COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

From a reader:

As a former Marine Officer, I have to agree about the PR issue, except for one thing. If this article was in Stars & Stripes, why don’t you take the reporter to task for not researching whether this warrant was speaking the truth. You know warrants (read: bluster) as well as I do!!!!! Besides, what does an embark warrant know about these kind of operations. I sense a bit of inter-service rivalry, which isn’t surprising.

Looking from afar and still in contact with active Marines, I agree with much of your criticisms regarding present USMC deployment schedules and operational errors. Unfortunately, inter-service rivalry swings both ways. They should have listened to the Army types during handovers.

However, let’s face it. Since WW2, the USMC has trained for assault warfare. We did not forget the “Small Wars Manual”, we just haven’t placed it high on our agenda. At TBS (Officer’s Basic), we heard about it, but it was not part of our curriculum. Assault was; Beach assault, small unit tactics, vertical envelopment, urban warfare. Not a hint of occupation operations. Dunnigan and others have called us “shock troops”, which is a fair description. Where this philosophical difference was clearly evident was on the march to Baghdad. The Army stopped, the Marines fumed.

Let’s stop the slinging here because the truth is both the USMC and the Navy SEALS (of which my Son is training for) have difficulty with protracted land warfare. That is an Army specialty.

Yes, that's true since WWII, the USMC has concentrated on the assault. As has the Army's mechanized infantry and much of its light infantry. But since about 1993-1994, the Army started developing OOTW (Operations Other Than War) in earnest, and the Field Manual on Low Intensity Warfare was popular reading among Army officers, cadets, and senior NCOs. (It was even commercially released at one point!)

The Army also retained a specific counterinsurgency capability in the Special Forces, who are designed to work closely with indigenous populations to further American interests. And as people with SF experience cross pollinated the Army, and as officers and NCOs moved back and forth between light infantry and mechanized units, the Army always retained a certain amount of basic staffing knowledge of the low-intensity conflict.

It didn't have to be that way. Indeed, there's a lot in the USMC heritage that could contribute to the institutional memory for protracted low-to-mid intensity conflicts, which call for a different doctrine and different mindset than the "shock troop" training regimen is designed to create. For instance, the USMC was absolutely instrumental in U.S. policy during the "banana wars" of the 1920s and 1930s in Haiti and Central America, and even in China, if I recall correctly, and indeed worked in very small numbers, and worked closely with indigenous troops, just as they are called to do in Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent, today.

They also did quite a bit of counterinsurgency during the Viet Nam war, which was, likewise, a protracted conflict. In some ways, the Marine Corps is ideally suited for long-term work. Not in terms of force structure, because they have a long history of deployments less than one year (i.e., six month sea duty) which plays a hand in their shorter (but more frequent) combat tours in Iraq.

But when it comes to the urban counterinsurgency, relationships are everything. Relationships with local sheiks and constabularies will make or break a unit in Iraq. Is the six month tour of duty conducive to that? I think, in the long run, that's going to be problematic. I think the USMC may do well to consider whether a longer tour of duty would help build and solidify those relationships - which should be nurtured further during a carefully planned relief in place, done with ample time for the carefully built-up personal relationships with Iraqi leaders to be transferred.

This will require a cultural change in the Marine Corps, though, and a good deal of salesmanship to sell to Marine Corps families, who are quite accustomed to the 6-7 month sea duty.

Remember back in the mid 1990s, when the Marine Commandant - I think it was General Krulak - a fine, fine officer - wanted to stop taking in married recruits? Bill Clinton stopped him. I think, in hindsight, General Krulak was right.

The Marine Corps may also do well to reconsider Beirut. Yes, they'll naturally blame Reagan and Congress for sticking them in that hellhole (Can't blame them for prohibiting the gate guard from chambering a round in his weapon, though!). But could the bombing have been prevented had the Marine Corps done a better job in the community? Is there a lesson there for all of us?

I don't begin to pretend to know enough about Beirut to offer an opinion one way or another. But I don't ever recall hearing any professional discussion, as an Army officer, dissecting that mission and considering that question. Maybe the Marines do - I just haven't heard it.

Lastly, in the reporter's defense, I have not seen any major media outlets profile Team Tigress. I'm pretty sure Army Times wrote them up last year, though. But my post on them from last year is still number one on the google search engine. And you'd have to know to input "Team Tigress" to find it by googling around.

Basically, I'm just having fun at the Marine Corps expense. It's what happens to an organization that takes itself too seriously and reads too much of its own press (to the exclusion of everyone else's.)

But the Marine Corps has super warriors in it, throughout its ranks. And you know, I've known for quite a while now that some of those warriors happened to be women. I'm glad my brothers in the Marine Corps finally got round to figuring what the Army's known for years.

'Ere's a pint to the Women Marines.

Splash, out

Jason