Desert One and Its Disorders

Abstract

Desert One--largely a Special Forces operation--ended in abject failure and cost Jimmy Carter a second term as president. It was not only an organizational failure, due to a splintering of the U.S. armed forces, but a failure of political will and political appreciation. The U.S., confronted virtually for the first time with the new hostile force of Islamic fundamentalism, in the form of a devilish "soft war" scenario put together by Imam Khomeini and his lieutenants, reacted tentatively and with a certain propitiation. When five months later a hostage rescue operation was finally mounted, it was so conceived that the U.S. could call it off at any step along the way. Desert One turned out to be the defining moment that led to a sea-change in American military policy in the 1980s: the spread of the principle of joint operations for the U.S. armed forces (Goldwater-Nichols Act), and the companion Cohen-Nunn Act consolidating Special Forces under a U.S. Special Operations Command.