Mike Jackson
General
Sir Michael "Mike" Jackson,
GCB,
CBE,
DSO,
ADC Gen (born
21 March 1944) is a
British army officer, formerly
Chief of the General Staff. He was formerly commander of
KFor in
Kosovo as well as
UNPROFOR (see
Timeline of UN peacekeeping missions) commander in
Bosnia.
Jackson's father was in the army. Jackson was a cadet at
Stamford School CCF, in 1961 he went to the
University of Birmingham. Jackson was commissioned into the
Intelligence Corps aged nineteen in
1963, specialising in the threat from the
Soviet Union. He transferred to the
Parachute Regiment in
1970 and was serving in
Northern Ireland when the regiment was involved in the infamous
Bloody Sunday. He spent two years as Chief of Staff of the Berlin Infantry Brigade, then commanding a parachute company in Northern Ireland, later rising to become the
commanding officer of 1 Para from March
1984 to September
1986.
In the
1990s, Jackson served in the
NATO chain of command as a deputy to the
Supreme Allied Commander Europe,
General Wesley Clark. In this capacity, he is best known for refusing to block the runways of the
Russian-occupied
Pristina Airport, to isolate the Russian troops there. Had he complied with General Clark's order, there was a chance the British troops under his command could have come into armed conflict with the Russians; doing this without prior orders from Britain would have led to his dismissal for gross insubordination. On the other hand, defying Clark would have meant disobeying a direct order from a superior NATO officer (Clark was a four-star general; Jackson only a three-star). Jackson ultimately chose the latter course of action, reputedly saying "I won´t start World War III for you!", though the point became irrelevant when the
American government prevailed upon the
Hungarians,
Romanians, and
Bulgarians to prevent the Russians from using their airspace to fly reinforcements in. As a result, he was dubbed "Macho Jacko" by the British tabloid press. Among his own troops and the British press, however, Jackson had a reputation for being severe, and prone to anger, earning him the nicknames "
Darth Vader" and "
Prince of Darkness". [
1]
During the aftermath of the
2003 Iraq War, Jackson, as
Chief of the General Staff, ordered an inquiry into pictures released by the British tabloid
The Daily Mirror that depicted alleged
torture of
Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers. The
Daily Mirror's editor
Piers Morgan was later fired by the newspaper, after the pictures were shown to be a hoax.
On
February 23 2005, soldiers of 1st Battalion,
The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, were found guilty of abuse of Iraqi prisoners arrested for looting at an army camp called Bread Basket, in
Basra, during May of 2003. After they were sentenced, General Jackson made a statement on television and said that: he was
"appalled and disappointed" when he first saw photographs of the Iraqi detainees and that
The incidents depicted are in direct contradiction to the core values and standards of the British Army ... Nevertheless, in the light of the evidence from this trial I do apologize on behalf of the army to those Iraqis who were abused and to the people of Iraq as a whole.
In March 2006 in the aftermath of British Christian peace tourist
Norman Kember's freeing from kidnappers after four months by a multinational armed force Jackson attracted interest when he, barely twenty four hours after Kember's liberation, attacked the hostage's lack of gratitude for the solidier's efforts in freeing him. Jackson claimed he was "saddened that there doesn't seem to have been a note of gratitude for the soldiers who risked their lives to save those lives", and in doing so added to a media scrum demanding Kember's apology.
Jackson had bags under his eyes surgically removed. He refuses to be photographed in a suit, preferring military uniform instead, with the famous red beret of the Parachute Regiment.
Jackson relinquished the post of Chief of Staff in 2006.From the
Court Circular:
The Prince of Wales, Lieutenant General, afterwards received General Sir Michael Jackson upon relinquishing his appointment as Chief of the General Staff and General Sir Richard Dannatt upon assuming the appointment.
*
Ministry of Defence's Chief of the General Staff biography*
Shock, Horror and General Mike Jackson*
British soldiers who abused Iraqis are jailed and dismissed from the Army The Independent 26 February 2005
