John Abizaid

By MARK THOMPSON

When General John Abizaid inherited the U.S. war in Iraq last year, some officers wanted him to boost the U.S. troop presence there to get a firmer grip on the violence racking the country. "More U.S. troops will lead to less consent for our presence among the Iraqis," Abizaid told them. Only partly in jest, he berated as "colonialists" those who wanted more U.S. troops in Iraq.

But Abizaid, who is a realist above all, was deadly serious last week when he asked--and got approval from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld--for an increase of 20,000 troops in Iraq to deal with the insurgency. Abizaid, 53, is savvy enough to push Rumsfeld when he wants to. Although Rumsfeld refused last summer to call what was happening in post-Saddam Iraq a guerrilla war, Abizaid forthrightly referred to it as "a classical guerrilla-type campaign." Says a fellow commander about Abizaid: "He's smart enough not to lie."

Abizaid's brain is the fulcrum in the war on terrorism. He oversees the world's toughest "neighborhood," spanning 25 countries from the Horn of Africa to the Himalayas. An Arabic speaker of Lebanese descent, he won the U.S. military's most difficult job last July. Although troops embrace Abizaid's muddy-boots mien, his soft-spoken demeanor gives him a cerebral air more common to the campus than to combat. The roots of terrorism "certainly don't lend themselves easily to military solutions," Abizaid says over breakfast. He knows that winning the peace in Iraq will be far more difficult than winning the war. Patience, Abizaid thinks, is an ally of the enemy. "We think in terms of sound bites of 15 seconds," he says. "They think in terms of hundreds of years." --By Mark Thompson