The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

198 Chapter 7
of grunts on a search- and- destroy mission who would replace them. CAP
Marines were protecting the village—not from the VC or the NVA, but from
the American military machine. 61
Among the short- term advantages of civic action, the primary benefits
were an intermeshing with village life—often knowing the terrain far
better than the enemy—and consequent contextual dividends in intelligence.
Superior intelligence cannot be attributed wholly, or even primarily,
to village gratitude stemming from American material gifts. Rather, it was
a combination of relentless patrolling to establish security, a consequent
well- developed sixth sense for the village, and neighborly civic action that
encouraged consistent and warm interaction with villagers.
Sincerely offered civic action achieved some level of force protection
but did not enhance the legitimacy of the South Vietnamese government,
despite this being part of purported purpose. From a macro view, the American
perception that drove these operations—that US- resourced civic action
in the name of a host government can provide a lasting boost to the host
government’s legitimacy—is likely nothing short of strategic fantasy, one
that does not seem to suffer much from consistent disproval. If local governing
officials were cooperative (which many were), Marines were happy
to attempt to pass the feel- good benefits of a civic- action accomplishment
to them. In the main, however, Marine civic action did not incur legitimacy
for local governments or Saigon; it incurred legitimacy for CAP Marines. In
this sense it produced force- protection benefits, superior intelligence, and
varying levels of counterinsurgent help. The goodwill and gratitude generated
from these sincere acts could not be “gifted” to the South Vietnamese
government. It went home with Marines.
Notes
1. Maj. Charles F. Williams, “La Guardia Nacional Dominicana,” Marine Corps
Gazette (September 1918): 196. Efficiency as well as “peace and order,” according
to 1st Lt. Robert C. Kilmartin, “Indoctrination in Santo Domingo,” Marine
Corps Gazette (December 1922): 383.
2. Gobat, Confronting the American Dream, 207, 216; Calder, Impact of
Intervention.
3. Millett and Gaddy, “Administering the Protectorates,” 111.
4. J. C. Fegan, “After Nineteen Years We Leave Haiti,” Marine Corps Gazette
(August 1934): 23.
5. Millett, Semper Fidelis, 193.
6. Col. Rufus Lane, “Civil Government in Santo Domingo in the Early Days of
the Military Occupation,” Marine Corps Gazette (June 1922): 135–36.
7. Gobat, Confronting the American Dream, 217–20.
8. Ibid., 4; Calder, Impact of Intervention, xii.