book about Vietnam.” After Krepinevich confirmed that he was, the caller hung up without explanation. Only later did he learn from a friend on the faculty that the superintendent had banned him from speaking on campus. Most important forums where he might have spread his message within the Army ignored him. He retired a few years later as a lieutenant colonel, his book all but forgotten until the Army found itself fighting another intractable insurgency in Iraq.
Petraeus later referred to Krepinevich’s treatment as “unsettling” and “enough to make any internal critic think twice” about challenging Army orthodoxy too openly. But in a less confrontational way, that was exactly what Petraeus himself was doing. He had been thinking about Vietnam since the 1970s, when his ten-day sojourn to France piqued his interest in Bigeard and the French experience in Indochina. He also talked for hours about the conflict with his father-in-law, General William Knowlton, who as a young officer attached to Westmoreland’s staff in Saigon had helped run a rural development program aimed at winning over Vietnamese peasants. Later, at Fort Leavenworth, Petraeus and five other students had studied the largest helicopter assault of the war, Operation Junction City, in 1967. They concluded that such search-and-destroy missions were ineffective against the Viet Cong, who simply melted away rather than fight. “Large unit tactics do not appear to have been appropriate for what was primarily a political war and an insurgency,” they wrote.
Once he reached West Point, Petraeus labored in the basement ofThayer Hall for the next two years on his own Vietnam dissertation, typing on a clunky desktop computer while also teaching classes to cadets. In the summer, between his first and second years at Sosh, he traveled to the Panama Canal Zone, the headquarters of the United States Southern Command, where Jack Galvin, his mentor from the 24th, was now in command. With leftist guerrillas fighting the U.S.-backed right-wing government in El Salvador, Galvin was overseeing the military’s first counterinsurgency operation since Vietnam. The two wars were nothing alike, though. Congress, eager to stave off another overseas commitment, had with the quiet support of the Pentagon put strict limits on the effort. A few dozen American Special Forces soldiers were involved in training the Salvadoran military, trying to rein in death squads, and extending the government’s control to areas cleared of guerrillas. The Americans were barred from combat.
Petraeus attached himself to Galvin for the next six weeks, living again, if only temporarily, the glamorous life of an American officer abroad. They celebrated on the Fourth of July at Galvin’s porticoed residence overlooking the canal, drinking champagne sent over by Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega. They made trips to Peru, Colombia, and El Salvador, all of which were fighting insurgencies of varying intensity. It was a heady experience. In a stopover in the Salvadoran capital, Petraeus strode into President José Napoleón Duarte’s office with a loaded submachine gun tucked underneath his arm. A
Wall Street Journal
reporter who ran into the exuberant young major that summer quoted him on the newspaper’s front page as saying counterinsurgency was becoming a “growth industry.” Yet Petraeus was also struck by how oblivious most of his own Army was to what was happening in El Salvador. Here was a small war the Army was actually involved in, he recalled thinking, but outside of Galvin’s staff virtually all of the Army’s energy and thought were focused elsewhere.
Galvin, in his usual provocative way, wanted to spread the word about what was happening in his vast domain. He told Petraeus to ghostwrite an essay using a speech that Galvin had delivered in London on counterinsurgency and to get it published in a military journal. The article, entitled “Uncomfortable Wars,” sounded many of
Petraeus later referred to Krepinevich’s treatment as “unsettling” and “enough to make any internal critic think twice” about challenging Army orthodoxy too openly. But in a less confrontational way, that was exactly what Petraeus himself was doing. He had been thinking about Vietnam since the 1970s, when his ten-day sojourn to France piqued his interest in Bigeard and the French experience in Indochina. He also talked for hours about the conflict with his father-in-law, General William Knowlton, who as a young officer attached to Westmoreland’s staff in Saigon had helped run a rural development program aimed at winning over Vietnamese peasants. Later, at Fort Leavenworth, Petraeus and five other students had studied the largest helicopter assault of the war, Operation Junction City, in 1967. They concluded that such search-and-destroy missions were ineffective against the Viet Cong, who simply melted away rather than fight. “Large unit tactics do not appear to have been appropriate for what was primarily a political war and an insurgency,” they wrote.
Once he reached West Point, Petraeus labored in the basement ofThayer Hall for the next two years on his own Vietnam dissertation, typing on a clunky desktop computer while also teaching classes to cadets. In the summer, between his first and second years at Sosh, he traveled to the Panama Canal Zone, the headquarters of the United States Southern Command, where Jack Galvin, his mentor from the 24th, was now in command. With leftist guerrillas fighting the U.S.-backed right-wing government in El Salvador, Galvin was overseeing the military’s first counterinsurgency operation since Vietnam. The two wars were nothing alike, though. Congress, eager to stave off another overseas commitment, had with the quiet support of the Pentagon put strict limits on the effort. A few dozen American Special Forces soldiers were involved in training the Salvadoran military, trying to rein in death squads, and extending the government’s control to areas cleared of guerrillas. The Americans were barred from combat.
Petraeus attached himself to Galvin for the next six weeks, living again, if only temporarily, the glamorous life of an American officer abroad. They celebrated on the Fourth of July at Galvin’s porticoed residence overlooking the canal, drinking champagne sent over by Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega. They made trips to Peru, Colombia, and El Salvador, all of which were fighting insurgencies of varying intensity. It was a heady experience. In a stopover in the Salvadoran capital, Petraeus strode into President José Napoleón Duarte’s office with a loaded submachine gun tucked underneath his arm. A
Wall Street Journal
reporter who ran into the exuberant young major that summer quoted him on the newspaper’s front page as saying counterinsurgency was becoming a “growth industry.” Yet Petraeus was also struck by how oblivious most of his own Army was to what was happening in El Salvador. Here was a small war the Army was actually involved in, he recalled thinking, but outside of Galvin’s staff virtually all of the Army’s energy and thought were focused elsewhere.
Galvin, in his usual provocative way, wanted to spread the word about what was happening in his vast domain. He told Petraeus to ghostwrite an essay using a speech that Galvin had delivered in London on counterinsurgency and to get it published in a military journal. The article, entitled “Uncomfortable Wars,” sounded many of
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