The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

230 Chapter 9
second battle, inviting media personnel known for credibility and unbiased
reporting to embed with the command operations center and become familiar
with the Marines’ painstaking targeting process. 53 In addition, Marines
invited over ninety embedded reporters representing sixty different news
outlets into their ranks. 54 Unlike the first action in the city of Fallujah, which
Marines regarded as a spontaneous act of “retaliation,” the second battle
was a deliberately planned affair. Information operations were recognized
as “high priority” and were delivered in a “massive effort” that included
both printed messages and radio broadcasts. 55
Marines minimized domestic backlash within Iraq by explaining to Fallujah
residents exactly what was coming. Those charged with information
operations made it very clear that Prime Minister Ayad Allawi believed all
opportunities for a peaceful solution in Fallujah had been exhausted and
that Marines would have his backing throughout the full operation there.
The city was going to be attacked, and operations would not stop until it
was cleared. 56 Marines and most observers agree that information operations
were successful in convincing about 80 percent of the civilian population
to depart. 57 Those citizens choosing not to leave were given specific
instructions to stay in their homes. 58 Through messages communicated to
both the resident population of Fallujah and to outside observers, Marines
worked to ensure that they “owned” the information operations narrative
this time around, 59 including successful psychological operations that misled
insurgents about the direction of attack. 60 By the time the Marines launched
their assault, their scores of embeds let the world see the Fallujah fight
through Marine eyes, hour by hour.
According to General Sattler, “it worked.” 61 Marines met with military
success in clearing insurgents and, despite inflicting massive destruction on
the city in the grim process of fighting an entrenched enemy, avoided political
defeat. 62
“Treading Water”: Defaulting to Large
Sweep Operations, 2004–6
Neither productive engagement with the population in ousting the insurgents
nor real progress toward stabilizing Iraq was achieved in the two
years following Fallujah. Battlefield success against the insurgents in the
city of Fallujah was necessary, but the heavy destruction that resulted did
not garner goodwill with citizens there or in the surrounding region. 63 Iraqis
who eventually came to partner with US forces characterize the years of US
engagement up through 2006 as one mistake after another. They stressed
that US forces did not understand Iraqi culture and consequently resorted to
heavy- handed tactics and large sweep operations that arrested and interrogated
many of the wrong people, moves that increased hostility and swelled