The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

222 Chapter 9
independent thinker who, as an unusually motivated autodidact, has cultivated
a particularly high level of counterinsurgency (reduced to the acronym
“COIN” by the modern US military) expertise outside his military training. 11
Mattis himself, however, insists that he is a representative product of Marine
institutions and culture. He explains that in addition to receiving training
on the CAP program, he, like other officers, had been issued a reprint of the
Small Wars Manual. This basic set of counterinsurgency lessons “prepared
me pretty well for COIN.” He references the comprehensive reading list
mandated to officer ranks, the concepts of the three- block war and strategic
corporal, and the extended boot- camp and urban counterguerrilla training
put in place by visionary seniors to argue that “lessons recognized were easily
examined in the literature and turned into lessons learned by the 90s” by
any who were willing to pursue them. 12
Guideposts to Stability Operations, 2003
Marines embarked on their Iraq campaign with General Mattis’s eve- ofinvasion
missive to all hands ringing in their ears:
While we will move swiftly and aggressively against those who
resist, we will treat all others with decency, demonstrating chivalry
and soldierly compassion for people who have endured a lifetime
under Saddam [Hussein]’s oppression. . . .
You are part of the world’s most feared and trusted force.
Engage your brain before you engage your weapon. . . . For the mission’s
sake, our country’s sake, and the sake of the men who carried
the Division’s colors in past battles—who fought for life and never
lost their nerve—carry out your mission and keep your honor clean.
Demonstrate to the world there is “No Better Friend, No Worse
Enemy” than a US Marine. 13
Mattis’s order to engage in careful treatment of the civilian population was
reminiscent of that issued nearly one hundred years earlier by Col. Joseph
Pendleton when landing Marines on Hispaniola. Marines in Iraq, however,
were drawn from a nation that had experienced the Civil Rights Movement,
embraced far more tolerant social norms than Americans of the early twentieth
century, and cultivated an identity as champions of human rights. In
addition, the searing experience of Vietnam meant that both the American
population and its service members were determined to avoid the bruising
and potentially strategically fatal consequences of undue harm to civilians
who inhabited the battle zone. The result was an American population and
a Marine Corps that demanded a higher standard of conduct from its troops
than their counterinsurgency predecessors.