Newsletter & Updates

Military History

On 16 Jan 1979, faced with an army mutiny and violent demonstrations against his rule, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the leader of Iran since 1941, was forced to flee the country. Fourteen days later, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of the Islamic revolution, returned after 15 years of exile and took control of Iran.

On 16 Jan 1991, at midnight in Iraq, the UN deadline for the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait expired, and the Pentagon prepared to commence offensive operations to forcibly eject Iraq from its five-month occupation of its oil-rich neighbor. At 4:30 pm EST, the first fighter aircraft were launched from Saudi Arabia and off US and British aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf on bombing missions over Iraq. All evening, aircraft from the US-led military coalition pounded targets in and around Baghdad as the world watched the events transpire in television footage transmitted live via satellite from Baghdad and elsewhere. At 7:00 pm, Operation Desert Storm, the code-name for the massive US-led offensive against Iraq, was formally announced at the White House.

On 17 Jan 1961, in his farewell address to the nation, President Dwight Eisenhower warned the American people to keep a careful eye on what he calls the “military-industrial complex” that had developed in the post-WWII years.

A fiscal conservative, Eisenhower had been concerned about the growing size and cost of the American defense establishment since he became president in 1953. In his last presidential address to the American people, he expressed those concerns in terms that frankly shocked some of his listeners.

Eisenhower began by describing the changing nature of the American defense establishment since WWII. No longer could the US afford the “emergency improvisation” that characterized its preparations for war against Germany and Japan. Instead, the US was “compelled to create a permanent armaments industry” and a huge military force. He admitted that the Cold War made clear the “imperative need for this development,” but he was gravely concerned about “the acquisition of unwarranted influence…by the military-industrial complex.” In particular, he asked the American people to guard against the “danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Eisenhower’s blunt language stunned some of his supporters. For most listeners, however, it seemed clear that Eisenhower was merely stating the obvious. WWII and the ensuing Cold War resulted in the development of a large and powerful defense establishment. Necessary though that development might be, Eisenhower warned, this new military-industrial complex could weaken or destroy the very institutions and principles it was designed to protect.

On 20 Jan 1981, minutes after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as our 40th president, the 52 US captives held at the US embassy in Teheran, Iran, were released, ending the 444-day Iran Hostage Crisis.

On 4 Nov 1979, the crisis began when militant Iranian students, outraged that we had allowed the ousted shah of Iran to travel to New York City for medical treatment, seized the US embassy in Teheran. The Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s political and religious leader, took over the hostage situation, refusing all appeals to release the hostages, even after the UN Security Council demanded an end to the crisis in an unanimous vote. However, two weeks after the storming of the embassy, the Ayatollah began to release all non-US captives, and all female and minority Americans, citing these groups as among the people oppressed by our government. The remaining 52 captives remained at the mercy of the Ayatollah for the next 14 months.

President Jimmy Carter was unable to diplomatically resolve the crisis, and on April 24, 1980, he ordered a disastrous rescue mission in which eight US military personnel were killed and no hostages rescued. I was a Mideast War planner then; the plan was wrong from the beginning. Three months later, the former shah died in Egypt, but the crisis continued. In November 1980, Carter lost the presidential election to Republican Ronald Reagan. Soon after, with the assistance of Algerian intermediaries, successful negotiations began between the US and Iran. On the day of Reagan’s inauguration, we freed almost $8 billion in frozen Iranian assets, and the hostages were released after 444 days.

On 21 Jan 1968, one of the most publicized and controversial battles of the Vietnam War began at Khe Sanh, 14 miles below the DMZ and six miles from the Laotian border.

Seized and activated by the US Marines a year earlier, the base, which had been an old French outpost, was used as a staging area for forward patrols and was a potential launch point for future operations to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. The battle began on this date with a brisk firefight involving the 3rd Bn, 26th Marines and a North Vietnamese battalion entrenched northwest of the base. The next day North Vietnamese forces overran the village of Khe Sanh and their long-range artillery opened fire on the base itself, hitting its main ammunition dump and detonating 1,500 tons of explosives.

An incessant barrage kept Khe Sanh’s Marine defenders pinned down in their trenches and bunkers. Because the base had to be resupplied by air, our high command was reluctant to put in any more troops and drafted a battle plan calling for massive artillery and air strikes. During the 66-day siege, our planes, dropped 5,000 bombs daily. The relief of Khe Sanh, called Operation Pegasus, began in early April as the 1st Cavalry (Airmobile) and a South Vietnamese battalion approached the base from the east and south, while the Marines pushed westward.

The siege was finally lifted on 6 April when the cavalrymen linked up with the Marines south of the Khe Sanh airstrip. In a final clash a week later, the 3rd Bn, 26th Marines drove enemy forces from Hill 881 North.

The official casualty count for the Battle of Khe Sanh was 205 Marines killed in action and over 1,600 wounded (this does not include the American and South Vietnamese soldiers killed in other battles in the region). Our military headquarters in Saigon estimated that the North Vietnamese lost between 10,000 and 15,000 men in the fighting at Khe Sanh.

On 23 Jan 1968, the US intelligence-gathering ship Pueblo was seized by North Korean naval vessels and charged with spying and violating North Korean territorial waters. Negotiations to free the 83-man crew dragged on for nearly a year, damaging the credibility of and confidence in the foreign policy of President Lyndon Johnson’s administration.

The capture of the ship and internment of its crew by North Korea was loudly protested by the Johnson administration. We vehemently denied that North Korea’s territorial waters had been violated and argued the ship was merely performing routine intelligence gathering duties in the Sea of Japan. Some US officials, including Johnson, were convinced that the seizure was part of a larger communist-bloc offensive, since exactly one week later, communist forces in South Vietnam launched the Tet Offensive, the largest attack of the Vietnam War. Despite this, however, the Johnson administration took a restrained stance toward the incident. Fully occupied with the Tet Offensive, Johnson resorted to quieter diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis in North Korea.

In December 1968, the commander of the Pueblo, Capt. Lloyd Bucher, grudgingly signed a confession indicating that his ship was spying on North Korea prior to its capture. With this propaganda victory in hand, the North Koreans turned the crew and captain over to us.

The crewmen’s reports about their horrific treatment at the hands of the North Koreans during their 11 months in captivity further incensed American citizens, many of whom believed that Johnson should have taken more aggressive action to free the captive Americans.

On 24 Jan 1972, after 28 years of hiding in the jungles of Guam, local farmers discover Shoichi Yokoi, a Japanese sergeant who was unaware that WWII had ended.

Guam, a 200-square-mile island in the western Pacific, became a US possession in 1898 after the Spanish-American War. In 1941, the Japanese captured it, and in 1944, our forces retook Guam. It was at this time that Yokoi, left behind by the retreating Japanese forces, went into hiding rather than surrender. In the jungles of Guam, he carved survival tools and for the next three decades waited for the return of the Japanese and his next orders. After he was discovered in 1972, he was finally discharged and sent home to Japan, where he was hailed as a national hero. He subsequently married and returned to Guam for his honeymoon. His handcrafted survival tools and threadbare uniform are on display in the Guam Museum in Agana.

On 26 Jan 1945, during WWII, Soviet troops enter Auschwitz, Poland, freeing the survivors of the network of concentration camps—and finally revealing to the world the depth of the horrors perpetrated there.

Auschwitz was really a group of camps, designated I, II, and III. There were also 40 smaller “satellite” camps. It was at Auschwitz II, at Birkenau, established in October 1941, that the SS created a complex, monstrously orchestrated killing ground: 300 prison barracks; four “bathhouses” in which prisoners were gassed; corpse cellars; and cremating ovens. Thousands of prisoners were also used for medical experiments overseen and performed by the camp doctor, Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death.”

The Red Army had been advancing deeper into Poland since mid-January. Having liberated Warsaw and Krakow, Soviet troops headed for Auschwitz. In anticipation of the Soviet arrival, the German Gestapo began a murder spree in the camps, shooting sick prisoners and blowing up crematoria in a desperate attempt to destroy the evidence of their crimes. When the Red Army finally broke through, Soviet soldiers encountered 648 corpses and more than 7,000 starving camp survivors. There were also six storehouses filled with literally hundreds of thousands of women’s dresses, men’s suits, and shoes that the Germans did not have time to burn.

On 27 Jan 1943, during WWII, 8th Air Force bombers, dispatched from their bases in England, flew the first American bombing raid against the Germans, targeting the Wilhelmshaven port. Of 64 planes participating in the raid, 53 reached their target and shot down 22 German planes—and lost only three planes in return.

On 29 Jan 2002, not long after the shocking attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush delivered a State of Union address in which he denounced countries suspected of harboring terrorists and developing weapons of mass destruction.

Both the Clinton and Bush administrations had gathered intelligence regarding al-Qaida terrorists as they organized and attended training camps in Afghanistan. After September 11, Bush ordered our military into Afghanistan to destroy those terrorist networks and hunt down al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. In his speech, Bush revealed findings in Afghanistan that indicated the existence of global networks of terrorists schooled in the methods of murder and often supported by outlaw regimes. He went on to name three countries as rogue nations that financed or supplied terrorist activity aimed at our nation and other democratic countries, describing North Korea, Iran and Iraq as an Axis of Evil.

Bush vowed to pursue a preemptive policy in fighting terrorism, stating America will do whatever is necessary to ensure our nation’s security. States who support terrorism pose a grave and growing danger, he continued. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail us. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.

On 30 Jan 1968, in coordinated attacks all across South Vietnam, communist forces launched their largest offensive of the Vietnam War against South Vietnamese and US troops.

Dozens of cities, towns, and military bases–including our embassy in Saigon–were attacked. The massive offensive was not a military success for the communists, but its size & intensity shook the confidence of many Americans who were led to believe, by the administration of President Lyndon Johnson, that the war would shortly be coming to a successful close.

On 30 Jan, during the Tet holiday cease-fire in South Vietnam, an estimated 80,000 troops of the North Vietnamese Army & National Liberation Front attacked cities and military establishments throughout South Vietnam. The most spectacular episode occurred when a group of commandos blasted through the wall surrounding our embassy in Saigon and unsuccessfully attempted to seize the building. Most of the attacks were turned back, with the communist forces suffering heavy losses.

Battles continued to rage throughout the country for weeks–the fight to reclaim the city of Hue from communist troops was particularly destructive. American & South Vietnamese forces lost over 3,000 men during the offensive. Estimates for communist losses ran as high as 40,000.

While the communists did not succeed militarily, the impact of the Tet Offensive on public opinion in the US was significant.

This offensive led many Americans to begin seriously questioning and to wonder whether our military might could truly prevail over the communist threat on foreign shores. In the 1950s, Americans had almost unconditionally supported a vigorous American response to communism; the reaction to the Tet Offensive seemed to reflect the growing skepticism of the 1960s, when Americans felt increasingly doubtful about the efficacy of such Cold War tactics. In the wake of the Tet Offensive, support for the US effort in Vietnam began steadily to decline, and public opinion turned sharply against President Johnson, who decided not to run for re-election.

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