The Odoms: Father and Son

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Last night as I was flipping through Middlebury College’s Magazine spring 2008 edition I came across “The Road to Hawr Rajab,” a feature story on alum Mark Odom by The New York Times chief military correspondent Michael Gordon. Now, I am not a Middlebury graduate, but I think highly of the college and its magazine. But Odom’s name, in particular, drew my attention.

Yes, US Army Lieutenant Colonel Mark Odom is the son of the recently deceased William E. Odom, the retired Army lieutenant general, former NSA director and long time Soviet expert who was openly and critically outspoken of the US invasion of Iraq and US heavy handed policy towards Iran. He foremost expressed a pragmatic view of US interests and his wisdom will be missed. One hopes his realistic view of the world has also rubbed off on his son. It is, above all, patriotic.

Why Mark Odom chose the career military is best left to Gordon’s article to explain. Whether in his heart of hearts the son truly thinks the US has a chance of achieving its goals and creating a unified, stable Iraq that is also democratic is questionable – although given his employer – wisely left unstated at this time.

Whether Mark Odom will rise to the heights of his father's profession is also an open question – the son, after all, entered the service through ROTC not West Point. It seems to me, regardless, that the next generation of US professional military leaders is likely to come from those who, like Odom, have “been there and done that,” e.g. served multiple tours on the ground in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, have learned how to adapt to different forms of conflict and can speak from real life experience not just the podium of some ideologically driven Washington, DC-based think tank.

I first came across Bill Odom’s name when I was working as a very junior editor on USIA’s then academic and intellectual journal Problems of Communism which expired after the Cold War ended. Odom had recently returned from the US Embassy in Moscow as a military attaché from 1972-4 where he, according to his recent Washington Post obituary, “studied Soviet life." An aside: Wonder who thought up that, ahem, euphemism. Questionable choice of words for an otherwise excellent obit.

Unlike most professional military or Foreign Service Officers, Odom wrote prolifically for publication even while on active duty. What I remember him writing for POC at the time was an article about the Soviet military – not the Bolshoi, the Tretyakov Gallery, the metro, the Soviet jazz underground or any other form of “Soviet life” that I experienced there three years later. He truly was an expert in his field. That he was considered a “hard liner” who also understood the political faces of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire before it is undeniable: the country’s military and politics were, of course, intertwined. Odom really was a Soviet specialist with an MA and a PhD from Columbia University and taught at Yale after his government service had ended.

What also comes through in Gordon’s article about the son, is that Mark Odom understands the realities on the ground in Iraq as his father did while serving in Vietnam - but like his father is keeping his views to himself, that the broader question is “more political than military” and that the role of a military officer is “to place the ball in the air” to allow the political decisions made “to complete the pass.” Yet Odom’s copious readings, Gordon tells us after a look at his bookshelf, suggest that that will likely be a “very hard, perhaps even impossible" task.