Centcom's Renaissance Man

New Chief Abizaid Is Departure From Previous Army Leaders By Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, August 3, 2003; Page A18

BAGHDAD -- Army Gen. John P. Abizaid always knew that the responsibilities of leading the U.S. Central Command were enormous. But as Centcom's deputy commander, he also knew they were someone else's.

"When you're the number two guy, you always say to yourself, 'Gee, the CinC's sure got a big problem, I wonder how he's gonna get out of this one,' " he said in a recent interview, using the military term for commander in chief. "Now, it's me."

(Emphasis mine)

New Chief Abizaid Is Departure From Previous Army Leaders
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 3, 2003; Page A18

BAGHDAD -- Army Gen. John P. Abizaid always knew that the responsibilities of leading the U.S. Central Command were enormous. But as Centcom's deputy commander, he also knew they were someone else's.

In July, the 52-year-old Lebanese American from California became chief of Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, after serving as deputy to Gen. Tommy R. Franks.

A fluent Arabic speaker who has lived in Jordan and Lebanon and seems to enjoy being in the Middle East, Abizaid cuts a markedly different figure from his predecessor, who frequently seemed uncomfortable, almost tongue-tied, and always eager to head home to Texas.

Abizaid also has pulled off that most difficult of acts in today's Army, where suspicion of intellectualism runs deep: He earned an advanced degree from Harvard, spent a follow-up year at Stanford, and still managed to get promoted to general. Despite that Ivy League master's in Middle Eastern studies, which for many officers might be a career-killer, he retains a reputation as a soldier's soldier and a good leader.

As a commander, Abizaid built a reputation of being extremely aggressive and competitive, someone who believes in taking the fight to the enemy. In their 1973 yearbook, his West Point classmates described Abizaid as "an Arabian Vince Lombardi. . . . He just couldn't accept second place."

Abizaid bore out that praise a decade later in the U.S. invasion of Grenada, in which he commanded a company in the 75th Ranger Regiment. Needing to attack a Cuban bunker, he ordered one of his sergeants to drive a bulldozer toward it and had his men advance behind its cover. That improvised moment was memorialized in the climax of Clint Eastwood's 1986 movie "Heartbreak Ridge" -- although Eastwood made it a Marine action because the Corps was more cooperative in helping make the film.

At the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Abizaid commanded an airborne battalion that was sent to the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. He has also served as deputy division commander of the 1st Armored Division in Bosnia, commandant at West Point and commander of the 1st Infantry Division during its deployment to Kosovo. Along the way, he has been a U.N. observer in Lebanon and an Olmsted scholar at the University of Jordan.

Abizaid's colleagues say that résumé makes him particularly well suited to lead Centcom during the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, where his performance could have a large influence over the future of the Arab world. Abizaid "is in exactly the right place and will have a huge impact," said his director of operations at Centcom, Air Force Maj. Gen. Gene Renuart. "I can't imagine a better officer to have in the job at this point in our history."

Abizaid also is in the unusual position of potentially being able to affect next year's presidential election. U.S. involvement in Iraq is likely to be an issue in the campaign, especially if U.S. soldiers are still dying at the current pace of one almost every day when the debates of the New Hampshire primary are raging.

The extent of his influence was made abundantly clear, however, in his first encounter with reporters since taking over the helm at Central Command.

After weeks in which Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld repeatedly declined to say that the U.S. military was still involved in a war in Iraq, despite a mounting toll of casualties, Abizaid contradicted his boss during a July 16 news conference at the Pentagon. Baathist die-hards in Iraq, he said, were waging "a classical guerrilla-type campaign against us." For good measure, he added, "It's low-intensity conflict, in our doctrinal terms, but it's war, however you describe it."

Those comments not only made news, but sent several messages. They told the American public that casualties in Iraq aren't a failure of peacekeeping but the necessary cost of combat. At the same time, they spurred Abizaid's subordinates in Iraq to be aggressive and use all the war-making tools available to them. And they showed that Abizaid would speak his mind.

"That was General Abizaid," commented retired Army Col. Joe Adamczyk, a veteran paratroop who served at West Point when Abizaid was commandant there from 1997 to '99. "What you see is what you get -- and you get a proven warrior who combines this with tremendous aplomb, insight and understanding when dealing at the highest levels of our government and the international community."

One reason Abizaid can get away with crossing Rumsfeld is that he worked closely with the defense secretary in 2001 and 2002, as the post-Sept. 11 war on terrorism began. As director of the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- a quiet but powerful position inside the Pentagon -- he is said to have forcefully told Rumsfeld on several occasions that he was wrong on an issue. Rumsfeld has the reputation of tolerating such behavior only when his interlocutor has all the facts marshaled.

"Abizaid is as close to the secretary as a general officer is likely to get," one Rumsfeld confidante said. "Combine that with the fact that he's Arab American, and an Arabic speaker, and he will be very powerful in the region."

Abizaid was in and out of Iraq almost weekly since April in his capacity as Franks's deputy commander, but last month, on his first trip here since taking the top job, he assumed the nonstop life of the CinC.

His day began before dawn in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, at Central Command's forward headquarters. At mid-morning, Abizaid was aboard a C-130 cargo plane that touched down at Baghdad International Airport and taxied to a waiting Black Hawk helicopter, which ferried him over the flat rooftops of the city to meetings with U.S. occupation authorities.

Then it was off to a white tablecloth lunch at the al Rasheed Hotel with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and a gaggle of reporters and columnists traveling with him. Showing his inclination to confront the adversary, which sometimes includes the news media, Abizaid looked around the table at the journalists and criticized coverage that said the reconstruction of Iraq was lagging. "The impatience of the press is always of some interest to me," he said mildly. "The progress here is quite remarkable, actually."

When Wolfowitz followed by asking him a question about the Middle East, Abizaid also showed some of his easy humor. "Can I see your press credentials?" he laughingly demanded of the deputy secretary.

Then it was back to the Black Hawks for a 150 mph flight through the blazing midday heat of the fertile Tigris River valley, its bright green marsh reeds and grape and tomato patches flashing by 200 feet below. Abizaid was flying into the heart of Iraq's restive "Sunni triangle," where U.S. troops have been in combat daily over the last six weeks, so two Apache attack helicopters flew escort, watching for ground fire from hostile towns such as Samarra and Balad.

At the headquarters of the 4th Infantry Division in Tikrit, Hussein's home town, Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the division commander, gave Abizaid a surprisingly optimistic overview of the recent U.S. offensive against resistance in the area. "Over the last two weeks, we've hit the weapons caches, and we've really hit the money guys," Odierno said. After the most recent action, in which hundreds of mid-level Baath Party operatives were detained, he added, "the local populace saw us picking these guys up and now we're getting intelligence in droves."

One of Odierno's brigade commanders succinctly summarized the state of the action. "Most of our incidents are initiated by us," he said. "We're kicking . . . ass."

Leaving the division headquarters, Abizaid gave a short talk of appreciation to the enlisted soldiers running the command post's computers and radios. "You are at the heart of the global war on terrorism," he said.

A moment later he had a short conversation with Samear Zaitoon, an interpreter for the division, who came away impressed. "He speaks excellent Arabic," Zaitoon said.

Then, as the sun dropped low and red over the western desert, he jumped back into a helicopter for two more meetings with commanders at outposts along the Tigris valley. His day didn't end until 10 p.m., when the helicopters put down for the final time back in Baghdad. Even then, Abizaid continued to move around, restlessly pumping his staff for ideas, talking to soldiers about their lives in Iraq and preparing for the next day's meetings.

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