American Soldier     by General Tommy Franks  (with  Malcolm McConnell)                  Back to What Kotik Reads

HarperCollins, New York: 2002

What we know for sure is that General Tommy R. Franks is a consummate strategist. His historic campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq  are the first paragraphs  of a new and revolutionary chapter in the history of war. How  to approach the memoir of a master strategist, one who has not yet left the stage ? The reader is challenged to judge whether the man who achieved tactical surprise in Iraq (after a months-long, highly visible buildup in neighboring Kuwait) has finally shown his hand.

Franks’s memoir, American Soldier, is published by ReganBooks, an imprint of New York publishing giant HarperCollins. I had occasion to read and review another ReganBooks release a few days ago, and so elements of the house style have become apparent to me. 

The prose has the content density of a tabloid feature story, making for a fast read. Editing is a tiny bit sloppy, laying down a few speed bumps along the narrative highway: Paul Bremer, the top US civilian administrator in Iraq, is introduced and then  referred to as ‘Jerry’ Bremer. This is Bremer’s nickname, but that’s not widely known and so the conventional introduction, “ Paul ‘Jerry’ Bremer”, would have been helpful.

There is little in the way of new disclosures about the Iraq or Afghanistan campaigns or the politics around them. General Franks reiterates his expressed prewar conviction that the Iraqi regime had deployed non-conventional weapons and fully intended to use them in battle. According to Franks, King Abdullah II of Jordan and President Hosni Mubarak had personally assured him that this was the case. Franks concedes his surprise that stockpiles of such weapons have not been found – and his relief that none were used on Coalition forces.  His catalog of those items of WMD production infrastructure and precursor materials that were, in fact, found by Coalition forces is most instructive. He likens living with Saddam Hussein in power to sitting at a table with a serial killer and a disassembled handgun.

Tommy Franks comes across as a thoroughly likable, even lovable guy. He is, above all else, a true American soldier, and as such his account of the American geostrategic and military posture post – 9/11, bearing as it does upon the outcome of an ongoing conflict, is shaped to serve American strategic interests as Franks knows them.

Franks makes no bones about the overriding importance he attaches to loyalty  - mutual loyalty – between commanders and their subordinates. He emphasizes the leverage gained by getting inside an adversary’s decision-making process, and the force-multiplying effect of deception. These are the very rocks upon which Tommy Franks has walked on the way to completing his missions, and he is very clear that completing the mission is the supreme value.

A cynical reader of American Soldier might conclude that Franks signals, up front, that his memoir is an instrument whose purpose is to promote American interests and those of his commanders and his subordinates. It is that, but not only that, and there is nothing even slightly dishonest about it. Full disclosure of the  filters through which Tommy Franks passes his story establishes the quality of its integrity.

This is a presentation of events  by a man who is eternally true to his nation , his troops and his officers. Franks might ( as he suggests  Donald Rumsfeld might ) well shake hands with the devil  if that would further his goals in the war on terror. His loyalty to his President, George W. Bush, and to SecDef Rumsfeld is ironclad. There are things General Franks cannot tell us, things he won’t tell us and things he tells us in a designing way.

But  I, for one, have the clear sense that Franks’s loyalty extends to me, too, and to all his countrymen. I trust him. He would never, ever deceive us or dissemble unless it were essential to completing the mission, defending American or protecting his forces. Our mission. Our forces.  That is how it should be. That is what makes Tommy R. Franks an exemplary soldier,  an invaluable citizen, and not too bad a storyteller at all.