by Jim Mattis
However, a British newspaper published a sharply different account: “US soldiers started to shoot us, one by one…Survivors describe wedding massacre as generals refuse to apologise.” The story alleged that women and children had been the ones killed, because the gathering was actually a wedding party.
When reporters asked for my response, I replied, “We’d tracked these guys when they crossed the Syrian border and caught them sixty-five miles from the nearest town. More than two dozen military-age males just happened to pick a campsite with no women? That’s a heck of a wedding party. Let’s not be naive.”
The press rightly plays a devil’s advocate role and doesn’t have to be right or accurate in that capacity. But whether you’re a general or a CEO, win or lose, you have to fight a false narrative or it will assuredly be accepted as fact. In the information age, you can’t retreat to your office and let your public affairs officer take the tough questions.
My directive was to let reporters go where they wanted. Assign them an NCO so they don’t walk into a helicopter’s rotor blade, but let them see reality. I didn’t want a repeat of the “five o’clock follies” of the 1960s, when overly positive and often mischaracterized information from Vietnam was fed by the senior military ranks to an increasingly skeptical, then cynical press. If there’s something you don’t want people to see, you ought to reconsider what you’re doing. The most compelling story for us should be the naked truth about the reality of our operations.
“I wanted to tell the stories of the grunts,” Tony Perry of the Los Angeles Times wrote. “I was allowed into [General Mattis’s] ops centers. Keeping a few secrets was a small price to pay for the open access the Marine brass gave me to the enlisted troops.”
Giving reporters free rein with the troops works only if the commander’s intent is embraced by the troops and genuinely reflected in the operations the reporters witness. Any inconsistency between word and deed would become the story. But seldom was I disappointed.
As a consequence of the “wedding” story, a U.S. military investigation team arrived in my zone from Baghdad to determine whether I or others should be charged with murder. A military lawyer asked me a list of questions, one of which caused a stir.
“General, how much time did you consider before authorizing the strike?”
He knew from the record that the time from when I was awakened until I authorized a strike had been less than thirty seconds.
“About thirty years,” I replied.
I may have sounded nonchalant or dismissive, but my point was that a thirty-second decision rested upon thirty years of experience and study. At Midway, for instance, Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance pondered for two minutes before launching his carrier aircraft at extreme range against the Japanese fleet. Two minutes to turn the tide of war in the Pacific. That’s how battles are won or lost.
The investigative report, issued weeks later, found no evidence that we had struck anything other than an enemy-occupied desert camp. But by then it was too late. The initial false reports had become ground truth; correcting it was not considered news. We had once again lost the battle of the narrative. As Churchill noted, “A lie gets halfway around the world before truth gets its pants on.” In our age, a lie can get a thousand times around the world before the truth gets its pants on.
* * *
—
After we had pulled out of Fallujah, now the epicenter of kidnappings, bombings, and beheadings, Janabi appeared anew, this time as the head of the “moderate” Mujahideen Council.
In June, after we ambushed a gang of terrorists on the city’s outskirts, he appeared on television to bemoan their “martyrdom.”
“This leads,” he declared, “to nothing but more confrontation with the enemy.”
If he was calling me the enemy, then it was time to confront him in his own lair. In our last meeting, he’d agreed that if we withdrew from the city, the Fallujah Brigade would seize all heavy weapons and Marines would have access to the city. He hadn’t delivered on anything. By June, that gave me all the reason I needed to confront him.
I would tell him to cut loose from Zarqawi now. And that if he didn’t deliver on his promises, it was inevitable that Marines would attack again and the terrorists would lose. Janabi and his family would lose everything. Cut a deal now, I would say. If that led to a fight on the spot, so be it, and game on.
I promised not to arrest him. He agreed to talk deep inside insurgent-controlled Fallujah. John Toolan asked Army Staff Sergeant Rashed Qawasimi to run a check with his sources. Fluent in Arabic, “Qwas” served as Toolan’s interpreter and more. Qwas was so uneasy about what he heard that John was convinced the meeting would in fact be a trap to kill me.
“Killing my general,” John joked, “would be a coup for the terrorists, and hurt my career.”
With a few Marines and some of Suleiman’s National Guardsmen, I drove to the City Hall. John was observing the meeting site from a helicopter, with a battalion on full alert at the edge of town. We were meeting in the sector where we believed Zarqawi was located. I decided that only four of us would go into the meeting room, with the others tactically dispersed outside to ward off any assault. Qwas, two Marines, and I walked inside.
“If a fight breaks out,” I told them, “I’ll kill Janabi. You keep firing and empty your magazines until the others break in.”
Janabi was seated at the room’s far end, showing off his influence, with forty-odd sheiks seated along the walls, many armed. The atmosphere was tense as I sat down next to Janabi, with my carbine casually lying across my thighs, pointed at him.
The words between Janabi and me, with Qwas translating, quickly became blunt. Janabi was acting earnest, playing to the crowd.
“There are no foreigners here,” Janabi lied. “You bomb innocent people. We only protect our homes you come to destroy.”
He protested that my Marines were the ones causing the city’s problems.
At one point he asked, “Do I look like a terrorist?”
I cocked my head, halfway smiling, and examined him closely. “Why, as a matter of fact, you do,” I said. “And from reading your sermons, you sound like one, too.”
I dropped my hand and double-clicked the carbine selector to automatic. He heard the click. If this escalated, I was killing him first. In May, he had tried to blow me up. There was no way he had walked into this meeting without a similar plan.
We sat there for several long seconds without speaking, staring at each other. He broke my stare and was visibly uncomfortable. As Qwas shifted to look alertly around the room, the whump-whump of John’s helicopter could be heard. Whatever Janabi had up his sleeve, he didn’t have the courage to carry it out.
“One way or another, we Marines are coming back into Fallujah,” I said as the meeting ended.
As we left, I nodded to several sheiks whom I knew, and John breathed a sigh of relief when we reentered Marine lines about ten minutes later.
* * *
—
While we could not bring any Marines into the city, John met routinely with Lieutenant Colonel Suleiman, who was glumly watching the radical jihadists grow bolder. Suleiman was a relatively junior officer without a real Iraqi chain of command. By dint of duty and personality, he was trying to protect his city. He quietly informed John where IEDs were being emplaced and which neighborhoods were falling under control of the terrorists. He wanted to take action but was not strong enough to do so with his outnumbered men.
Then, one torrid day in early August, Suleiman called John to say that his second-in-command had been kidnapped by Janabi. Suleiman said he was driving to the mosque to get him released. John urged him to wait until we received permission to go with him. Suleiman refused; he believed he had to move immediately.
When he arrived at the mosque, Janabi had him seized and dragged inside. That night, he was beaten, s
calding water was poured over him, and he “confessed” to betraying Islam. His decapitated body was dumped outside our lines, and recordings of his “confession” were distributed in the marketplaces. John was furious and wanted to take tanks to the mosque and seize Janabi. But our orders from Baghdad remained firm: No.
Each day, somewhere in Anbar, Marine patrols were killing insurgents, and each day, a U.S. soldier, sailor, or Marine lost his life or a limb. It was a morally bruising fight, in most instances ceding the first shot to an enemy in civilian clothes. I was out every day, driving hundreds of miles a week to meet with the squads, village elders, and company commanders. My biggest concern was that somewhere in the chain of command, a commander was not keeping up the spirits of his men or was losing touch with the reality faced by his grunts. Nothing was more important to me than maintaining the fighting spirit of our troops and their confidence in their leaders on the battlefield.
You can’t fool the troops. Our young men had to harden their hearts to kill proficiently, without allowing indifference to noncombatant suffering to form a callus on their souls. I had to understand the light and the dark competing in their hearts, because we needed lads who could do grim, violent work without becoming evil in the process, lads who could do harsh things yet not lose their humanity.
By dropping in and getting face-to-face with the grunts, I could get a feel for what the squads were thinking, what frustrated them. Was there anything I could do spiritually or physically to help?
My command challenge was to convey to my troops a seemingly contradictory message: “Be polite, be professional—but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.” A twenty-year-old corporal is in command of nineteen-year-olds and speaks only a few Arabic phrases. In an atavistic environment, his squad has to act ethically and without lashing out at the fearful and the innocent.
But when someone shoots at a Marine, he becomes fair game. I wanted my lads to keep an offensive mindset. If fired upon, their job was to hunt down the enemy and take him out; I wanted no passivity or ceding of initiative to the enemy.
“There are some jerks in the world,” I said, “that need to be shot. There are hunters and there are victims. No complacency! Keep your discipline and you will be the hunter. I feel sorry for every son of a bitch that doesn’t get to serve alongside you fine young men.”
Each morning, I’d wake up around four, sort through emails, check in at the ops center, and put on my combat gear. By seven I’d be ready to hit the road. Outside the headquarters, my communicators, drivers, and aide staged my five vehicles. No matter how worn down, they had already rehearsed the day’s mission. Often during our ten to twelve hours on the roads and dirt paths, someone would shoot at us or detonate an IED, or we’d come across a unit that needed a hand. When that happened, we were all equally engaged. Across Iraq, this was the norm for the battalion and regimental commanders.
At the end of each day, I told my team what I’d learned and asked what they had picked up at the outposts we visited. They often came back with information I hadn’t heard. We kept one another informed.
Staying in close contact with the troops came at a cost. Of the twenty-nine sailors and Marines in my detail, two were killed and fifteen wounded (some more than once) in five months. In late May, an IED killed Staff Sergeant Jorge Molina, thirty-seven, who had changed his last name to Molina Bautista to honor his mother, Maria Bautista. Jorge, who was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, left behind his wife, Dina, and three sons. He was even-keeled, occasionally breaking into a broad grin during our post-patrol debriefs. In June, we lost twenty-one-year-old Lance Corporal Jeremy Lee Bohlman. Always alert when we were on the road, he was high-spirited off-duty, a lot of fun for the team to have around. I still see them standing in front of me today, and I miss them and so many others lost in that long, hot tour of duty.
I visited a half dozen units each day, evaluating the mood of each: Were the troops comfortable speaking in my presence? Did they nudge one another in appreciation of a wisecrack or incorrect remark? Did they feel at ease with their immediate superiors? It was refreshing to listen to a gunnery sergeant or lieutenant verbally spar with his men in the casual but respectful manner that reflected mutual fondness. That told me the lads’ hearts were still in the game.
Building trust and affection in units is not the same as chasing popularity, which relies on favoritism, nor does it replace the priority of accomplishing the mission. For this reason I came down hard on anyone who said, “Sir, my mission is to bring all my men home safely.” That’s a laudable and necessary goal, but the primary mission was to defeat the enemy, even as we did everything possible to keep our young men and women alive.
In late summer, I was nearing the end of two years commanding the 1st Marine Division and would soon be reassigned. I wanted to finish the fight, and I repeatedly said we had to clean out the enemy’s safe haven in Fallujah. I was fed up with the dithering. I wanted to surround the Jolan market and search every building until we found and killed Zarqawi, Janabi, and the other terrorists who were spreading mayhem.
My higher command reiterated that we were not to go into Fallujah. My efforts to influence American policy decisions had fallen short.
* * *
—
I had never before left a job unfinished, yet I was leaving my troops facing a maddening situation: we were playing defense. American policymakers were still restricting necessary tactical actions. I had been raised by Vietnam-era Marines who drummed into me the importance of making sure the policymakers grasped the nature of the war they were responsible for. Don’t get trapped into using halfway measures or leaving safe havens for the enemy. I believed I had spoken clearly. But I hadn’t gotten through.
When it came time to relinquish command, in late August 2004, I had to think of what to say to the troops. I couldn’t congratulate them for a hard-fought success; victory had been snatched from them. What they did have was one another, and their abiding sense of duty.
I remembered a poem written by French lieutenant André Zirnheld in 1942, as German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was sweeping across North Africa. Knowing the odds against him were overwhelming, Zirnheld volunteered to parachute in behind German lines near the British-held port of Tobruk. He was killed. Zirnheld had remained loyal to his sense of duty. He had chosen to be a soldier. That didn’t change because the Battle of Tobruk was lost. His poem was discovered when his body was recovered. Today it is known as “The Paratrooper’s Prayer.”
The war was lengthening. But that wouldn’t change who we were or sap our fighting spirit. The Marine motto is “Semper Fidelis”—always faithful, not just when things go your way. Nobody had forced us to be where we were; we had all volunteered to fight. My troops had kept the faith, thanks to their will and discipline, and I said good-bye to my rambunctious and undaunted Marines by reading the French “Paratrooper’s Prayer”:
I bring this prayer to you, Lord,
For you alone can give
What one cannot demand from oneself.
Give me, Lord, what you have left over,
Give me what no one ever asks of you.
I don’t ask you for rest or quiet,
Whether of soul or body;
I don’t ask you for wealth,
Nor for success, nor even health perhaps.
That sort of thing you get asked for so much
That you can’t have any of it left.
Give me, Lord, what you have left over,
Give me what no one wants from you.
I want insecurity, strife,
And I want you to give me these
Once and for all.
So that I can be sure of having them always,
Since I shall not always have the courage
To ask you for them.
RETURNING TO THE STATES IN THE FALL OF 2004, my first priority was t
o visit Gold Star families. I know that nothing can assuage the grief of losing a loved one. I could not offer the solace of victory. All I could do was share with them the feeling of loss. Sitting in their living rooms, I doubted that I or anyone outside their families could ever feel the enormity of their sacrifice. But I tried to convey the love that we comrades in arms shared for one another. The fallen, volunteers all, had rallied to the flag and stood guard over our beloved nation, never quitting their posts. Our nation will always need such steadfast guardians, as every American generation has learned.
Between Afghanistan and Iraq, I’d been fighting for three years, never thinking about a follow-on assignment in the States. But the Commandant, General Michael Hagee, assigned me to be his three-star deputy for “combat development.” Headquartered in Quantico, Virginia, the Marine Corps Combat Development Command (MCCDC) is responsible for education, training, doctrine development, and establishing requirements for equipment and weapon systems. Because of my recent experience, General Hagee said he wanted my perceptions to permeate the Corps. Returning from fighting, I was determined to use what I had learned to help sharpen our spears. First we had to have our troops at the top of their game for the fighting in the Middle East. At the same time, our other adversaries were not taking a holiday, and we had to be prepared for fights in the future.
General Hagee and I agreed that my first priority would be to prepare the troops for the kind of combat awaiting them in the Middle East. Emphasis would have to be on the lower-level leaders: Lieutenants, sergeants, and corporals were now of strategic importance. We needed to adapt our doctrine to reenergize counterinsurgency techniques, with an emphasis on the key small-unit leaders charged with winning the trust and support of the local people.
* * *
—
Anyone who has studied history knows that an enemy always moves against your perceived weakness, and this enemy had chosen irregular warfare. Now we had to adapt faster than they could, getting inside their OODA loop. Having watched how swiftly Islamist terrorism was spreading, I believed we would be fighting for years. Accordingly, irregular warfare had to be a core competency, but without the Marine Corps’s developing tunnel vision and ignoring other kinds of threats. My approach in adapting our warfighting to this enemy was to insist on the pervasive implementation of decentralized decision-making, drawing from the well of ideas I had developed and honed in previous wars.