For Corps? return to Iraq, group touts unusual tactics

[thedrifter]

Issue Date: February 16, 2004

For Corps? return to Iraq, group touts unusual tactics

By Christian Lowe
Times staff writer

Marines are known for tactical thinking that?s a bit unorthodox at times. They know that improvisation and cunning often make up for having less money and fewer people than the other services.
Recent reports that Marines headed to Iraq plan to wear green cammies ? to differentiate themselves from the Army troops they?re replacing ? and that many young leathernecks are taking a crash course in Arabic language and culture indicate the Corps is taking a more nuanced approach to occupation duty than the forces there today.

In that vein, a small group of active-duty Marine and Army officers and retired strategists have been gathering each month with a strategist known for his unconventional ideas to discuss how the new occupation forces can win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. The solutions they?ve come up with, while by no means official policy, could be as intriguing to Marine commanders headed to Iraq as they are unusual. The strategies stress de-escalation in the face of violence, a low-key approach to interaction with restive citizens and an emphasis on saying ?we?re not like the guys who were here before us.?

The group is headed by William Lind, director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation and a frequent participant in Marine Corps and Pentagon war games, and meets in the Washington, D.C., area to hash over the problems facing U.S. forces in the war on terror. Lind typically releases its findings in his occasional e-mail releases titled ?On War.?

The discussion comes as the U.S. military is preparing for one of its most ambitious rotations ever: a deployment exchange of 130,000 troops who?ve been in Iraq nearly a year with 110,000 fresh service members. The rotations will occur in the face of continued violence from insurgents who use mortars, car bombs and drive-by shootings to sow chaos and disrupt America?s occupation.

At the group?s most recent meeting, the participants, all of whom wish to remain anonymous, proposed taking the green utilities idea even further. When conducting civil-affairs projects in an Iraqi town, why not wear civilian clothes? Or ditch the helmets and body armor and wear only soft covers. Move around town on foot, not in vehicles. Don?t wear sunglasses.

All simple solutions to the problems of perception, the participants argued.

?Teach [troops] enough Arab culture so they avoid gross insults like stepping on the heads of people they detain,? says the ?On War? memo discussing the subjects of the January meeting. ?Your first task is to tell the locals ?We?re not like the guys who just left.??

Among other suggestions pondered by the group:

?Go in with plenty of money to pass around. Be willing to pay ?blood money? ? compensation to families whose members were killed by Americans.

?Don?t ?relieve in place.? Move into new areas, not the Army?s old base camps.

?Offer the guerrillas a deal in which they take responsibility for local security.

?Set up liaison offices where locals can bring questions and requests to Marines.

The assessment did take into account the prickly question of what happens if none of this works ? if the locals reject the Marine stance as weakness and hit the leathernecks as hard as they hit the Army. When casualties mount, the reflexive reaction of Marines will be to respond with brutal force.

This time, Lind insists in his memo, restraint will be the key.

?How long can we sustain this alternate, ?softer? approach as our casualties mount?? the memo asks. ?The troops need to be trained and prepared for doing so, because their natural response will be to take it out on the population. ? They have to be willing not to kill.?

Outside strategists agree that it?s important to discuss such innovative approaches.

?That?s tactical thinking at its best,? said retired Air Force Col. Jim Callard, a former Air Force special-operations pilot and instructor at the National Defense University. ?But you need to think strategically. Think about your job as if you?re going to be in that community for 20 years.?

Retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, who commanded Marines in Somalia and now is working as a consultant to the Pentagon on the creation of the Iraqi Civil Defense Forces, said the suggestions Lind?s group offers were ?common sense,? but that it may not be possible to implement some of them.

Wearing civilian clothes on operations, for example, is a ?strategic decision that is beyond the paygrade of even the general officer,? he said, noting that only U.S. Central Command chief Army Gen. John Abizaid ?can authorize coalition military in civilian clothes on duty.?

But some say that, beyond being difficult to implement, such approaches could be a recipe for disaster. As Army Lt. Col. Gian Gentile, former commander of the 4th Infantry Division?s 1st Brigade Combat Team in Iraq and now a history professor at the U.S. Military Academy, argued in a Jan. 19 commentary in The Washington Post, the Corps? approach might toughen when Marines are confronted with the explosive insurgency of the ?Sunni Triangle.?

?The Marines? simplistic solution doesn?t square with conditions on the ground.? he wrote. ?I fear this approach ? will ignore the hard-won gains of Army units over the past eight months.?

nnnnnBut Lind?s group believes there may be radical solutions to continued insurgent violence. For example, instead of directly confronting a guerrilla organization with American might, the latest memo proposes a ?Mafia model, where instead of acting directly, we contract ?hits? on the bad guys who just disappear with no American fingerprints on them.?

Then there?s the British colonial model employed in India in the 19th century. During the Raj, British rulers pitted Hindus against Muslims, deflecting anti-colonial anger and channeling it into local disputes.

Neither proposal is likely to be adopted, Lind admits, because the desire of U.S. officials to show progress in Iraq with demonstrable results is incompatible with the undercover nature of the ?Mafia model? and the British colonial path depends on specific local intelligence that, so far, is out of reach.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/sto...PER-2577013.php


Sempers,

Roger