thedrifter
10-23-08, 03:27 PM
Medal of Honor recipient criticizes war planning
By RICHARD PYLE, Associated Press Writer
Thu Oct 23, 7:33 am ET
"If Not Now, When?" (Berkeley Publishing Group. $25.95. 275 pages), by Col. Jack Jacobs (retired) and Douglas Century.
The Medal of Honor, the United States' highest military award for battlefield valor, does not come easily. During and since World War II, 60 percent have been bestowed posthumously, and not one has been given to a living recipient since the Vietnam War era.
All of which makes Jack Jacobs — the author of "If Not Now, When?" — a member of a vanishing tribe, those soldiers who survived their own acts of exceptional heroism to tell the story.
When Jacobs earned his accolade (one doesn't "win" a Medal of Honor) as an infantry officer in Vietnam in 1969, there were 450 living recipients. Today, he notes, there are fewer than 100, most of them in their 80s.
"In less than 15 years, there will be none of us left," he writes.
Jacobs is unusual in that he was cited for "conspicuous gallantry" while serving as a U.S. adviser to a South Vietnamese army unit rather than with American troops. He fought off a Viet Cong assault, rallied the allied force and saved more than a dozen lives, according to the record.
As the book demonstrates, being a member of an elite group of genuine heroes facing extinction is not the only thing setting Jacobs apart from most former career soldiers. While recounting his own experiences, he also takes some serious shots at how the U.S. government, and in particular its military leaders, have handled more recent wars.
He writes that the Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, was right to tell Congress in 2003 that the Iraq operation would require hundreds of thousands more troops than the Pentagon had planned, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was wrong to "flippantly dismiss" Shinseki's estimate as being "far from the mark."
In criticizing civilian leaders for disastrous decisions, ignoring the advice of senior military officers, Jacobs condemns certain of those officers for failing to raise objections when they should.
If either Gen. Tommy Franks, the Iraq force commander, or Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Myers thought the Pentagon plan was "unworthy," he writes, they owed it to their uniforms, the nation and the troops to speak out.
"And if they thought the plan was a good one, then they were fools. In either case, they failed this country," Jacobs says.
Polemics aside, "If Not Now, When?" is an American story, taking the author from his origins as the Brooklyn-born son of Greek Jewish immigrants, through a 20-year Army career and a postwar life on Wall Street and as a sought-after military analyst on television.
It is almost a novelist's vision of what a Medal of Honor recipient should be — a young man of obscure beginnings whose success is fueled by determination that comes in part from being short of stature, in Jacobs' case, 5 feet 4 inches.
In that respect, he is not unlike the two best-known Medal of Honor recipients of the time: Audie Murphy, the 5-foot-5-inch Texas youth who became the most decorated U.S. soldier of World War II and went on to Hollywood fame, and Jacklyn "Jackie" Lucas, who lied about his age to enlist and had just turned 17 when he saved fellow Marines by covering two live grenades on Iwo Jima.
Ellie
By RICHARD PYLE, Associated Press Writer
Thu Oct 23, 7:33 am ET
"If Not Now, When?" (Berkeley Publishing Group. $25.95. 275 pages), by Col. Jack Jacobs (retired) and Douglas Century.
The Medal of Honor, the United States' highest military award for battlefield valor, does not come easily. During and since World War II, 60 percent have been bestowed posthumously, and not one has been given to a living recipient since the Vietnam War era.
All of which makes Jack Jacobs — the author of "If Not Now, When?" — a member of a vanishing tribe, those soldiers who survived their own acts of exceptional heroism to tell the story.
When Jacobs earned his accolade (one doesn't "win" a Medal of Honor) as an infantry officer in Vietnam in 1969, there were 450 living recipients. Today, he notes, there are fewer than 100, most of them in their 80s.
"In less than 15 years, there will be none of us left," he writes.
Jacobs is unusual in that he was cited for "conspicuous gallantry" while serving as a U.S. adviser to a South Vietnamese army unit rather than with American troops. He fought off a Viet Cong assault, rallied the allied force and saved more than a dozen lives, according to the record.
As the book demonstrates, being a member of an elite group of genuine heroes facing extinction is not the only thing setting Jacobs apart from most former career soldiers. While recounting his own experiences, he also takes some serious shots at how the U.S. government, and in particular its military leaders, have handled more recent wars.
He writes that the Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, was right to tell Congress in 2003 that the Iraq operation would require hundreds of thousands more troops than the Pentagon had planned, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was wrong to "flippantly dismiss" Shinseki's estimate as being "far from the mark."
In criticizing civilian leaders for disastrous decisions, ignoring the advice of senior military officers, Jacobs condemns certain of those officers for failing to raise objections when they should.
If either Gen. Tommy Franks, the Iraq force commander, or Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Myers thought the Pentagon plan was "unworthy," he writes, they owed it to their uniforms, the nation and the troops to speak out.
"And if they thought the plan was a good one, then they were fools. In either case, they failed this country," Jacobs says.
Polemics aside, "If Not Now, When?" is an American story, taking the author from his origins as the Brooklyn-born son of Greek Jewish immigrants, through a 20-year Army career and a postwar life on Wall Street and as a sought-after military analyst on television.
It is almost a novelist's vision of what a Medal of Honor recipient should be — a young man of obscure beginnings whose success is fueled by determination that comes in part from being short of stature, in Jacobs' case, 5 feet 4 inches.
In that respect, he is not unlike the two best-known Medal of Honor recipients of the time: Audie Murphy, the 5-foot-5-inch Texas youth who became the most decorated U.S. soldier of World War II and went on to Hollywood fame, and Jacklyn "Jackie" Lucas, who lied about his age to enlist and had just turned 17 when he saved fellow Marines by covering two live grenades on Iwo Jima.
Ellie