Now available for pre-order from amazon.com, A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country, by Wesley K. Clark, scheduled for release September 18, 2007.
An excerpt:
I scanned left and right, hoping they weren’t maneuvering around us. I could tell something was wrong with my foot – it wasn’t moving right, and now I could see the broken bone sticking out of my hand. I wasn’t in pain, but I really didn’t want to be right here, right now – not like this. For an awful instant I remembered my three month old son at home, my son whom I hadn’t even seen yet.No, it wasn’t going to end like this, and I suppressed the thought.
Focus. Fight. Take charge.
“Get that gun going!” I shouted again, as I looked back under my left arm and saw the first troops come across the little footbridge. They were here. And they came running, those peace-symbol-lovin’, foul-cussin’, war-hatin’, draftee American soldiers came, right into the firefight. They came right into the smack of the bullets, and the whine of the ricochets. They were called forward, and they came! God, I loved them.
I remember those soldiers.
I'm a post-Vietnam era veteran. I joined up in 1973, when the war was all but over. But I served with those draftee soldiers.
Some of them were just waiting out their ETS. Others stuck around maybe because of a weak economy and no jobs at home, or to work on their education, or because they found something in the Army, even the broken Army of the '70s, that wasn't there for them in the civilian world. Some of them would stay to make a career of it, and some would move on when civilian pastures turned greener.
But whatever each individual story might be, you had to love them. These were the young men who had answered when their country called. They hadn't hid out in the Guard, or had "other priorities." And not because they didn't hate war as much as anyone -- those who had actually seen war almost always hated it more -- but because they recognized an obligation to something bigger than just themselves.
Now, you can say they didn't have a congressman daddy to make the phone calls for flight school and a champaign squadron assignment. Or they didn't have the money for college and a deferment (or five). Or maybe they just didn't have the smarts, or maturity, or presence of mind to manipulate the system and keep themselves out of harm's way. But there's one thing you can't say. You can't say they didn't know how much being a soldier might some day cost them, and how cheap and easy it would have been to run away instead. By the end of the 1960s, everyone knew that much.
And yet each of them chose to raise his right hand and take an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. I often wonder how many young people, what percentage of the generation of 18 to 21 year olds, would make that same choice today.
Every study, for that matter every combat vet, will tell you that soldiers don't fight for democracy or freedom. They don't fight for policy or politics. They don't even fight for mom, apple pie, and the girl next door.
Soldiers fight for their buddies in combat. They fight so they won't let their buddies down, so they won't feel like they haven't done their part, or haven't pulled their fair share of the load. They fight because they see themselves as part of a team, and the more the team has endured together, the stronger the bonds that connect the members to each other.
Senior military leaders today are quick to say they don't want to return to a draft. They know that the modern All Volunteer Force is the most tactically capable and technically competent army the world has ever seen. And that's a great thing. It saves lives in combat, and allows a commander to do more with less.
But sometimes I think they forget that what really makes a soldier has nothing to do with how well they shoot, move and communicate. It has everything to do with how much they're willing to give. And American soldiers throughout our history have been willing to give, regardless of whether they were drafted, hired for pay and benefits, or enticed with tales of glory and adventure. They all seem to have that capacity, so what makes it work for some and not for others?
Sorry. I don't pretend to know.
But I do know this much. There's only one thing that keeps a military unit under extreme stress, whether in great psychological pain or shaking with fear, from becoming an unruly, out-of-control mob. And that's the quality of leadership. The leader builds the team through which the soldiers feel connected, so that they will fight for each other. But he, or she, does it by building up the individuals as well. Because ultimately, it's individuals who make choices. When leadership is lacking, you get a My Lai or Haditha. When it's there, you usually don't hear about it... which is exactly how it should be.
I don't know to what extent the same is true in the civilian world, but I do believe we Americans, as a people, have accepted far too many failings from our president because of the pain and fear after 9/11 and the hunger for leadership that we feel. We have allowed ourselves to forget the ideals upon which we were founded, the ideals we have tried our damnedest to live up to for over 200 years.
Frank Herbert wrote in his science fiction novel Dune, "A leader is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people." Americans need to be a people again. We need a real leader.
We need Wes Clark.
