I was the Mideast war planner for US Readiness Command at MacDill AFB in Tampa from 1977 to 1981. In those days we thought the enemy we’d be fighting over the Mideast oil would be the Soviet Union. My modest efforts probably became a part of the first draft for Desert Shield–the first (defensive) phase of the first Gulf War. Today, in 1991, the offensive phase, Desert Storm, began. The ground attack phase of Desert Storm lasted only 100 hours–though things would likely have been better in the world if we’d kept fighting and had taken Saddam out then.
The enemy then and now is Radical Islam–that is people of the Islamic faith who take the very radical position that all who are not of their belief need to be dead. Like in all religious wars, some are true believers and some are just using religion to achieve personal ends. In any case, it is not main-stream Islam that is the enemy. It’s the radicals. And, yes, we may just find ourselves fighting them here in the USA.
