The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

Counterinsurgency in Iraq 227
Washington believed a show of force was necessary, so refused this advice
and demanded the Marines go in. Marines saluted, gave residents two days
to evacuate, and attacked. 36
Marines acquitted themselves with legendary leatherneck fighting skill
in the bloody streets of Fallujah. Watching the Marines rush into the fight,
embedded reporter Robert Kaplan recorded their raw courage and tactical
proficiency with awe:
[Captain] Smith did not have to order his Marines straight into the
direction of the fire; it was a collective impulse—a phenomenon
I would see again and again over the coming days. The idea that
Marines are trained to break down doors, to seize beachheads and
other territory, was an abstraction until I was there to experience
it. Running into fire rather than seeking cover from it goes counter
to every human survival instinct—trust me. I was sweating as much
from fear as from the layers of clothing I still had on from the
night before, to the degree that it felt as if pure salt were running
into my eyes from my forehead. As the weeks had rolled on, and I
had gotten to know the 1/5 Marines as the individuals they were, I
had started deluding myself that they weren’t much different from
me. They had soft spots, they got sick, they complained. But in one
flash, as we charged amid whistling incoming shots, I realized that
they were not like me; they were Marines. 37
Marines will draw a number of lessons from the First Battle of Fallujah.
A hindsight focus for the Corps has been the extent to which this
engagement validated “nearly 10 years of urban experimentation and combat
development,” including “fighting among civilians, the three block war,
and the use of asymmetrical tactics.” 38 Their control over the outcome in
Fallujah, however, was interrupted by the reaction of civilian leadership
to the enemy’s use of information operations, a lesson the Marines would
learn the hard way in the first round in Fallujah and prepare carefully for
in the second.
Days into the conflict, scenes of gore and dead children were sent to the
airwaves by news outlets sympathetic to the insurgents’ cause. 39 Whether
the dead were a result of Marine military action or victims of the insurgents’
own fire, both were skillfully played to a global audience as victims
of Marine brutality. Reeling from the heart- rending images, key US allies
and the Iraqi Governing Council demanded an end to the Fallujah assault.
General Mattis assessed that Marine forces were days away from taking
the city. The Iraqi leadership in Baghdad, with the support of key Coalition
allies, continued their pressure on the White House, threatening to pull support
if the Marine assault did not end immediately. In response, Washington
concluded that the Fallujah operation was not worth the breakup of the