Reconstructing Iraq
With the Marines in the south and the 101st Airborne in the north.
by Max Boot
09/15/2003, Volume 009, Issue 01
I WENT TO IRAQ in August, the day after a bomb had ripped through the United Nations compound in Baghdad, killing 23 people including the U.N. special envoy. I came home the day after another massive car bomb exploded at a mosque in Najaf, taking more than 95 lives including that of a leading cleric. Yet I returned more optimistic than when I went.
Understandably, these attacks have caused apprehension, verging on panic, among U.S.-based commentators and politicians. A chorus of critics is already attacking the Bush administration for losing Iraq. During my trip I, too, saw plenty of room for improvement, especially by the civilian-run Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. For that matter, I was almost a casualty of a roadside bomb myself. Nevertheless, after 10 days traveling with soldiers and Marines in both the north and south, I am encouraged by the resourcefulness of our troops and struck by how different things look when seen firsthand. From afar, chaos seems to reign in Iraq; up close, distinct signs of progress emerge.
Air travel isn't one of the more positive signs. There still is no commercial air service to Iraq. I went in with Bing West, a former assistant secretary of defense and a Marine veteran of Vietnam, on a Marine Lear jet from Kuwait to Al Kut in central Iraq. From there, an old CH-46 helicopter whisked us to the 1st Marine Division headquarters at Camp Babylon. Yes, that Babylon. The former home of Nebuchadnezzar now houses rulers clad in khaki camouflage.
The headquarters of the 1st Marine Division was on the grounds of one of Saddam Hussein's numerous palaces. A guest house had been turned into a Combat Operations Center where officers and enlisted personnel sat at laptop computers monitoring everything from enemy attacks to electricity flows. A tent city around the building was full to overflowing when we arrived. The Marines were in the process of transitioning out, while Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Spaniards, and numerous other coalition troops had already arrived to take their place. The formal handoff to the coalition forces occurred on September 3, except in Najaf, where the recent bombing has delayed it.
For Marines who went through the war sleeping in the dirt and eating MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), life at Camp Babylon had gotten relatively civilized by the end of their tour. Most of the tents had cots and air conditioning, "head" calls could be taken in the privacy of a port-o-potty, and food came from a "chow hall" run by Indian contract employees. Things will be positively luxurious for the allied troops, who are having built for them, at U.S. expense, air-conditioned shower and laundry facilities. The food wasn't bad--we had lobster my first night and excellent cakes--but everyone from buck private to three-star general waited in a long line before getting fed.
From here the 1st Marine Division directed battalions that ran all of south-central Iraq--up to 11 million people in the Shiite heartland. Major General James Mattis laughingly called it the Blue Diamond Republic of Iraq, after the 1st Division's nickname. If so, he was president of the republic, or, more accurately, its benevolent dictator. Mattis is a legend inside the Marine Corps, having led the Marines into both Afghanistan and Iraq. He was so hell-bent on reaching Baghdad that he fired one of his brigade commanders for not going fast enough. It was his men who toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein in central Baghdad on April 9, signaling the end of the war.
Relatively short and trim, with a silver crewcut and owlish spectacles, Mattis doesn't look particularly imposing. But when he opens his mouth it becomes apparent that he's cut from the George S. Patton mold. Funny, blunt, erudite, inspiring, and profane, he takes no guff and tolerates no inefficiency. At nightly briefings with his staff, he dissected PowerPoint presentations with laser-like questions that got to the heart of every problem. The issues he dealt with were more appropriate to an imperial proconsul than to a general: how to combat Islamic extremists, win over ordinary people, distribute fuel, enforce law and order, and a thousand other matters. Mattis was not the least bit fazed by the challenge.
And he had made substantial progress. While Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle were still plagued by anti-American terrorism, life in the Blue Diamond Republic was pretty calm. It might not seem that way in the wake of the August 29 car bombing in Najaf. But despite that event, a substantial degree of normality had returned to Najaf and neighboring towns. The streets I saw were bustling, and the Marines enjoyed excellent relations with local leaders.
Not the least of their achievement is that no Marine has been killed by hostile fire since May 1, when President Bush proclaimed "major hostilities" at an end. Almost 70 Army soldiers have been slain in that period. This success isn't a result of flooding south-central Iraq with soldiers. Mattis never deployed more than 8,000 Marines, along with some Army civil affairs, psychological operations, and military police units, to control an area the size of Missouri.
There is no doubt that the Marines' task was made easier by the fact that the Shiites suffered under the old regime and welcomed their liberation. But few analysts predicted in May that Shiite holy cities like Najaf and Karbala would emerge as strongholds of pro-American sentiment. Much of the talk back then was of Iranian infiltration and Lebanese-style terrorism. That hasn't happened, at least not against Americans, and every single Marine I met was convinced that the reason had to do with their approach to peacekeeping, which they believe superior to the more heavy-handed methods employed, at least initially, by Army units that occupied Baghdad and the Sunni area to the immediate north and west.
The Marine strategy was based on three principles. First, do no harm. That meant not alienating Iraqis by violating their religious or social customs. Women, for instance, should not be subject to intrusive searches. When talking to Iraqis, Marines were instructed to point their firearms away and take off their sunglasses. Above all, it meant using as little firepower as possible. As Mattis put it: "If someone needs shooting, shoot him. If someone doesn't need shooting, protect him."
The Marines showed restraint when dealing with hostile crowds. They did not have a single incident like the one that occurred in Fallujah in late April, when the 82nd Airborne opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators, killing at least 12. Marines were more likely to greet hostile crowds with free bottles of water than with bullets, on the assumption that someone can't be too angry with you if he's just accepted some water from you.
The Marines' second guiding principle was to win hearts and minds. The Marines repaired schools, distributed candy, handed out free medical supplies, set up Rotary clubs, and undertook myriad other charitable tasks. This earned them goodwill among the community leading to increased intelligence about troublemakers.
Their third principle was to be ready to win a 10-second gunfight. While wanting to be as open and friendly as possible, all Marines were told to be ready to open fire at a moment's notice. When Army supply convoys get attacked by fedayeen, they speed away, I was told. When Marine convoys got hit, they were supposed to stop immediately and disgorge infantrymen to pursue the attackers. Mattis insisted that even convoys carrying the Marines out of Iraq retain a robust offensive capability.
It all adds up to Mattis's widely publicized slogan: "No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy" than a U.S. Marine. To see how this yin-yang policy was carried out, we toured some Marine units just before they headed home.
OUR FIRST STOP was in the desert southwest of Baghdad, home to a giant Army logistics base called Dogwood. This area is different from the rest of the Blue Diamond Republic because it's primarily Sunni, not Shiite, and it's experienced some of the same security woes that have plagued the Sunni Triangle. In May and June, Army convoys operating here suffered nonstop guerrilla attacks. During one two-week period in May there were 51 ambushes.
Although this was an Army base, it was in the Marines' area of operations, so Mattis set up Task Force Scorpion to clean up the mess. Composed of the 4th Force Reconnaissance (the closest the egalitarian Marines come to having Special Forces), the 4th Light Armored Regiment, some Army civil affairs soldiers, and a couple of Marine infantry platoons, the task force never totaled more than 1,000 soldiers.
But with aggressive patrolling, it managed to capture a number of terrorists and reduce the number of attacks. Just before we arrived they had nabbed a Republican Guard general and a four-man team that had been mortaring Dogwood. The successful operations impressed the local people, who flooded them with unsolicited tips. Based on that information they staged surgical raids that usually involved no gunfire and resulted in the surrender of a suspect. While aggressive against suspected terrorists, the task force's commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Pappas, regularly met with local sheikhs.
As we were being briefed on Scorpion's operations, an officer volunteered that they were planning a raid that very night. Would we like to go along? Sure, I said, little suspecting what I was getting myself into.
Reveille came in total darkness at 4:30 A.M. on Friday, August 22, though the crump of a mortar shell landing several hundred meters from our barracks already had me wide awake. By 5:30 we were on the move. Our target was a suspected Baathist leader who had escaped a previous raid by jumping into the Euphrates and swimming away in his underwear. We were headed once again to his posh riverside home about an hour and a half from Dogwood.
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