The Road to Safwan: The 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry in the 1991 ...

Conclusion 243
cers, noncommissioned officers, and individual soldiers.
In the haste to demobilize after the Desert Storm, the army
returned to the position that cavalry did not need armor. As a result,
there were no American armored units in Somalia when
they were sorely needed to take care of insurgents and rescue
American forces in Mogadishu in 1993. 1 Although the administration
of President George W. Bush came into office with a
strong desire to transform the army and make it more mobile by
cutting out many of its heavy elements, tanks were central to the
rapid victory over the Iraqi Army in 2003. Tanks were assigned
to the 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, the 3rd Infantry Division’s
cavalry squadron, and demonstrated their continual value at an
intense battle on the outskirts of As Samawah on March 21. As
Wilson demonstrated at the Battle of Norfolk in 1991 and the 3-
7 Cavalry in their more recent battle, cavalry units still need
tanks in order to succeed on the modern battlefield. 2
The story of the 1-4 Cavalry also demonstrates the importance
of trust within a community of officers. Often far from the
control of their seniors, the squadron’s officers made the decisions
that they believed their superiors wanted them to make.
When a senior commander was unhappy, such as Rhame was
with Wilson during the last stages of Combat Command Carter,
he would make the correction and send him back to the unit.
When a subordinate leader disagreed, he felt comfortable
enough to challenge the boss. This climate of command, traditionally
so important in military units, resulted in the entire
squadron all striving for the same goals, ready to take the initiative
and not concerned that one mistake would result in personal
failure or chastisement. The squadron’s cutting of the
Basra Road was an excellent example of why this command climate
is so important.
To most Americans, however, Desert Storm had been all
about technology. Many of the training programs and systems
that had demonstrated their worth were either eliminated, such
as the Combined Arms Services Staff School, or severely modified.
In their place, the army began investing in complex command
and control systems designed to monitor every subordinate’s
action from afar. Network-centric warfare, Army Battle
Command System, the BLUEFOR (Blue Force, i.e. friendly