The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

Conclusion 273
determine whether US military personnel stay or depart, and those locals
who risk their lives on well- intended promises may be left hanging. The
primary asset of the CAP program—the Marines’ assurance that they would
be a permanent feature in the village until the security situation was well
in hand—encouraged trust from the villagers “knowing we are going to
stay.” 58 This trust, however, was misplaced. Looking back, one CAP Marine
stated bitterly, “Do you want to know the worst thing I did in Vietnam?
. . . Winning hearts and minds. Winning hearts and minds was the ultimate
betrayal. Those are the folks who were hanging on to the helicopters
and embassy walls. It’s really sad that we won some of them over.” 59
CAP Marines believed that they would stay in their village, or at least their
replacements would, until Americans had worked themselves out of a job—
until PFs were ably trained and they, alongside legitimated South Vietnamese
regulars, could handle VC and North Vietnamese Army incursions. In
reality, however, the Marines had no control over how long they stayed.
Decisions from “higher” and the political climate at home were intervening
variables. The trust from villagers that became strategically helpful in the
CAP program by yielding a measure of intelligence on the enemy and protection
for the Marines, and which later cemented success in Anbar, will be
difficult to replicate in future operations. The US national record of departing
a theater with an insurgency still in swing—in Vietnam, Iraq, and very
likely in Afghanistan—will in all probability be well understood by foreign
populations in tomorrow’s counterinsurgency scenarios. It will, and should,
act as an impediment to their willingness to establish relationships of reliance
and trust with US forces.
Perhaps owing to acknowledgment of this operational reality, the
SULG strikes a lesson- recognized cautionary note: “Be very wary of training,
operating alongside, and establishing publicly visible relationships with
indigenous forces if you cannot commit to the effort on a long- term basis.
Abandoning a young and inexperienced indigenous force before it is ready
to fight on its own will almost guarantee insurgent exploitation.” 60 This
counsel is issued not because Marines have real control over the timing of
their departure, but as a nudge toward thoughtful analysis concerning the
appropriate relationship with locals once US departure is on the horizon.
Americans, Marines, and the Problem
of Future Counterinsurgency
The operational cultural narratives that have shaped Marine thinking and
activity in small wars have been drawn from multiple sources. The outlook
of the Corps on its future role, however, is powerfully shaped by an internal
service instinct protective of hard- won identity goods and the Corps’s place
of distinction in the lineup of US armed services. The heart of Marine Corps