“If I may interject here, Mr. President,” Jeffrey Hartman said, “but as distasteful as this may sound, it appears as if we have an even trade—we shot up their island, they shot up our spy ship. I don’t believe we are on the verge of war here. Iran is flexing its muscles, to be sure, but the entire world knows that the Khomeini battle group is a paper tiger.
“Mr. President, General Freeman, I know losing even one man is hard, but I don’t believe that this is a prelude to war, nor should we make it so. After all, we started this mess by bolstering the Peninsula Shield attack mission. The loss of those ISA agents was tragic, but we took a gamble and we lost. We should just back off and let everyone cool down. We stirred up one big hornet’s nest, Philip.”
“Maybe someone should have taken care of the nest before it got so big that it threatened all the neighbors,” Freeman retorted. “The only mistake we made was letting the GCC fight our battle for them.”
“So we should’ve sent in a bombing raid on Abu Musa Island?”
Hartman asked. “We should’ve bombed that Iranian island? We’d be the bullies then, General.”
“Instead, we’ve lost a major intelligence-collecting vessel,” Freeman pointed out, “and Iran will just park their carrier task force in the Strait of Hormuz and rebuild the missile systems on that island. Do we dare sail a carrier into the Gulf, Jeffrey?
What will we have to concede to Iran so we get a guarantee that they won’t attack the carrier group?”
“They are not going to attack our carriers, Philip,” Hartman said, shaking his head. “This whole thing is a non-issue, General. We back off, let them rant and rave, and things will be back to normal. We’ve sailed a dozen carrier battle groups past those Iranian military bases in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz over the past few years, and the Iranians have ignored us.”
Freeman didn’t continue the argument, and that surprised President Martindale, who studied his National Security Advisor for a moment in silence. In the previous administration, Philip Freeman had been the long-suffering Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a lone voice urging a definitive, hard-hitting military policy in a White House that had seemed very reluctant to use military force. Before that, he’d been one of the main engineers of the Pentagon’s “Bottom-Up Review,” or BUR, a comprehensive review of U.S. military doctrine that was supposed to decide the future of the military forces for the next twenty-five years.
Freeman was a true visionary—even Martindale, leader of the political opposition at the time, had recognized it. Freeman knew that America was done fighting grand intercontinental World War III-scale wars. No longer were nuclear weapons and massive armored columns streaking across the European countryside—or even the Arabian deserts—guaranteed to win wars; in fact, Freeman had written, the nukes and the big, slow, resource-draining weapons systems were sapping the life out of the U.S. military. Speed was life. Wherever and whenever America was threatened, America had to respond rapidly, with the application of accurate, deadly—but not necessarily massive—firepower. Hit and Rit. Shoot and scoot. It wasn’t necessary to flatten the entire battlefield to cripple an enemy’s ability to make war—every little cut, every little break weakened him. Philip Freeman had showed why America didn’t need thirty bases in Germany or ten bases in England or eight bases in Japan or fifteen carrier battle groups. Global reach and global power could allow America, with proper funding and support from Congress, to fight two MRCs—major regional conflicts, Desert Storm-sized wars—and win, even with fewer forces.
But Freeman had seen his hard work and dedication to duty go to waste, as the best military machine in the world crumbled around him due to a lack of funding and, more important, a lack of strong leadership. The White House and Congress had taken the BUR cuts and effectively doubled them, reasoning that if America could win two Desert Storms with 20 percent fewer forces, it could win one Desert Storm and hold another enemy at bay with 40 percent fewer forces. Congress seemed totally out of controclass="underline" bases that the Joint Chiefs thought were useless but were located in areas popular with lawmakers were given added funding, while vital logistical and construction bases in major cities with a large civilian payroll were closed.
Foreign-policy disasters had frustrated Freeman as did domestic affairs. He had been deeply hurt after the deaths and public disfigurement of eighteen U.S. soldiers in Somalia, especially since the Somali warlord responsible for the humiliation was not only still breathing, but being flown around by United Nations officials. He had been angry and frustrated over the deaths of U.S. and allied peacekeepers in Bosnia; he had been professionally frustrated when Congress wouldn’t budget enough money even for the greatly scaled-down BUR military, He’d seen the U.S. military being sucked into a Vietnam-like quagmire in Bosnia, and seen belligerent Iran, North Korea, and China growing in military strength while the United States was constantly scaling back. War fighting was out, and peacekeeping was in—and to a soldier’s soldier like Freeman, it was like stepping into a boxing ring wearing handcuffs.
It had been obvious to presidential candidate Kevin Martindale that these perceptions were tearing Philip Freeman apart. In official press conferences, even a casual observer could tell that Freeman appeared hamstrung by inaction; after his retirement, he’d become almost a recluse. When he emerged from his Billings, Montana, ranch to address a graduation or conference—he’d rarely done press interviews after his Pentagon days—many ‘in the nation, including Martindale, eagerly wanted to hear what he had to say.
And it was that way right now. Philip Freeman’s abrupt silence meant that he had a plan, and Martindale couldn’t wait to hear it—but first there was much to do. “I don’t hear a firm consensus here, folks, so why don’t we put this on the back burner for a short while. I want everybody to gather some more data. We have to know for sure what we’re dealing with. Anything more for me?” They tossed around more ideas and issues, then the meeting broke up. “A word with you for a see, Phil,” the President said. When everyone else except Vice President Ellen Whiting had departed, the President motioned them both to a chair at the coffee table, and they sat informally.
“Talk to me, Phil,” the President ordered. “What’s on your mind?”
“The Iranians could do it, sir,” Freeman said. “Do what?”
“Close off the Persian Gulf. They’ve got the advantage of substantial land-based air assets, a pretty good air defense network to protect against cruise-missile attack, and a million-man standing army battle-hardened and ready to fight—plus they’ve got a beefed-up navy, including an aircraft carrier battle group that has the potential to mount a pretty good attack on the Lincoln carrier group. The intangibles are a pretty sophisticated chemical and biological warfare capability and possibly an advanced nuclear weapons program, far more better network of regional and world allies, including China, North Korea, nd possibly many Muslim nations such as Syria, Libya, Pakistan, even Turkey—all of whom could make lots of trouble for us elsewhere in the world, possibly opening up a ‘second front,’ if you will.”