The Weekly Standard
Reconstructing Iraq
With the Marines in the south and the 101st Airborne in the north.
by Max Boot
09/15/2003, Volume 009, Issue 01

I WENT TO IRAQ in August, the day after a bomb had ripped through the United
Nations compound in Baghdad, killing 23 people including the U.N. special
envoy. I came home the day after another massive car bomb exploded at a
mosque in Najaf, taking more than 95 lives including that of a leading
cleric. Yet I returned more optimistic than when I went.

Understandably, these attacks have caused apprehension, verging on panic,
among U.S.-based commentators and politicians. A chorus of critics is
already attacking the Bush administration for losing Iraq. During my trip I,
too, saw plenty of room for improvement, especially by the civilian-run
Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. For that matter, I was almost a
casualty of a roadside bomb myself. Nevertheless, after 10 days traveling
with soldiers and Marines in both the north and south, I am encouraged by
the resourcefulness of our troops and struck by how different things look
when seen firsthand. From afar, chaos seems to reign in Iraq; up close,
distinct signs of progress emerge.

Air travel isn't one of the more positive signs. There still is no
commercial air service to Iraq. I went in with Bing West, a former assistant
secretary of defense and a Marine veteran of Vietnam, on a Marine Lear jet
from Kuwait to Al Kut in central Iraq. From there, an old CH-46 helicopter
whisked us to the 1st Marine Division headquarters at Camp Babylon. Yes,
that Babylon. The former home of Nebuchadnezzar now houses rulers clad in
khaki camouflage.

The headquarters of the 1st Marine Division was on the grounds of one of
Saddam Hussein's numerous palaces. A guest house had been turned into a
Combat Operations Center where officers and enlisted personnel sat at laptop
computers monitoring everything from enemy attacks to electricity flows. A
tent city around the building was full to overflowing when we arrived. The
Marines were in the process of transitioning out, while Poles, Romanians,
Bulgarians, Hungarians, Spaniards, and numerous other coalition troops had
already arrived to take their place. The formal handoff to the coalition
forces occurred on September 3, except in Najaf, where the recent bombing
has delayed it.

For Marines who went through the war sleeping in the dirt and eating MREs
(Meals Ready to Eat), life at Camp Babylon had gotten relatively civilized
by the end of their tour. Most of the tents had cots and air conditioning,
"head" calls could be taken in the privacy of a port-o-potty, and food came
from a "chow hall" run by Indian contract employees. Things will be
positively luxurious for the allied troops, who are having built for them,
at U.S. expense, air-conditioned shower and laundry facilities. The food
wasn't bad--we had lobster my first night and excellent cakes--but everyone
from buck private to three-star general waited in a long line before getting
fed.

>From here the 1st Marine Division directed battalions that ran all of
south-central Iraq--up to 11 million people in the Shiite heartland. Major
General James Mattis laughingly called it the Blue Diamond Republic of Iraq,
after the 1st Division's nickname. If so, he was president of the republic,
or, more accurately, its benevolent dictator. Mattis is a legend inside the
Marine Corps, having led the Marines into both Afghanistan and Iraq. He was
so hell-bent on reaching Baghdad that he fired one of his brigade commanders
for not going fast enough. It was his men who toppled the statue of Saddam
Hussein in central Baghdad on April 9, signaling the end of the war.

Relatively short and trim, with a silver crewcut and owlish spectacles,
Mattis doesn't look particularly imposing. But when he opens his mouth it
becomes apparent that he's cut from the George S. Patton mold. Funny, blunt,
erudite, inspiring, and profane, he takes no guff and tolerates no
inefficiency. At nightly briefings with his staff, he dissected PowerPoint
presentations with laser-like questions that got to the heart of every
problem. The issues he dealt with were more appropriate to an imperial
proconsul than to a general: how to combat Islamic extremists, win over
ordinary people, distribute fuel, enforce law and order, and a thousand
other matters. Mattis was not the least bit fazed by the challenge.

And he had made substantial progress. While Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle
were still plagued by anti-American terrorism, life in the Blue Diamond
Republic was pretty calm. It might not seem that way in the wake of the
August 29 car bombing in Najaf. But despite that event, a substantial degree
of normality had returned to Najaf and neighboring towns. The streets I saw
were bustling, and the Marines enjoyed excellent relations with local
leaders.

Not the least of their achievement is that no Marine has been killed by
hostile fire since May 1, when President Bush proclaimed "major hostilities"
at an end. Almost 70 Army soldiers have been slain in that period. This
success isn't a result of flooding south-central Iraq with soldiers. Mattis
never deployed more than 8,000 Marines, along with some Army civil affairs,
psychological operations, and military police units, to control an area the
size of Missouri.

There is no doubt that the Marines' task was made easier by the fact that
the Shiites suffered under the old regime and welcomed their liberation. But
few analysts predicted in May that Shiite holy cities like Najaf and Karbala
would emerge as strongholds of pro-American sentiment. Much of the talk back
then was of Iranian infiltration and Lebanese-style terrorism. That hasn't
happened, at least not against Americans, and every single Marine I met was
convinced that the reason had to do with their approach to peacekeeping,
which they believe superior to the more heavy-handed methods employed, at
least initially, by Army units that occupied Baghdad and the Sunni area to
the immediate north and west.

The Marine strategy was based on three principles. First, do no harm. That
meant not alienating Iraqis by violating their religious or social customs.
Women, for instance, should not be subject to intrusive searches. When
talking to Iraqis, Marines were instructed to point their firearms away and
take off their sunglasses. Above all, it meant using as little firepower as
possible. As Mattis put it: "If someone needs shooting, shoot him. If
someone doesn't need shooting, protect him."

The Marines showed restraint when dealing with hostile crowds. They did not
have a single incident like the one that occurred in Fallujah in late April,
when the 82nd Airborne opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators, killing at
least 12. Marines were more likely to greet hostile crowds with free bottles
of water than with bullets, on the assumption that someone can't be too
angry with you if he's just accepted some water from you.

The Marines' second guiding principle was to win hearts and minds. The
Marines repaired schools, distributed candy, handed out free medical
supplies, set up Rotary clubs, and undertook myriad other charitable tasks.
This earned them goodwill among the community leading to increased
intelligence about troublemakers.

Their third principle was to be ready to win a 10-second gunfight. While
wanting to be as open and friendly as possible, all Marines were told to be
ready to open fire at a moment's notice. When Army supply convoys get
attacked by fedayeen, they speed away, I was told. When Marine convoys got
hit, they were supposed to stop immediately and disgorge infantrymen to
pursue the attackers. Mattis insisted that even convoys carrying the Marines
out of Iraq retain a robust offensive capability.

It all adds up to Mattis's widely publicized slogan: "No Better Friend, No
Worse Enemy" than a U.S. Marine. To see how this yin-yang policy was carried
out, we toured some Marine units just before they headed home.


OUR FIRST STOP was in the desert southwest of Baghdad, home to a giant Army
logistics base called Dogwood. This area is different from the rest of the
Blue Diamond Republic because it's primarily Sunni, not Shiite, and it's
experienced some of the same security woes that have plagued the Sunni
Triangle. In May and June, Army convoys operating here suffered nonstop
guerrilla attacks. During one two-week period in May there were 51 ambushes.

Although this was an Army base, it was in the Marines' area of operations,
so Mattis set up Task Force Scorpion to clean up the mess. Composed of the
4th Force Reconnaissance (the closest the egalitarian Marines come to having
Special Forces), the 4th Light Armored Regiment, some Army civil affairs
soldiers, and a couple of Marine infantry platoons, the task force never
totaled more than 1,000 soldiers.

But with aggressive patrolling, it managed to capture a number of terrorists
and reduce the number of attacks. Just before we arrived they had nabbed a
Republican Guard general and a four-man team that had been mortaring
Dogwood. The successful operations impressed the local people, who flooded
them with unsolicited tips. Based on that information they staged surgical
raids that usually involved no gunfire and resulted in the surrender of a
suspect. While aggressive against suspected terrorists, the task force's
commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Pappas, regularly met with
local sheikhs.

As we were being briefed on Scorpion's operations, an officer volunteered
that they were planning a raid that very night. Would we like to go along?
Sure, I said, little suspecting what I was getting myself into.

Reveille came in total darkness at 4:30 A.M. on Friday, August 22, though
the crump of a mortar shell landing several hundred meters from our barracks
already had me wide awake. By 5:30 we were on the move. Our target was a
suspected Baathist leader who had escaped a previous raid by jumping into
the Euphrates and swimming away in his underwear. We were headed once again
to his posh riverside home about an hour and a half from Dogwood.

Force Recon Marines, riding in two Humvees, were supposed to conduct the
raid. Three light armored vehicles went along to "sanitize" the perimeter
and deal with any "squirters," or fleeing suspects. Dressed in a heavy flak
vest and Kevlar helmet, I was squished into the back of one of these
tinpots. Without enough room to sit up straight or stretch out my legs, and
with virtually no portholes, I was left to stare for hours on end at
pictures of a soldier's girlfriend and a pinup of Pamela Anderson, both
attached by magnets to the vehicle hull. Soon the temperature would soar
over 120 degrees. Dust wafted through two open hatches manned by Marines
with M-16s.

At about 6 A.M., our journey took an unexpected twist. As we were driving by
some fields, three remote-controlled bombs exploded by the side of the road.
Each was made from a 155 mm shell packed with explosives. Two more
unexploded bombs were later discovered by the roadside, one of them full of
white phosphorus. Had they all gone off when intended, hundreds of pounds of
explosives would have ripped into our column, almost certainly causing
serious casualties. Luckily the mission commander, Major Joe Cabell,
insisted on proper dispersion and the explosions passed harmlessly between
our vehicles.

As soon as the attack occurred, the column pulled over to the side of the
road and Marines jumped out to hunt for the perpetrators. A gunner saw what
he thought were men fleeing through the fields and fired warning shots. It's
a good thing he didn't hit anyone: It later turned out they were innocent
farmers. As two Huey helicopters buzzed some nearby palm trees, it started
to look like a scene from a Vietnam War movie.

With the help of an interpreter, the Marines interviewed local farmers and
found out that a suspicious blue van had been seen in the neighborhood. We
set off to find it and eventually ran down a blue Volkswagen van. Its sole
occupant, a defiant young man in a track suit, tested positive for gunpowder
residue on his hands. The Marines handcuffed him with plexicuffs and tossed
him into the back of the light armored vehicle right next to your
correspondent. The corporal asked me to "cover" the suspect. I held the 9 mm
pistol a bit nervously (I'm more comfortable in think tanks than battle
tanks) but did as I was told. In a few minutes, the suspect, his head
covered in a T-shirt, was transferred to a Humvee for transportation back to
base.

We pressed on with the raid, but it turned out the target wasn't home. We
tried a couple of nearby locations-- no dice. By 1:30 P.M. we were back at
base, hot, filthy, and exhausted. What was supposed to be a four-hour raid
had turned into an eight-hour trek across the countryside. I was whipped,
but the Marines weren't too discouraged. "It was a good day," said Corporal
Daiman Benney, a 26-year-old infantryman with a blond mustache. Reflecting
on his impending departure for home, he sighed, "I'll miss chasing bad
guys."


THIS IS THE SHARP END of the Marine occupation. The next day we saw the
warriors' soft side during a visit to Karbala, site of the second-holiest
Shiite shrine. Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Lopez, commander of the 3rd
Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, was preparing to turn over command to a
Bulgarian contingent, but before he did so, he had some errands to run. He
piled into an SUV accompanied by a sergeant and Bing and me. None of us was
wearing a flak vest or helmet. The Marines were in their "soft covers," aka
cloth hats. Crammed into the back were dozens of silver soccer balls donated
by Nike. The Marines were planning to hand out 15,000 balls to the children
of Iraq, and Lopez wanted to make a start today.

As we crawled through the crowded city streets, we tossed soccer balls to
any kids we saw. As soon as the first ball came bouncing out, a tremendous
excitement seized the urchins. They ran after the SUV, arms outstretched,
shouting "Mistah! Mistah!" The kids were ecstatic and so was Lopez. With a
big smile on his face, he said, "I wish I could take all of them home with
me."

When the ball supply was exhausted, we headed to city hall for Lopez's last
meeting with the provincial governor and city council. They were as happy to
see him as the kids. A consummate diplomat, Lopez exchanged flowery
courtesies with a long line of sheikhs and other local officials, and then
got down to business. Speaking through his interpreter (a Marine private
born in Kuwait), he spent 45 minutes wheeling and dealing over a variety of
public works projects. A Bulgarian colonel who will soon replace Lopez
looked on to learn how it's done. "You will be missed a lot," a local worthy
told Lopez, but the Marine is confident that the people of Karbala are well
on the way to self-government. "Democracy is embedded here," he said.

That may be a stretch, but there is no question that the U.S. occupation has
made tremendous strides among the Shiites, who comprise 60 percent of Iraq's
population. Driving through towns like Karbala and Najaf you see shops
overflowing with goods and Iraqi cops in blue uniforms directing traffic.
Violence hasn't entirely disappeared, as witness the August 29 car-bomb
murder of Ayatollah Hakim and scores of his followers, but little animosity
is directed toward the Americans, who are generally seen as liberators.

Every drive through Iraq in a U.S. military vehicle becomes a referendum on
the occupation. Do the people smile or frown as you pass? In the Sunni
Triangle, U.S. army patrols are often met with sullen stares. In central
Iraq, smiles and thumbs up are commonplace. Little kids are especially
enthusiastic. I felt like the queen of England waving regally at Iraqis as
we drove by in our three-Humvee convoy.

Support for the occupation isn't universal, of course. There are still some
clerics who want a theocracy, and they have received support from Iran and
other sources. But they have gained little traction among Iraqis. The most
prominent troublemaker, Moqtada al-Sadr, scion of a family of prominent
ayatollahs, appears to be rapidly losing support, as judged by the sparse
attendance at his sermons in Najaf. The attack on Ayatollah Hakim was the
extremists' attempt to win through violence what they could not achieve by
peaceful means--an attempt that will almost surely backfire by uniting the
Shiites against the barbarians who desecrated their holiest shrine.

There was pressure from some U.S. officials in the Coalition Provisional
Authority to arrest Sadr because of widespread rumors that he was involved
in the murder of a pro-American imam back in April. But in the absence of
hard evidence, the Marines refused to move against him. In their view,
arresting him would only have turned him into a martyr. Better to let his
rival clerics steal away his support--which seems to be happening.


THIS IS ONLY ONE EXAMPLE of the rifts that divide the military from the CPA,
led by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer. It was apparent during our visit that the
CPA has done little to help the men and women in uniform; some joked that
the agency's initials stand for "Can't Provide Anything." Even
well-intentioned CPA initiatives have been badly bungled.

For instance, there was a plan to put 300,000 unemployed Iraqis to work
clearing agricultural canals. A good idea, but the Iraqi managers failed to
pay the workers for three weeks. In Diwaniyah, a major town in central Iraq,
the unhappy ditch diggers rioted in protest and destroyed a government
building. The Marines, who had not been involved in setting up this program,
were called in to deal with the resulting chaos. They dispersed the rioters
and paid the agricultural workers out of their own funds. Now they have set
up a system to ensure that the payments are made. One can only hope that the
coalition forces who are replacing the Marines will prove equally adept at
covering for the CPA's missteps.

Much of the problem, no doubt, is that the CPA lacks the readymade
infrastructure available to a military division. Starting from scratch, it
has a hard time recruiting qualified candidates to come to Iraq. And those
it hires are likely to leave after a few months. Former New York City police
chief Bernard Kerik, for instance, arrived at the beginning of the summer to
run the justice ministry, and he's already going home. But despite having a
small organization, Bremer appears to be centralizing many operations in
Baghdad. This is an odd choice given the vast differences between the
Kurdish and Arab north, Sunni center, and Shiite south. Running everything
from the capital seems a big mistake.

Complaints about over-centralization are echoed by the 101st Airborne
Division. Like the Marines, the "Screaming Eagles" fought in the war, then
were called upon to garrison a large chunk of the country--the north--that
is moving toward peace and prosperity. The division is headquartered in
Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, with a population of 1.2 million. The
101st's entire area of operations encompasses 6 million people, including
Arabs, Kurds, Turkomen, and other ethnic groups.

Like the Marines, the 101st is living in one of Saddam's palaces. Its
accommodations are slightly more posh; the troops have access to running
water, the Internet, satellite TV, even two swimming pools. But only a
sadist would begrudge them a few creature comforts. The Marines are heading
home in September; the 101st will be here until February 2004, a whole year.
One of its brigades, the 3rd, came here after spending most of 2002 in
Afghanistan; now the "Rakkasans," as they're called, are deployed in the
wasteland between Mosul and the Syrian border.

The 101st faces many thorny problems unique to its area, such as land
disputes between Arabs and Kurds, and a porous border with Syria. But its
approach is similar to that of the Marines. In their combat operations
center, the division commander, Major General David Petraeus, has posted a
sign that proclaims, "We are in a race to win over the people. What have you
and your element done to contribute to that goal today?"

They have done a good deal--almost all of it without the help of the CPA. On
his own initiative, General Petraeus decided to open the Syrian border to
increase trade, and to strike deals with Turkey and Syria to swap Iraqi oil
for badly needed electricity. The division has also restored telephone
service and is taking bids for cellular service.

Like Mattis, Petraeus preaches respect for Iraqis. Politeness and restraint
are the order of the day. And when his troops do have to use strongarm
tactics, they take pains not to leave hurt feelings behind. After they
killed Uday and Qusay Hussein on July 22, the division spent more than
$100,000 to repair damage to the neighborhood where the intense firefight
occurred.

One of the 101st's brigade commanders, Colonel Joe Anderson, hopped in a
humvee to take Bing West and me on a whirlwind tour of Mosul. Projects
underway range from training the Iraqi police to providing medicine for a
local hospital to painting schools to refurbishing an Olympic-size swimming
pool to building houses for refugees. The list seems endless--and the 101st
is doing all of it with its commanders' own discretionary fund, much of
which comes from seized assets of the old regime.

Aside from providing money for the military to spend, Bremer's Coalition
Provisional Authority has as little presence in the north as it has in the
south. Its TV station, the Iraqi Media Network, is not received here, thus
ceding the propaganda war to anti-American outlets like Al Jazeera. And it
has failed to remedy the electricity and fuel problems that plague the
entire country. The northern region has less power now than it did a few
weeks ago because the central government in Baghdad is siphoning its power
to the center, much as Saddam used to.

After visiting both northern and southern Iraq, one gets the clear sense
that the CPA needs to take a different tack. The same might be said of the
army units that garrison Baghdad and the Sunni areas to the immediate north
and west--the 4th Infantry Division, 1st Armored Division, and 3rd Armored
Cavalry Regiment. All are armor units less attuned to the demands of
peacekeeping than light infantry outfits like the 1st Marine Division and
the 101st Airborne. One officer of the 101st suggested that the situation in
Baghdad would be much better if his division, with its more nuanced
approach, had garrisoned the capital. The Marines, too, are convinced they
could do a better job there, which makes it all the more unfortunate that
they are now heading home.

In the view of numerous 101st Airborne and 1st Marine officers I talked to,
sending more troops to Iraq isn't the answer. Smarter policing tactics and
better intelligence are what's required, and training more Iraqi cops should
be the top priority. They could use more funding for such training and other
reconstruction projects, since, as Petraeus says, "money is ammunition."

In spite of continuing attacks and various other frustrations, both the
101st Division and the 1st Marine Division display a fundamental optimism
about Iraq and its future. As General Petraeus put it, "I think we're
winning up here. We have very good momentum." General Mattis delivered the
message in an earthier style: "We've got the bastards on the run."

Yet the world press, which lavished such attention on Iraqi looting back in
May, seems largely indifferent to the successful work of rebuilding that has
gone on since. The media naturally focus on bombings and shootings, not on
the reopening of schools or training of police officers. There is a real
danger of another Tet Offensive--an American military victory turned into a
public relations disaster back home.

As we flew back to Kuwait on a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, my thoughts were
not on such cosmic strategic questions. Rather, I thought of the American
men and women who are serving in Iraq. They have performed their work with
incredible fortitude, humanity, ingenuity, and skill under difficult and
often dangerous circumstances. For me, visiting Iraq was a 10-day adventure;
for them, it is a 24/7 occupation.

I asked my Marine driver, a wispy-thin 22-year-old lance corporal named
William Eberly, why he'd enlisted. "I wanted to feel like I actually did
something for my country," he told me, "so I could call myself a true
American." It strikes me that Lance Corporal Eberly has done a lot for two
countries--the United States and Iraq--whether his countrymen appreciate it
or not.


Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a
contributing editor to The Weekly Standard. He is author of "The Savage Wars
of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power."

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