compilation, Yoshie.  Thank you.  Nicole


On 3/11/08 4:17 PM, "Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:

> <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/>
> 
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