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Retired Army Gen. John Shalikashvili, the first
foreign-born chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who counseled
President Bill Clinton on the use of troops in Bosnia and other
trouble spots, has died, according to a statement from the White
House. He was 75.


      Shalikashvili suffered a severe stroke on August 2004 that
paralyzed his left side, and he underwent grueling physical
therapy.


      The native of Poland held the top military job at the Pentagon
in the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1997, when the general
retired from the Army. He spent his later years living in Fort
Lewis, Wash.


      Clinton pointed out that "Gen. Shali" made the recommendations
that sent U.S. troops into harm's way in Haiti, Rwanda, Bosnia, the
Persian Gulf and a host of other world hotspots that had
proliferated since the end of the Cold War.


      "He never minced words, he never postured or pulled punches, he
never shied away from tough issues or tough calls, and most
important, he never shied away from doing what he believed was the
right thing," Clinton said.


      In a farewell interview with The Associated Press at the time,
Shalikashvili said American military and civilian authorities need
to cooperate more when they decide to get involved in such trouble
spots, because so much of what the military is asked to do involves
humanitarian or peacekeeping operations.


      For example, he said, the military might need assistance from
the Justice Department to help set up police forces, or advice from
the State Department on economic aid.


      "We know the agencies, but who is responsible for coordinating
it, bringing it all in at the right time?" he said. "Haiti,
Bosnia, Rwanda, even Somalia, showed us these things go forward
from the first day, and there is no coordinator."


      Shalikashvili was head of the Joint Chiefs when the "Don't ask,
don't tell" policy on gays in the military was adopted. He had
argued that allowing homosexuals to serve openly would hurt troop
morale and undermine the cohesion of combat units. Years later,
though, he said that he changed his mind on the issue after meeting
with gay servicemen.


      "These conversations showed me just how much the military has
changed, and that gays and lesbians can be accepted by their
peers," Shalikashvili wrote in a January 2007 New York Times
opinion piece.


      Earlier in his career, under the first President George Bush,
Shalikashvili served as NATO's supreme allied commander and also
commander in chief of all U.S. armed forces in Europe. At the end
of the first Gulf War, he was in charge of the Kurdish relief
operation in Iraq.


      In recent months Shalikashvili served on a senior military
advisory group to the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate
John Kerry, as did another former NATO commander, Gen. Wesley
Clark.


      Not long before his stroke, Shalikashvili spoke at the 2004
Democratic National Convention in Boston, saying, "I do not stand
here as a political figure. Rather, I am here as an old soldier and
a new Democrat."


      Shalikashvili was born June 27, 1936, in Warsaw, the grandson of
a czarist general and the son of an army officer from Soviet
Georgia. He lived through the German occupation of Poland during
World War II and immigrated with his family in 1952, settling in
Peoria, Ill.


      He learned English from watching John Wayne movies, according to
his official Pentagon biography, and he retained a distinctive
Eastern European accent.


      Shalikashvili, who studied engineering at Bradley University in
Peoria, enrolled in the Air Force Reserve ROTC, but his eyes were
not good enough to be a pilot, according to a Defense Department
biography.


      He became a U.S. citizen in 1958 and was drafted months later.
In addition to being the first foreign-born Joint Chiefs chairman,
he was the first draftee to rise to the top military job at the
Pentagon, the Defense Department said.


      "He knows how to put combat power together, understands policy
options and will also be highly regarded by the troops," retired
Col. Roy Alcala, who worked with Shalikashvili in the Pentagon,
said in 1993.


      Shalikashvili and his wife, Joan, moved to Steilacoom, near the
Army's Fort Lewis south of Tacoma, Wash., in 1998.


      Shortly after Shalikashvili was tabbed by Clinton, the Simon
Wiesenthal Center said documents it found indicated the general's
late father, Dimitri Shalikashvili, collaborated with the Nazis
during World War II. The center said it found the elder
Shalikashvili's unpublished writings in the archives of Stanford
University's Hoover Institution.

Gallery

Retired Army Gen. John Shalikashvili, the first
foreign-born chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who counseled
President Bill Clinton on the use of troops in Bosnia and other
trouble spots, has died, according to a statement from the White
House. He was 75.


Retired Army Gen. John Shalikashvili dies

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