General Norman Schwarzkopf, military hero of Gulf war, dies at 78

Norman Schwarzkopf
1934-2012

General Norman Schwarzkopf commanded the US-led forces that crushed Iraq in the 1991 Gulf war to become America's most acclaimed military hero since the mid-century exploits of generals Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur.

In Operation Desert Storm, Schwarzkopf - who has died in Florida, aged 78 - orchestrated one of the most lopsided victories in modern warfare, a six-week blitzkrieg by a broad coalition of forces with overwhelming air superiority that liberated tiny Kuwait from Iraqi occupation, routed Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard and virtually destroyed Iraq's infrastructure, all with relatively light allied losses.

Winning the lightning war was never in doubt and in no way comparable to the traumas of the second world war and the Korean conflict, which made Eisenhower and MacArthur into national heroes. But a divisive Vietnam conflict and the cold war had produced no such heroes, and the little-known Schwarzkopf was wreathed in laurels as the victor in a popular war against a brutal dictator.

The general, who retired soon after the Gulf war and lived in Tampa, died of complications arising from pneumonia, said his sister Ruth Barenbaum.

A combat-tested, highly decorated career officer who held many commands, served two battlefield tours in Vietnam and co-ordinated US landing forces in the 1983 invasion of Grenada, Schwarzkopf came home from the Gulf to a tumultuous welcome, including a glittering ticker-tape parade up Broadway.

"Stormin' Norman", as headlines proclaimed him, was lionised by millions of euphoric Americans who, until weeks earlier, had never heard of him. Then- president George H. W. Bush, whose popularity soared with the war, gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Congress gave him standing ovations. Britain's Queen Elizabeth made him an honorary knight. European and Asian nations conferred lavish honours.