What comes to our mind's eye about the Gulf War? From beginning to end, the great, bear-like, confident figure of Gen Schwarzkopf, the allied commander, will be remembered by most people.
But where is his equivalent now? We see the Secretary of Defence, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, and retired Gen Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, back in Washington. They provide the very necessary civil control. But where is the commander of operation Enduring Freedom? Should he not be visible on the ground, as Schwarzkopf was?
There are, of course, reasons why no commander has yet appeared. There is no firm ground base available in the area, a significant fact. The Arab states have not yet felt confident enough to host the HQ of a commander whose job it will be to direct a war on other Arabs. The double standards for Israel have consequences. The ultimate scope of operations is not yet fully agreed.
In the meantime, who is in charge? There is reference to senior American and British planners in Tampa, Florida, dealing with operations in Afghanistan. This has a precedent, if hardly a promising one. The 1988 Somalia operation to capture Mahomad Farah Aideed was planned in Florida.
There are five US "Unified Military Commands", each with a "Special Operations Command" assigned to it. The US Central Command (CENTCOM) is located in Tampa, Florida and deals with Central and South-west Asia/Middle East/East Africa.
All this is far from the caves and beleaguered towns of Afghanistan. Gen Schwarzkopf was the Commander of Central Command in 1990. He moved immediately to Saudi Arabia and took charge of the operation to expel the Iraqis from Kuwait. Anonymous staff officers, 4,000 miles away, are no substitute, although one appreciates the difficulties of setting up a new "Desert Storm" type HQ.
Cluster bombs are topical. There are various types, but they are usually dropped in what used to be called dispensers that open and scatter 202 bomblets. The dispensers are now called bombs and their contents are called cluster bomblets. Each bomblet is about the size of a soft drinks can. They can have high explosives, incendiary devices, etc. Each bomblet-case fragments into 200 pieces of flying shrapnel; enough to cover a football field.
They are area, not point weapons, intended for "spread out" targets - troops in trenches, vehicles in car parks, artillery gun positions, etc. Various explosion timings can be set, but they are intended to self-destruct eventually. About 10-15 per cent fail to self-destruct and remain as minefields. They also inhibit movement near guns, parked aircraft, bomb craters on runways, etc.
We first saw them in 1978. The Israelis had dropped hundreds during their first invasion of Lebanon. They resembled grey tennis balls in size, shape and seaming. Children picked them up and lost their hands. A camel trying to hobble on three legs is not a pretty sight. They remained dangerous until destroyed by Explosive Ordnance Disposal officers of the UN force. There was evidence that some were past their "use by" dates. This may have inhibited self-destruction.
President Carter, to his credit, stopped the export of cluster bombs to Israel - a courageous act with an election not long away. President Reagan replaced President Carter and soon allowed the resumption of exports.
There was a Canadian saying in the Sinai: "I'm a fully qualified coward where mines are concerned." This writer concurred. There was an estimate of 12 million mines in the desert in the late 1970s. One studied them avidly, became familiar with the minefield markings, if any, met the occasional grim casualty - and walked carefully.