Defending the defenders: A response to Kiesling

Sunday, I attended former diplomat John Kiesling's talk to the Princeton Middle East Society. The talk was certainly interesting, albeit sensational. My quote that was published in yesterday's paper does not accurately reflect my assessment of Mr. Kiesling's position.

I'm an officer in the military. It has been my job to execute the civilian government's policy, not form or analyze it. I'll refrain from passing judgment on Mr. Kiesling's analysis of the current President's war on terror.

However, I will address Mr. Kiesling's misrepresentation of the U.S. Navy's Maritime Interdiction program. During the question-and-answer session that followed the resigned diplomat's speech, Mr. Kiesling cited the U.S. Navy's implementation of this program by the military's European Command in the Mediterranean as an example of the military creating a mission in order to justify its force structure. He smugly added that the Navy spent its time zooming around in stealthy black boats instead of coordinating its operations with regional coast guards.

Now for the truth. The Navy's Maritime Interdiction program is the latest version of an age-old naval mission. Boardings and inspections of ships have existed as long as one country has sought to prevent certain cargo or persons from leaving or entering another country. The current American incarnation, known as Maritime Interdiction Operations (or MIO), blossomed under Central Command in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War. The U.N.-brokered peace agreement between the coalition and Iraq imposed an embargo on Iraqi trade, to remain in effect until the Iraqi government proved that it had dismantled its WMD programs. The Ambassador's characterization or this program's origins was, at the least, misleading.

Even more misleading was his qualitative description of the program. Last summer, I served as a boarding officer in Operation Enduring Freedom in the Persian Gulf. I participated in 27 boardings. Our task force searched every merchant entering and leaving Iraq in order to confirm that their cargos were in compliance with U.N. Security Council Resolutions 661 and 986, which governed the terms of the economic sanctions. We did not zoom around in stealthy black boats — we had noisy gray boats with large radar cross-sections (not at all stealthy). To Mr. Kiesling's credit, there are a very few stealthy boats used; however, they aren't used for admirals' entertainment. They are used sparingly and when necessary to ensure tactical surprise in cases of armed or resistant merchants.

Our ship served under the command of an Australian Commodore, who was in charge of several American ships, as well as a few Australian, British, and Canadian vessels, and with the support of Kuwaiti and Omani coast guard authorities. In the past month, Australian, American, French, and Japanese vessels completed a MIO exercise in the South Pacific. When folks talk about preventing North Korea from exporting its weapons technologies, maritime embargo, enforced by a MIO program, would be a critical component of such sanctions. Contrary to the diplomat's assertions, the American Navy almost always coordinates its MIO programs with other nations.

I won't surmise whether the speaker's misrepresentation was one of negligent confusion or willful distortion. When I spoke to him of his misrepresentation, he simply admitted his error, and did not try to justify it. Whatever his motivation, Mr. Kiesling's comment and the audience's reaction are a powerful reflection of relations between the academy and the military, and deserve a closer look.

The tone of Mr. Kiesling's comments on the MIO regime echoed an earlier part of his speech in which he characterized "military men" as "ambitious" and "self-serving." Why was Mr. Kiesling so comfortable in making this characterization of the military man, even in a post-Sept. 11 environment, when many military men and women are involved in rather risky missions that are anything but "self-serving"? Clearly, he did not guess that there would be an officer in student's clothing present at his talk. After all, he was speaking at Princeton University, a preeminent organ of the American academy. Since the academy's desertion of the military during the Vietnam War, there has been little effort by academic elites to include the military in its broader mission of education.

Mr. Kiesling knew his description of the MIO program would be a crowd-pleaser in this academic environment. The military remains a favorite whipping boy at America's colleges. His estimate was confirmed by widespread chuckles as the audience pictured a naval version of Stanley Kubrick's Buck Turgidson dreaming up missions for his mothballed Mediterranean men-o'-war.

Many lament the rightward drift of the American officer corps, and they are right to do so. An apolitical military is the most important guarantee of civilian control over the armed services. However, after listening to Mr. Kiesling's talk, and observing the fawning reception of his audience, some responsibility for this trend must be placed on the academic left's rejection of the military. Let's just hope the academy makes an effort to reintegrate the military in its student body, its faculty, and its curriculum — both communities could learn much from each other. And if the military ever slides as far right as the academy has entrenched itself on the left, we will all be in trouble — the grand ambitions of a politicized general staff are much more potent than the idle musings of the ivory tower.

Henry G. Nuzum is a Lieutenant junior grade in the Navy Reserves.