Marines Intend to Avoid Get-Tough Tactics in Iraq

[thedrifter]

Marines Intend to Avoid Get-Tough Tactics in Iraq
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

Published: December 11, 2003


CAMP PENDLETON, California, Dec. 10 -- No force has a tougher reputation than the United States Marines. But the marines who are headed to Iraq this spring say they intend to avoid the get-tough tactics that have been used in recent weeks by Army units.

Marine commanders say they not plan to surround villages with barbed wire, demolish buildings used by insurgents or detain relatives of suspected guerrillas. The Marines do not plan to fire artillery at suspected guerrilla mortar positions, an Army tactic that risks harming civilians. Nor do the Marines want to risk civilian casualties by calling in bombing strikes on the insurgents, as has happened most recently in Afghanistan.

"I do not envision using that tactic," said Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, the commanding general of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, who led the Marine force that fought its way to Baghdad and will command the more than 20,000 marines who will return to Iraq in March. "It would have to be a rare incident that transcends anything that we have seen in the country to make that happen."

The upsurge in guerrilla attacks on American troops in Iraq has prompted Army units in the Sunni Triangle in central Iraq to adopt a hard-nosed approach -- and spawned a behind-the-scenes debate within the American military about the best way to quash the insurgents.

While some Army commanders insist the hard-nosed tactics have been successful in reducing enemy attacks, other military officers believe they are alienating Iraqis and thus depriving American commanders of the public support and human intelligence needed to ferret out threats.

In an interview at his headquarters at Camp Pendleton, General Conway was careful not to criticize the Army. Still, he indicated that he plans to pursue a very different strategy.

"I don't want to condemn what people are doing," General Conway said. "I think they are doing what they think they have to do. I'll simply say that I think until we can win the population over and they can give us those indigenous intelligence reports that we're prolonging the process."

The Marines, General Conway says, will try to design their raids to be "laser precise," targeted on the enemy with a maximum effort made to avoid endangering or humiliating Iraqi civilians.

After American forces invaded Iraq last spring, United States marines fought some of the fiercest battles of the war at Nasiriya and at a mosque in eastern Baghdad. After Saddam Hussein was driven from power, the Marines assumed the responsibility for stabilizing south-central Iraq, where most of the inhabitants are Shiite Muslims who were persecuted under Mr. Hussein and were glad to see him gone. In contrast to the Army's experience, no marine was killed in action after mid-April.

The Marines insist their success also reflected their energetic efforts to work with the local population, an effort guided by their "small wars" manual, which derives from their 20th century interventions in Central America.

There were several parallels between the Marine experience in southern Iraq and how the Army's 101st Airborne has approached northern Iraq -- and many differences from the aggressive tactics of the Army's Fourth Infantry Division and other Army units in the Sunni Triangle.

On their return to Iraq now, the Marines will be dealing with a much more challenging area which includes restive towns like Falluja, west of Baghdad.

In that region, American military units have come and gone so often that they have had little time to understand their surroundings. Falluja was initially occupied by the 82nd Airborne Division, which was soon replaced by the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, which was in turn replaced by the Second Brigade of the Army's Third Infantry Division. In early summer, the Third Infantry Division had some success in helping to establish the local police. But it returned to the United States, handing the town back to the Third Armored Cavalry, which was soon replaced by the 82nd Airborne.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/11/i...&partner=GOOGLE


Sempers,

Roger