Benjamin F. Jones
AUTHOR

Benjamin F. Jones

Warfare Americas France
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There is more to war than fighting. Wartime leaders must understand what their mission is and the bounds of their nations' political cause. Eisenhower's Guerrillas shows how conventional warfare and unconventional warfare can be tied together to achieve a war aim. It also shows that military leaders need to understand the war aims of their political leaders. I began my interest in this topic while serving in the 352d Special Operation Group at RAF Mildenhall in the mid 1990s. It was an amazing unit filled with great people who all had interesting stories. We did combat search and rescue for operations in Bosnia, humanitarian relief in Africa, and trained and ran exercises with up and coming NATO nations in eastern Europe. But we had predecessors back to the Second World War whose stories had never really been researched and whose stories had not been told. About a decade ago, books on the Jedburghs began coming out, but really did not explain what their missions meant, or what they did fit into the bigger picture. Nor did it really offer an assessment as to how well these first special operators and guerrilla fighters did to help win World War II. So, I wanted to organize the stories around what General Eisenhower wanted them to achieve and then measure that against the results. The actions of the Jedburghs and Maquis, the French slang for resistance fighter, can only really be understood when viewed this way. After all, General Eisenhower had to understand and work within Franklin Roosevelt's, Winston Churchill's, and Charles de Gaulle's common aims in order for his guerrillas to succeed. Where their aims diverged, he could not bring them together alone, events would have to do that. Later in my military career, and after having completed the research for this book, I served in a coalition headquarters seeking to defeat an insurgency. In Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force led by General David Petraeus and later General John Allen, often dealt with similar issues as Eisenhower did, such as trying to explain coalition intent to Afghan President Karzai while trying to understand and interpret Karzai's intent for American and other coalition nations. I often felt walking the halls and alleys of HQ ISAF in Kabul decorated with the colors of 50 contributing nations supporting the Afghans, that we had failed to appreciate Eisenhower's wisdom of operating within the realm of his contributing nation's political aims. We always seemed to be pushing those boundaries by asking for more than what Presidents Obama, Karzai, and other coalition leaders were willing to give. Doing so became exasperating and from my vantage point, it was clear that President Obama and President Karzai did not have a constructive relationship with each other, and an intermittently constructive relationship with the Commander of ISAF. Neither President agreed with Petraeus' strategy, making achieving its aims impossible. Recognizing this, made Eisenhower's modest success waging his guerrilla war all the more remarkable, as he too had to push Roosevelt into certain actions and allow the Free French to run his guerrilla warfare in France. Eisenhower's understanding and leadership of his guerrillas was lost after he left the White House but needs to be understood today, and by more than military leaders, but by political leaders and the people they serve.
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