MajGen Jim Molan AO, DSC (retired) named Australian Thinker of the Year for 2009
This is good news, but news you won’t read in the papers. Major General Jim Molan AO, DSC (retired), has been named the Australian Thinker of the Year for 2009 by the international School of Thinking.
Molan is the author of Running the War in Iraq, published earlier this year by HarperCollins Australia (which also published my last book, 18 Hours, The True Story of An SAS War Hero about Martin “Jock” Wallace who won the Medal For Gallantry for outstanding bravery and courage under fire in Afghanistan in 2002).
An incredibly bright man who is supremely respected in military and political circles in Australia and abroad, Molan has been awarded the prize in “recognition of his unique work as an Australian general overseeing a total force of 300,000 troops, including 155,000 Americans” in Iraq from 2004.
That was no mean feat. In his compelling book, Molan details the horror of war, the fog of war, the body counts, the controversy and political shenanigans, and the life and death decisions that have to be made with regard to the men and women of the Australian and US defence forces who were under his command. And he is controversial.
He writes about the dangers he faced every day during his year in Iraq, and talks of the roster of brave troops from the highly regarded Australian Special Air Service Regiment who were assigned to perform close personal protection for him on the frontlines.
Molan, himself a helicopter pilot and expert in counter-insurgency, details the bravery of the emerging Iraqi Security Service who conducted four-hour road blocks in Ramadi or on the edge of Sadr City, air assaults from helicopters in the middle of the night on booby-trapped farmhouses full of insurgents and daring raids on houses full of jihadists in hostile cities.
“The passing threats that I personally faced disappear in total insignificance compared to the most boring day in the life of many of these soldiers,” he writes. In fact, he was under attack directly on 15 occasions – by missiles, mortars and rockets, particularly when travelling the lethal 12km trip from the Green Zone to the Baghdad Airport.
Molan's book published earlier this year
Molan joined the Australian Army in 1968 and served in Jakarta, East Timor, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and latterly, the Middle East. He was sent to Iraq in April 2004 by the then Chief of Defence, Peter Cosgrove (who launched my book, 18 Hours in 2006), and went on to work with the top US brass on the historic November 2004 Battle of Fallujah and the inspiring 2005 general elections in Iraq. He also worked intimately with Iraq’s emerging political leaders and military commanders.
Late last year he hit headlines when he said the Rudd Government should increase its troop numbers in Afghanistan and that Australia would be in it for the “long haul”, adding it is a winnable conflict.
Molan was at the top in the Army and lived a fast and full life in uniform. Retired from active service now, not much has changed. He tells me “there is life after the Army”, and it’s a pretty busy one.
He is a popular public speaker who specialises in “Leadership and Management in Extremes”; and is also a regular Opinion page columnist for various newspapers and security journals in Australia and United States. As well, he is about to start training future generals in the Australian Army about “advanced war fighting”. On top of that, he’s working on a 20-acre property outside Canberra which, according to him, is a “worked-out sheep paddock”, and recently completed a chapter in a book opposing a Bill of Rights, which is bound to be provocative.
Major General Jim Molan will be presented with the Australian Thinker of the Year award by the School of Thinking in a ceremony on July 22 in Melbourne. For more on the SOT and previous recipients of the award,which was started in conjunction with the Melbourne Convention Centre, go here.
No doubt, he will wear the honour well.
Meanwhile, I highly recommend Running the War in Iraq to anyone who is interested in what life is like behind-the-scenes of a operations command centre in one of the most controversial and bloody conflicts in contemporary times – as well as what it’s like on the front line.
