One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at War
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22 hashish Vivienne Walt, “Afghanistan’s New Bumper Drug Crop: Cannabis,” Time, April 1, 2010.
23 feeling very much alone Cpls. Richard Hur and Oscar Orozco were the first to see they were missing and run back to provide supporting fire.
CHAPTER 12: THE ENDLESS GRUNT
1 “I put out a memo” Gen. David Petraeus interview, June 3, 2011.
2 “The more time you spend” Gates, Duty, p. 563.
3 “As I strolled” Eugene Sledge, quoted in “The War: Face of Battle: Aftermath,” http://www.pbs.org/thewar/at_war_battle_aftermath.htm.
4 “Lady” E. B. Sledge, China Marine: An Infantryman’s Life After World War. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 135.
5 “Some were very angry” NPR interview, October 30, 2011.
6 Old Breed 3/5 was proud of its brotherhood. For example, in Iraq in 2005, Cpl. Larry Hutchins, a squad leader in Kilo 3/5, killed an Iraqi civilian in mistaken retaliation for the death of a Marine. In 2013, Hutchins sent me this letter from the brig.
Someone once told me that “where the Institution will sacrifice one of its own to save itself, the Brotherhood will sacrifice itself to save one of its own.” I never really understood what this meant.
Seven years ago when I was arrested for the murder of an Iraqi, I felt abandoned by the Marine Corps. I’ll never forget arriving in the middle of the night, pulling up to the prison and seeing parallel lights running in straight lines for what seemed to be miles. It was the gates of hell in Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” I had never felt more alone in my life.
Here I sit today, understanding the differences between the Institution and the Brotherhood. Men from all over our country have written to me, telling of their battles in WWII, Korea and Viet Nam. One man set up an allotment for my wife. Another has become like family, seeking out congressmen and coming to the brig every week. I prayed asking God send me help, not knowing he had sent me angels.
My heart is with my wife and children. They are my home. Every home needs four strong walls. These men are the walls of my home.
I am a proud member of the “Old Corps” Brotherhood. It is because of the Brotherhood that I have regained my pride in being a Marine. Because of the Brotherhood, I fought in Iraq, and would fight again. As I sit writing this in prison, I have come to believe there are those of us who are Semper Fi.
Hutchins’s letter is testament to a strict institution that imposed hard punishment for wrongdoing, and yet remained a brotherhood that did not sever its bonds. The Marine Corps is so small that a first sergeant can call his contacts to get an informal evaluation of every Marine in his unit. When the enemy is rushing the wire, a commanding officer can call on Marines decades in their graves to motivate the living. No one scoffs when a captain like Johnson stands in the muddy waters at Patrol Base Fires, invoking the memory of a long-dead corporal named Sledge.
CHAPTER 13: WHO WILL FIGHT FOR US?
1 “What does Sangin mean?” Marine Corps Times, May 14, 2014.
2 “Violence has subsided” Marine Corps Times, April 26, 2012.
3 “Sangin is like” Azam Ahmed, “Afghan Army Struggles in District Under Siege,” New York Times, September 11, 2013.
4 “It’s difficult” Ibid.
5 highest percentage of drug addicts Tahir Qadiry, “Afghanistan, the Drug Addiction Capital,” BBC News, April 10, 2013.
6 A majority in 3rd Platoon See Appendix D.
7 handed several outposts in Sangin over Afghan News Agency, December 16, 2013, and Marine Corps Times, December 17, 2013.
8 “Local residents and officials” Azam Ahmed and Taimoor Shah, “Local Turf-Sharing Accord with the Taliban Raises Alarm in Afghanistan,” New York Times, December 18, 2013.
9 “The war doesn’t stop” Fresno Bee, January 18, 2014.
10 “Write this down” Peter Baker, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House. New York: Doubleday, 2013, p. 219.
11 one trillion dollars Linda J. Bilmes, “The Financial Legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan: How Wartime Spending Decisions Will Constrain Future National Security Budgets.” Harvard Kennedy School Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP13-006, March 2013.
12 “Soldiers and Marines” Foreword, FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency. Department of the Army, December 2006.
13 “Afghanistan is the war” New York Times, July 15, 2008.
14 “What was interesting” Anne E. Kornblut, Scott Wilson, and Karen DeYoung, “During Marathon Review of Afghanistan Strategy, Obama Held Out for Faster Troop Surge,” Washington Post, December 6, 2009.
15 “a fully resourced counterinsurgency strategy” Gates, Duty, pp. 342 and 367. It is worth noting that Gates, McChrystal, and Petraeus all agreed that the strategy was based on the “oil spot” or “ink blot” technique used in the Malayan War (1948–1960). In Malaya, then a British colony, the oil spot consisted of placing villagers inside stockades guarded by Malayan soldiers commanded by British officers. The oil spot in Malaya was a means of controlling the villagers, regardless of what they wanted.
Unlike in Malaya, the American oil spot in Afghanistan would not control the villagers; instead, it would win their support. After “clearing” (killing) sufficient Taliban, the Americans would move on to another district, spreading the oil spot, while Afghan government officials and soldiers moved in behind them.
In Vietnam, the Marines had used the oil spot in the villages along the coast. By 1970, Marine squads were living in 117 villages. Each shared sleeping quarters and patrols with the village militia. The Marines moved on, usually after a year rather than a few months. It took that long to provide the militia with the training, combat experience, and self-confidence to stand up to the guerrillas still remaining in the area. The oil spot succeeded against the local guerrillas, but eventually the weight of the North Vietnamese army crushed South Vietnam.
In Afghanistan, the oil spot strategy was an arithmetic impossibility. Sixty coalition battalions could not be scattered across 300,000 square kilometers (an area equivalent to the distance between Boston and Atlanta) to protect eight million tribal Pashtuns living in 5,000 villages, while the president of Afghanistan whipped up popular opinion against the coalition and the Taliban enjoyed a 2,600-kilometer-long sanctuary called Pakistan.
16 credible proposals Lt. Cols. William Jurney and Dale Alford, Majs. John Nagl and Jim Gant, Capt. Matt Golsteyn, and Col. Randy Newman, to name only a few, all advocated creating conventional and Special Forces task forces to work intensively with the Afghan forces, at a fraction of the size and cost of our standard force structure.
17 lessons from Vietnam On both sides—the North Vietnamese Army with its guerrilla Viet Cong groups and the United States with Special Forces and Combined Action Platoons—the concept of placing experienced leadership among less capable forces was frequently applied.
18 “We are in this thing” Pentagon press briefing, December 10, 2009.
19 kill the enemy and train Gates, Duty, p. 572.
20 Petraeus After 3rd Platoon and General Petraeus had both left, Marine Gen. John Allen took command in mid-2011. “We will prevail,” he said. “The insurgents have been ejected from the population by counterinsurgency operations.… We will continue the counterinsurgency campaign as long as we can, or until we might get a change in mission.” General Allen video talk posted at wn.com on May 20, 2012, videotaped August 11, 2011.
21 “our country” Lt. Gen John Kelly, speech in St. Louis, November 11, 2010; see Appendix A.
22 “Troops risking their lives” Gates, Duty, p. 475.
23 “resolve that terrorists” President Barack Obama, State of the Union address, January 28, 2014.
24 “This is how” President Obama, address at West Point, May 28, 2014.
25 “be viewed as a strategic defeat” Gates, Duty, p. 567. In the fall of 2013, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff addressed the topic before the Association of the U.S. Army. �
�I simply don’t know,” Adm. James Winnefeld said, “where the security interests of our nation are threatened enough to cause us to lead a future major, extended [counterinsurgency] campaign.” Counterinsurgency as nation building ended with a thud.
26 “To fight a war” Quoted in Tom Donnelly, “Currents of Cooperation, Currents of Conflict,” AEI Center for Defense Studies website, May 24, 2010.
27 “A set of ties” Aaron B. O’Connell, Underdogs: The Making of the Modern Marine Corps. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012, p. 41.
28 “We become” Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.2.ii.html.
BY BING WEST
One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at War
The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan
The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq
No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah
The Village
Naval Forces and Western Security: Sea Plan 2000 (editor)
Small Unit Action in Vietnam
The Pepperdogs
WITH SGT. DAKOTA MEYER, USMC (RET.)
Into the Fire: A Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan War
WITH MAJ. GEN. RAY L. SMITH, USMC (RET.)
The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the U.S. Marines
About the Author
BING WEST, a Marine combat veteran, served as an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. He has been on hundreds of patrols in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. A nationally acclaimed war correspondent, he is the author of The Village; No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah; The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq; and The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan. Most recently, he was the co-author of Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer’s memoir, Into the Fire. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Infantry Order of St. Crispin, West is the recipient of the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the Colby Award for Military Writers, the Andrew J. Goodpaster Prize for military scholarship, the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation award (twice), Tunisia’s Médaille de la Liberté, the Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Association Award, the Father Clyde Leonard Award, the Free Press Award, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars News Media Award. He lives with his wife, Betsy, in Newport, Rhode Island.
www.westwrite.com