Diplomat, statesman, humanitarian: Zinni’s traits and experience crucial in new role

Villanova alumnus Anthony Zinni, a retired general of the U.S. Marine Corps, was  appointed on Nov. 19 by Secretary of State Colin Powell, as special envoy responsible for advancing President Bush’s peace efforts in the Middle East. Zinni will serve as special adviser to Powell in the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

The former four-star general has strong ties to the region, having served there for nearly a decade, including four years as the top U.S. military commander in the region. Prior to his retirement from the Marine Corps, Zinni most recently held the position of commander in chief of the United States Central Command (USCENTCOM), responsible for monitoring U.S. interests in a regions that spans 20 countries in the Middle East (including Iraq), North Africa and Southwest Asia.  Zinni commanded the region during the last crisis in Iraq which occurred in the late fall of 1997.

The Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, native’s new role in the Middle East peace mission was recorded in an Associated Press story by Matt Kelley (dateline Washington, D.C.), published in The Philadelphia Inquirer on Nov. 25. 

‘With his burly frame and no-nonsense demeanor, Zinni’s physical appearance probably conveys a message that uses to his advantage.  He’s a very forceful speaker,’ said Jay Farrar, a former Pentagon and National Security Council official now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. ‘At the end of the day, that’s what helps him in the diplomatic process.”

To prepare for the job as head of the U.S. Central Command, Zinni studied Arabic, Middle East history and politics and traveled extensively through the region, meeting military and political leaders.  Many of the lower-level people he befriended in the 1990s have more senior posts now. 

Zinni is credited with helping Ethiopia and Eritrea in trying to resolve a border dispute that led to a war and oversaw the U.S. military’s 1995withdrawal from Somalia (where fighters allegedly linked to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network shot down two U.S. helicopters and killed 18 American soldiers in 1993.He also commanded the operation that fired Tomahawk cruise missiles on al-Qaeda training campus and a factory in Sudan after the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa. 

‘People trust Zinni because he’s a straight shooter who keeps his word and expects everyone else to do so,’ Farrar said.  ‘He’s also not naive.  He understands that the American point of view is not the only point of view, that other perspectives have to be taken into account,’ said Farrar.

Zinni is the son of an Italian immigrant who got U.S. citizenship by serving in the military. He is the first in his family to attend college. Having been a sickly teenager, he took up weight lifting at Villanova ain the 1960s.  According to Irene Burgo, a writer for the University’s alumni magazine, Zinni also toughened his mind with difficult courses in philosophy.

‘He felt it gave him a very strong moral and spiritual grounding.  It wasn’t because Villanova was a religious institution.  Zinni felt there was a moral grounding here that generally pervaded without being indoctrination,” said Burgo, who interviewed Zinni in 1997 in the only extensive interview he has granted.

Zinni enlisted in the Marines while at Villanova.  During the summers, he attended the Platoon Leader’s Course and was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1965.

He served a tour of duty in Vietnam in 1967, as a liaison with the South Vietnamese Marines.  He returned to Vietnam as a company commander in 1970, was wounded in a firefight and earned two Bronze Star medals.

Zinni has said his experience in Vietnam taught him that communicating goals clearly is vital.  His commanders could never give a good answer when he asked what America’s objective in Vietnam was, Zinni said in a 1998 interview. 

“I promised myself after that I would always explain to the troops why we were doing what we were doing and I would never accept a mission or a tasking that I didn’t feel was right or that I couldn’t understand,” Zinni said.

Marine Brig. Gen. Edward Langston described Zinni as purposefully understated and shy of publicity.  He spent weeks studying a battlefield problem and then invested almost as much time communicating his vision to subordinates–from one-star general to young company commanders, Langston said in an interview in 1998.  He acted as a teacher, pontificating on the finer points of war and “is very calm and very composed,” said Langston. “He puts the folks at ease whether he’s wearing the uniforms or whether he’s with the ambassadors of the world.”

Zinni aides did not respond to reporter Kelley’s request for an interview Monday (Nov. 19).

While in the military, Zinni also earned master’s degrees in management and international relations and taught tactics and other courses to junior officers.

Zinni’s overseeing several operations against Iraq in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, further expanded his expertise in unconventional, modern warfare.

He also embraced his dual role as diplomat and military commander at Central Command in an era that saw the U.S. regional commanders gain nearly unprecedented power as representatives of U.S. foreign policy.

“If you constrain yourself to military thinking and military learning, you’re going to be fairly narrow,” Zinni said in 1998.  “More and more, senior officers have to be a blend of diplomat, statesman, humanitarian.”

(For more information, see the Summer 1998 issue of Villanova Magazine, article by Irene Burgo.)