Reconstructing Iraq
BOOT, MAX
Reconstructing Iraq With the Marines in the south and the 101st Airborne in the north BY MAX BOOT I went to Iraq in August, the day after a bomb had ripped through the United Nations compound in...
...expense, air-conditioned shower and laundry facilities...
...I was whipped, but the Marines weren't too discouraged...
...occupation has made tremendous strides among the Shiites, who comprise 60 percent of Iraq's population...
...But its approach is similar to that of the Marines...
...When the ball supply was exhausted, we headed to city hall for Lopez's last meeting with the provincial governor and city council...
...Mattis insisted that even convoys carrying the Marines out of Iraq retain a robust offensive capability...
...The Marines were planning to hand out 15,000 balls to the children of Iraq, and Lopez wanted to make a start today...
...Without enough room to sit up straight or stretch out my legs, and with virtually no portholes, I was left to stare for hours on end at pictures of a soldier's girlfriend and a pinup of Pamela Anderson, both attached by magnets to the vehicle hull...
...They could use more funding for such training and other reconstruction projects, since, as Petraeus says, "money is ammunition...
...We have very good momentum...
...One of its brigades, the 3rd, came here after spending most of 2002 in Afghanistan...
...The Marine strategy was based on three principles...
...The formal handoff to the coalition forces occurred on September 3, except in Najaf, where the recent bombing has delayed it...
...Reveille came in total darkness at 4:30 a.m...
...Understandably, these attacks have caused apprehension, verging on panic, among U.S.-based commentators and politicians...
...The corporal asked me to "cover" the suspect...
...Our first stop was in the desert southwest of Baghdad, home to a giant Army logistics base called Dogwood...
...The most prominent troublemaker, Moqtada al-Sadr, scion of a family of prominent ayatollahs, appears to be rapidly losing support, as judged by the sparse attendance at his sermons in Najaf...
...Would we like to go along...
...up close, distinct signs of progress emerge...
...As two Huey helicopters buzzed some nearby palm trees, it started to look like a scene from a Vietnam War movie...
...When Marine convoys got hit, they were supposed to stop immediately and disgorge infantrymen to pursue the attackers...
...From here the 1st Marine Division directed battalions that ran all of south-central Iraq—up to 11 million people in the Shiite heartland...
...They did not have a single incident like the one that occurred in Fallujah in late April, when the 82nd Airborne opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators, killing at least 12...
...Little kids are especially enthusiastic...
...As we were driving by some fields, three remote-controlled bombs exploded by the side of the road...
...He was so hell-bent on reaching Baghdad that he fired one of his brigade commanders for not going fast enough...
...But despite that event, a substantial degree of normality had returned to Najaf and neighboring towns...
...One officer of the 101st suggested that the situation in Baghdad would be much better if his division, with its more nuanced approach, had garrisoned the capital...
...the 101st will be here until February 2004, a whole year...
...After visiting both northern and southern Iraq, one gets the clear sense that the CPA needs to take a different tack...
...First, do no harm...
...Women, for instance, should not be subject to intrusive searches...
...Luckily the mission commander, Major Joe Cabell, insisted on proper dispersion and the explosions passed harmlessly between our vehicles...
...As we were being briefed on Scorpion's operations, an officer volunteered that they were planning a raid that very night...
...Reflecting on his impending departure for home, he sighed, "I'll miss chasing bad guys...
...Dust wafted through two open hatches manned by Marines with M-16s...
...Based on that information they staged surgical raids that usually involved no gunfire and resulted in the surrender of a suspect...
...But few analysts predicted in May that Shiite holy cities like Najaf and Karbala would emerge as strongholds of pro-American sentiment...
...A good idea, but the Iraqi managers failed to pay the workers for three weeks...
...In their view, arresting him would only have turned him into a martyr...
...They were as happy to see him as the kids...
...Nevertheless, after 10 days traveling with soldiers and Marines in both the north and south, I am encouraged by the resourcefulness of our troops and struck by how different things look when seen firsthand...
...In central Iraq, smiles and thumbs up are commonplace...
...I came home the day after another massive car bomb exploded at a mosque in Najaf, taking more than 95 lives including that of a leading cleric...
...We tried a couple of nearby locations— no dice...
...The Marines' second guiding principle was to win hearts and minds...
...We set off to find it and eventually ran down a blue Volkswagen van...
...There are still some clerics who want a theocracy, and they have received support from Iran and other sources...
...The Marines handcuffed him with plexicuffs and tossed him into the back of the light armored vehicle right next to your correspondent...
...As we crawled through the crowded city streets, we tossed soccer balls to any kids we saw...
...Our target was a suspected Baathist leader who had escaped a previous raid by jumping into the Euphrates and swimming away in his underwear...
...The same might be said of the army units that garrison Baghdad and the Sunni areas to the immediate north and west—the 4th Infantry Division, 1st Armored Division, and 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment...
...It was apparent during our visit that the CPA has done little to help the men and women in uniform...
...But in the absence of hard evidence, the Marines refused to move against him...
...You will be missed a lot," a local worthy told Lopez, but the Marine is confident that the people of Karbala are well on the way to self-government...
...now the "Rakkasans," as they're called, are deployed in the wasteland between Mosul and the Syrian border...
...Major General James Mattis laughingly called it the Blue Diamond Republic of Iraq, after the 1st Division's nickname...
...I held the 9 mm pistol a bit nervously (I'm more comfortable in think tanks than battle tanks) but did as I was told...
...Projects underway range from training the Iraqi police to providing medicine for a local hospital to painting schools to refurbishing an Olympic-size swimming pool to building houses for refugees...
...Marines were more likely to greet hostile crowds with free bottles of water than with bullets, on the assumption that someone can't be too angry with you if he's just accepted some water from you...
...The successful operations impressed the local people, who flooded them with unsolicited tips...
...But they have gained little traction among Iraqis...
...On his own initiative, General Petraeus decided to open the Syrian border to increase trade, and to strike deals with Turkey and Syria to swap Iraqi oil for badly needed electricity...
...It might not seem that way in the wake of the August 29 car bombing in Najaf...
...Not the least of their achievement is that no Marine has been killed by hostile fire since May 1, when President Bush proclaimed "major hostilities" at an end...
...still is no commercial air service to Iraq...
...for them, it is a 24/7 occupation...
...During one two-week period in May there were 51 ambushes...
...A guest house had been turned into a Combat Operations Center where officers and enlisted personnel sat at laptop computers monitoring everything from enemy attacks to electricity flows...
...For instance, there was a plan to put 300,000 unemployed Iraqis to work clearing agricultural canals...
...Although this was an Army base, it was in the Marines' area of operations, so Mattis set up Task Force Scorpion to clean up the mess...
...For me, visiting Iraq was a 10-day adventure...
...Funny, blunt, erudite, inspiring, and profane, he takes no guff and tolerates no inefficiency...
...In their combat operations center, the division commander, Major General David Petraeus, has posted a sign that proclaims, "We are in a race to win over the people...
...Every drive through Iraq in a U.S...
...Much of the talk back then was of Iranian infiltration and Lebanese-style terrorism...
...The former home of Nebuchadnezzar now houses rulers clad in khaki camouflage...
...The media naturally focus on bombings and shootings, not on the reopening of schools or training of police officers...
...But only a sadist would begrudge them a few creature comforts...
...I asked my Marine driver, a wispy-thin 22-year-old lance corporal named William Eberly, why he'd enlisted...
...In a few minutes, the suspect, his head covered in a T-shirt, was transferred to a Humvee for transportation back to base...
...Violence hasn't entirely disappeared, as witness the August 29 car-bomb murder of Aya-tollah Hakim and scores of his followers, but little animosity is directed toward the Americans, who are generally seen as liberators...
...Yet the world press, which lavished such attention on Iraqi looting back in May, seems largely indifferent to the successful work of rebuilding that has gone on since...
...Mattis never deployed more than 8,000 Marines, along with some Army civil affairs, psychological operations, and military police units, to control an area the size of Missouri...
...Now they have set up a system to ensure that the payments are made...
...special envoy...
...some joked that the agency's initials stand for "Can't Provide Anything...
...It's a good thing he didn't hit anyone: It later turned out they were innocent farmers...
...In the Sunni Triangle, U.S...
...From there, an old CH-46 helicopter whisked us to the 1st Marine Division headquarters at Camp Babylon...
...the troops have access to running water, the Internet, satellite TV, even two swimming pools...
...Mat-tis was not the least bit fazed by the challenge...
...Rather, I thought of the American men and women who are serving in Iraq...
...The Marines were in their "soft covers," aka cloth hats...
...Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Lopez, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, was preparing to turn over command to a Bulgarian contingent, but before he did so, he had some errands to run...
...I went in with Bing West, a former assistant secretary of defense and a Marine veteran of Vietnam, on a Marine Lear jet from Kuwait to Al Kut in central Iraq...
...The northern region has less power now than it did a few weeks ago because the central government in Baghdad is siphoning its power to the center, much as Saddam used to...
...Even well-intentioned CPA initiatives have been badly bungled...
...we were back at base, hot, filthy, and exhausted...
...In spite of continuing attacks and various other frustrations, both the 101st Division and the 1st Marine Division display a fundamental optimism about Iraq and its future...
...Better to let his rival clerics steal away his support—which seems to be happening...
...There was pressure from some U.S...
...In Diwaniyah, a major town in central Iraq, the unhappy ditch diggers rioted in protest and destroyed a government building...
...And it has failed to remedy the electricity and fuel problems that plague the entire country...
...Aside from providing money for the military to spend, Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority has as little presence in the north as it has in the south...
...A gunner saw what he thought were men fleeing through the fields and fired warning shots...
...What have you and your element done to contribute to that goal today...
...But despite having a small organization, Bremer appears to be centralizing many operations in Baghdad...
...As soon as the attack occurred, the column pulled over to the side of the road and Marines jumped out to hunt for the perpetrators...
...This success isn't a result of flooding south-central Iraq with soldiers...
...The issues he dealt with were more appropriate to an imperial proconsul than to a general: how to combat Islamic extremists, win over ordinary people, distribute fuel, enforce law and order, and a thousand other matters...
...The Marines, too, are convinced they could do a better job there, which makes it all the more unfortunate that they are now heading home...
...Driving through towns like Karbala and Najaf you see shops overflowing with goods and Iraqi cops in blue uniforms directing traffic...
...It strikes me that Lance Corporal Eberly has done a lot for two countries—the United States and Iraq— whether his countrymen appreciate it or not...
...Democracy is embedded here," he said...
...By 5:30 we were on the move...
...Above all, it meant using as little firepower as possible...
...He is author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power...
...That meant not alienating Iraqis by violating their religious or social customs...
...The division is headquartered in Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, with a population of 1.2 million...
...As General Petraeus put it, "I think we're winning up here...
...From afar, chaos seems to reign in Iraq...
...They have done a good deal—almost all of it without the help of the CPA...
...We were headed once again to his posh riverside home about an hour and a half from Dogwood...
...Air travel isn't one of the more positive signs...
...In the view of numerous 101st Airborne and 1st Marine officers I talked to, sending more troops to Iraq isn't the answer...
...The 101st's entire area of operations encompasses 6 million people, including Arabs, Kurds, Turkomen, and other ethnic groups...
...Relatively short and trim, with a silver crewcut and owlish spectacles, Mattis doesn't look particularly imposing...
...With a big smile on his face, he said, "I wish I could take all of them home with me...
...They have performed their work with incredible fortitude, humanity, ingenuity, and skill under difficult and often dangerous circumstances...
...One can only hope that the coalition forces who are replacing the Marines will prove equally adept at covering for the CPA's missteps...
...This is only one example of the rifts that divide the military from the CPA, led by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer...
...Politeness and restraint are the order of the day...
...The Marines repaired schools, distributed candy, handed out free medical supplies, set up Rotary clubs, and undertook myriad other charitable tasks...
...Support for the occupation isn't universal, of course...
...What was supposed to be a four-hour raid had turned into an eight-hour trek across the countryside...
...But with aggressive patrolling, it managed to capture a number of terrorists and reduce the number of attacks...
...By 1:30 p.m...
...Running everything from the capital seems a big mistake...
...While aggressive against suspected terrorists, the task force's commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Pappas, regularly met with local sheikhs...
...Most of the tents had cots and air conditioning, "head" calls could be taken in the privacy of a port-o-potty, and food came from a "chow hall" run by Indian contract employees...
...This earned them goodwill among the community leading to increased intelligence about troublemakers...
...Its sole occupant, a defiant young man in a track suit, tested positive for gunpowder residue on his hands...
...This is the sharp end of the Marine occupation...
...Just before we arrived they had nabbed a Republican Guard general and a four-man team that had been mortaring Dogwood...
...on Friday, August 22, though the crump of a mortar shell landing several hundred meters from our barracks already had me wide awake...
...Force Recon Marines, riding in two Humvees, were supposed to conduct the raid...
...This is an odd choice given the vast differences between the Kurdish and Arab north, Sunni center, and Shiite south...
...Crammed into the back were dozens of silver soccer balls donated by Nike...
...Like the Marines, the "Screaming Eagles" fought in the war, then were called upon to garrison a large chunk of the country—the north—that is moving toward peace and prosperity...
...At nightly briefings with his staff, he dissected PowerPoint presentations with laserlike questions that got to the heart of every problem...
...A Bulgarian colonel who will soon replace Lopez looked on to learn how it's done...
...The attack on Ayatollah Hakim was the extremists' attempt to win through violence what they could not achieve by peaceful means—an attempt that will almost surely backfire by uniting the Shiites against the barbarians who desecrated their holiest shrine...
...As soon as the first ball came bouncing out, a tremendous excitement seized the urchins...
...The streets I saw were bustling, and the Marines enjoyed excellent relations with local leaders...
...Dressed in a heavy flak vest and Kevlar helmet, I was squished into the back of one of these tinpots...
...Yes, that Babylon...
...A chorus of critics is already attacking the Bush administration for losing Iraq...
...This area is different from the rest of the Blue Diamond Republic because it's primarily Sunni, not Shiite, and it's experienced some of the same security woes that have plagued the Sunni Triangle...
...Much of the problem, no doubt, is that the CPA lacks the readymade infrastructure available to a military division...
...And he had made substantial progress...
...To see how this yin-yang policy was carried out, we toured some Marine units just before they headed home...
...officials in the Coalition Provisional Authority to arrest Sadr because of widespread rumors that he was involved in the murder of a pro-American imam back in April...
...Two more unexploded bombs were later discovered by the roadside, one of them full of white phosphorus...
...As we flew back to Kuwait on a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, my thoughts were not on such cosmic strategic questions...
...Speaking through his interpreter (a Marine private born in Kuwait), he spent 45 minutes wheeling and dealing over a variety of public works projects...
...A consummate diplomat, Lopez exchanged flowery courtesies with a long line of sheikhs and other local officials, and then got down to business...
...There Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...At about 6 A.M., our journey took an unexpected twist...
...Things will be positively luxurious for the allied troops, who are having built for them, at U.S...
...Sure, I said, little suspecting what I was getting myself into...
...Each was made from a 155 mm shell packed with explosives...
...Their third principle was to be ready to win a 10-sec-ond gunfight...
...army patrols are often met with sullen stares...
...I wanted to feel like I actually did something for my country," he told me, "so I could call myself a true American...
...But when he opens his mouth it becomes apparent that he's cut from the George S. Patton mold...
...The list seems endless—and the 101st is doing all of it with its commanders' own discretionary fund, much of which comes from seized assets of the old regime...
...Three light armored vehicles went along to "sanitize" the perimeter and deal with any "squirters," or fleeing suspects...
...While Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle were still plagued by anti-American terrorism, life in the Blue Diamond Republic was pretty calm...
...When Army supply convoys get attacked by fedayeen, they speed away, I was told...
...Starting from scratch, it has a hard time recruiting qualified candidates to come to Iraq...
...It was a good day," said Corporal Daiman Benney, a 26-year-old infantryman with a blond mustache...
...There is a real danger of another Tet Offensive—an American military victory turned into a public relations disaster back home...
...Had they all gone off when intended, hundreds of pounds of explosives would have ripped into our column, almost certainly causing serious casualties...
...Complaints about over-centralization are echoed by the 101st Airborne Division...
...A tent city around the building was full to overflowing when we arrived...
...The Marines are heading home in September...
...And when his troops do have to use strongarm tactics, they take pains not to leave hurt feelings behind...
...The Marines, who had not been involved in setting up this program, were called in to deal with the resulting chaos...
...Almost 70 Army soldiers have been slain in that period...
...While wanting to be as open and friendly as possible, all Marines were told to be ready to open fire at a moment's notice...
...Like the Marines, the 101st is living in one of Saddam's palaces...
...It was his men who toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein in central Baghdad on April 9, signaling the end of the war...
...Yet I returned more optimistic than when I went...
...If someone doesn't need shooting, protect him...
...During my trip I, too, saw plenty of room for improvement, especially by the civilian-run Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad...
...There is no doubt that the Marines' task was made easier by the fact that the Shiites suffered under the old regime and welcomed their liberation...
...We pressed on with the raid, but it turned out the target wasn't home...
...He piled into an SUV accompanied by a sergeant and Bing and me...
...The headquarters of the 1st Marine Division was on the grounds of one of Saddam Hussein's numerous palaces...
...All are armor units less attuned to the demands of peacekeeping than light infantry outfits like the 1st Marine Division and the 101st Airborne...
...military vehicle becomes a referendum on the occupation...
...With the help of an interpreter, the Marines interviewed local farmers and found out that a suspicious blue van had been seen in the neighborhood...
...And those it hires are likely to leave after a few months...
...Reconstructing Iraq With the Marines in the south and the 101st Airborne in the north BY MAX BOOT I went to Iraq in August, the day after a bomb had ripped through the United Nations compound in Baghdad, killing 23 people including the U.N...
...They ran after the SUV, arms outstretched, shouting "Mistah...
...The next day we saw the warriors' soft side during a visit to Karbala, site of the second-holiest Shiite shrine...
...Mistah...
...That hasn't happened, at least not against Americans, and every single Marine I met was convinced that the reason had to do with their approach to peacekeeping, which they believe superior to the more heavy-handed methods employed, at least initially, by Army units that occupied Baghdad and the Sunni area to the immediate north and west...
...When talking to Iraqis, Marines were instructed to point their firearms away and take off their sunglasses...
...That may be a stretch, but there is no question that the U.S...
...Do the people smile or frown as you pass...
...They dispersed the rioters and paid the agricultural workers out of their own funds...
...Its TV station, the Iraqi Media Network, is not received here, thus ceding the propaganda war to anti-American outlets like Al Jazeera...
...It all adds up to Mattis's widely publicized slogan: "No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy" than a U.S...
...Its accommodations are slightly more posh...
...The Marines were in the process of transitioning out, while Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Spaniards, and numerous other coalition troops had already arrived to take their place...
...For Marines who went through the war sleeping in the dirt and eating MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), life at Camp Babylon had gotten relatively civilized by the end of their tour...
...For that matter, I was almost a casualty of a roadside bomb myself...
...Composed of the 4th Force Reconnaissance (the closest the egalitarian Marines come to having Special Forces), the 4th Light Armored Regiment, some Army civil affairs soldiers, and a couple of Marine infantry platoons, the task force never totaled more than 1,000 soldiers...
...If so, he was president of the republic, or, more accurately, its benevolent dictator...
...Like Mattis, Petraeus preaches respect for Iraqis...
...One of the 101st's brigade commanders, Colonel Joe Anderson, hopped in a humvee to take Bing West and me on a whirlwind tour of Mosul...
...The kids were ecstatic and so was Lopez...
...Soon the temperature would soar over 120 degrees...
...General Mattis delivered the message in an earthier style: "We've got the bastards on the run...
...After they killed Uday and Qusay Hussein on July 22, the division spent more than $100,000 to repair damage to the neighborhood where the intense firefight occurred...
...The Marines showed restraint when dealing with hostile crowds...
...None of us was wearing a flak vest or helmet...
...Former New York City police chief Bernard Kerik, for instance, arrived at the beginning of the summer to run the justice ministry, and he's already going home...
...Smarter policing tactics and better intelligence are what's required, and training more Iraqi cops should be the top priority...
...In May and June, Army convoys operating here suffered nonstop guerrilla attacks...
...As Mattis put it: "If someone needs shooting, shoot him...
...I felt like the queen of England waving regally at Iraqis as we drove by in our three-Humvee convoy...
...The food wasn't bad—we had lobster my first night and excellent cakes—but everyone from buck private to three-star general waited in a long line before getting fed...
...Mattis is a legend inside the Marine Corps, having led the Marines into both Afghanistan and Iraq...
...The 101st faces many thorny problems unique to its area, such as land disputes between Arabs and Kurds, and a porous border with Syria...
...The division has also restored telephone service and is taking bids for cellular service...
Vol. 9 • September 2003 • No. 1
