Although General Zinni manages to anchor his more abstract arguments in knowledge he has acquired on the ground -- leading troops in Vietnam , commanding rescue operations in Somalia , heading a special operations section of the Marines , in addition to serving as Centcom commander and special envoy to the Middle East -- he often leaves the reader wanting more specifics and more close analyses of situations he knows firsthand -LRB- like the one in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian standoff -RRB- .