Twenty-four years ago, in June 1991, as American troops began to gear up to invade Iraq, I started writing and researching my book “Certain Victory,” the U.S. Army’s official history of the Gulf War. I spent nine months reading documents and interviewing soldiers ranging from private to four-star general. I asked one question of everyone: How did the U.S. defeat the world’s fourth-largest military in only 100 hours of combat?
The universal answers from the soldiers: We fought with superior equipment, bought by the taxpayers during the Reagan years; our leaders overcame the malaise of Vietnam to build a new volunteer military; the revolutions in training and doctrine of the 1980s proved their worth.
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