From: "Michael Tank"
Subject: One Marine
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 05:33:06 -0700
From Capt. Dutch White, USMC, Retired Mustang along with a response after Dutch's story from Warrant Officer Jack Wing, USMC, Retired.
Read, enjoy and remember our Heroes.
SF,
Mike
IT CAME DOWN TO ONE MARINE
On Nov. 15, 2003, an 85-year-old retired Marine Corps colonel died of congestive heart failure at his home in La Quinta, Calif., southeast of Palm Springs.
He was a combat veteran of World War II. Reason enough to honor him. But this Marine was a little different. This Marine was Mitchell Paige.
It's hard today to envision -- or, for the dwindling few, to remember -- what the world looked like on Oct. 26, 1942.
The U.S. Navy was not the most powerful fighting force in the Pacific. Not by a long shot. So the Navy basically dumped a few thousand lonely American Marines on the beach on Guadalcanal and high-tailed it out of there.
(You Navy guys can hold those letters. Of course Nimitz, Fletcher and Halsey had to ration what few ships they had. I've written separately about the way Bull Halsey rolled the dice on the night of Nov. 13, 1942, violating the stern War College edict against committing capital ships in restricted waters and instead dispatching into the Slot his last two remaining fast battleships, the South Dakota and the Washington, escorted by the only four destroyers with enough fuel in their bunkers to get them there and back.
You want courage? Those American destroyer captains need not have worried about carrying enough fuel to get home. By 11 p.m., outnumbered better than three-to-one by a massive Japanese task force driving down from the northwest, every one of those four American destroyers had been shot up, sunk, or set aflame. And while the South Dakota -- known throughout the fleet as a jinx ship -- had damaged some lesser Japanese vessels, she continued to be plagued with electrical and fire control problems.
"Washington was now the only intact ship left in the force," writes naval historian David Lippman. "In fact, at that moment Washington was the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet. She was the only barrier between (Admiral) Kondo's ships and Guadalcanal. If this one ship did not stop 14 Japanese ships right then and there, America might lose the war. ..."
On Washington's bridge, Lieutenant Ray Hunter had the con. He had just seen the destroyers Walke and Preston "blown sky high." Dead ahead lay their burning wreckage. Hundreds of men were swimming in the water and the Japanese ships racing in.
"Hunter had to do something. The course he took now could decide the war," Lippman writes. " 'Come left,' he said. ... Washington's rudder change put the burning destroyers between her and the enemy, preventing her from being silhouetted by their fires.
"The move made the Japanese momentarily cease fire. Lacking radar, they could not spot Washington behind the fires. ..." Washington raced through burning seas. Dozens of destroyer men were in the water clinging to floating wreckage. "Get after them, Washington!" one shouted.
Sacrificing their ships by maneuvering into the path of torpedoes intended for the Washington, the captains of the American destroyers had given China Lee one final chance.
Blinded by the smoke and flames, the Japanese battleship Kirishima turned on her searchlights, illuminating the helpless South Dakota, and opened fire. Finally, as her own muzzle blasts illuminated her in the darkness, Admiral Lee and Captain Glenn Davis could positively identify an enemy target.
The Washington's main batteries opened fire at 12 midnight precisely. Her radar fire control system functioned perfectly. During the first seven minutes of Nov. 14, 1942, the "last ship in the U.S. Pacific Fleet" fired 75 of her 16-inch shells at the battleship Kirishima. Aboard Kirishima, it rained steel. At 3:25 a.m., her burning hulk officially became the first enemy sunk by an American battleship since the Spanish-American War. Stunned, the Japanese withdrew. Within days, Japanese commander Isoroku Yamamoto recommended the unthinkable to the emperor -- withdrawal from Guadalcanal.)
But that was still weeks in the future. We were still with Mitchell Paige back on the god-forsaken malarial jungle island of Guadalcanal, placed like a speed bump at the end of the long blue-water slot between New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago ... the very route the Japanese Navy would have to take to reach Australia.
On Guadalcanal the Marines struggled to complete an airfield. Yamamoto knew what that meant. No effort would be spared to dislodge these upstart Yanks from a position that could endanger his ships. Before long, relentless Japanese counterattacks had driven supporting U.S. Navy from inshore waters. The Marines were on their own.
As Platoon Sgt. Mitchell Paige and his 33 riflemen set about carefully emplacing their four water-cooled .30-caliber Brownings, manning their section of the thin khaki line which was expected to defend Henderson Field against the assault of the night of Oct. 25, 1942, it's unlikely anyone thought they were about to provide the definitive answer to that most desperate of questions: How many able-bodied U.S. Marines does it take to hold a hill against 2,000 desperate and motivated attackers?
Nor did the commanders of the mighty Japanese Army, who had swept all before them for decades, expect their advance to be halted on some God-forsaken jungle ridge manned by one thin line of Yanks in khaki in October of 1942.
But by the time the night was over, "The 29th (Japanese) Infantry Regiment has lost 553 killed or missing and 479 wounded among its 2,554 men," historian Lippman reports. "The 16th (Japanese) Regiment's losses are uncounted, but the 164th's burial parties handled 975 Japanese bodies. ... The American estimate of 2,200 Japanese dead is probably too low."
You've already figured out where the Japanese focused their attack, haven't you? Among the 90 American dead and seriously wounded that night were all the men in Mitchell Paige's platoon. Every one. As the night of endless attacks wore on, Paige moved up and down his line, pulling his dead and wounded comrades back into their foxholes and firing a few bursts from each of the four Brownings in turn, convincing the Japanese forces down the hill that the positions were still manned.
The citation for Paige's Congressional Medal of Honor picks up the tale: "When the enemy broke through the line directly in front of his position, P/Sgt. Paige, commanding a machinegun section with fearless determination, continued to direct the fire of his gunners until all his men were either killed or wounded. Alone, against the deadly hail of Japanese shells, he fought with his gun and when it was destroyed, took over another, moving from gun to gun, never ceasing his withering fire."
In the end, Sgt. Paige picked up the last of the 40-pound, belt-fed Brownings -- the same design which John Moses Browning famously fired for a continuous 25 minutes until it ran out of ammunition, glowing cherry red, at its first U.S. Army trial -- and did something for which the weapon was never designed. Sgt. Paige walked down the hill toward the place where he could hear the last Japanese survivors rallying to move around his flank, the belt-fed gun cradled under his arm, firing as he went.
And the weapon did not fail.
Coming up at dawn, battalion executive officer Major Odell M. Conoley was first to discover the answer to our question: How many able-bodied Marines does it take to hold a hill against two regiments of motivated, combat-hardened infantrymen who have never known defeat?
On a hill where the bodies were piled like cordwood, Mitchell Paige alone sat upright behind his 30-caliber Browning, waiting to see what the dawn would bring.
One hill: one Marine.
But "In the early morning light, the enemy could be seen a few yards off, and vapor from the barrels of their machine guns was clearly visible," reports historian Lippman. "It was decided to try to rush the position."
For the task, Major Conoley gathered together "three enlisted communication personnel, several riflemen, a few company runners who were at the point, together with a cook and a few messmen who had brought food to the position the evening before."
Joined by Paige, this ad hoc force of 17 Marines counterattacked at 5:40 a.m., discovering that "the extremely short range allowed the optimum use of grenades." They cleared the ridge.
And that's where the unstoppable wave of Japanese conquest finally crested, broke, and began to recede. On an unnamed jungle ridge on an insignificant island no one had ever heard of, called Guadalcanal.
But who remembers, today, how close-run a thing it was -- the ridge held by a single Marine, in the autumn of 1942?
When the Hasbro Toy Co. called some years back, asking permission to put the retired colonel's face on some kid's doll, Mitchell Paige thought they must be joking.
But they weren't. That's his mug, on the little Marine they call "G.I. Joe."
And now you know ...
Semper Fi, Dutch
U. S. Marine Corps (Ret)
http://www.angelfire.com/va/cherrydeuce/
Damn good story Dutch! Lest we forget! Mitch Paige has always been a hero in my book! Until the end he was also involved in uncovering the "Wanna-be" Medal of Honor phonies. Geez, it's a shame that we are rapidly losing the Heroes of WWII! I got a call last night from a old friend who is a "Pearl Harbor Survivor". His whole life now is to travel around and speak to different groups about his experiences. He is very lonely now ,as his wife of many years passed away last year. I bring him into the school each year to talk with the kids. He tells some pretty interesting stories. One story I cannot forget is.... Every year they have a reunion in Hawaii. Several years ago while the large group was at the Punch Bowl,an elder Japanese man approached and wanted to join the association. (He was told the qualifications of membership, and told them that he met all of them)! Qualifications were... You were in the military on Dec.7th 1941. You were wearing the uniform, were in the general vicinity of Pearl Harbor. The man said that he met all the requirements! Come to find out he was the leader of the air group who attacked! He had found religion and was guilty of his actions. He even asked if he could speak to the group, but it was all denied buy the members. (The survivors had to change the rules after that). Dale Speelman is getting along in age now, and I don't know how long he will be around. Seven years ago the principal of the school presented him with his high school diploma. You should have seen his face! I looked like we gave him a million dollars!! We have to look out for our vets!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted on Jan 20, 2004, 7:55 AM
from IP address 65.41.151.144
http://www.network54.com/Forum/message?forumid=135069&messageid=1074603323
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This is...
Gunny G's...
GLOBE and ANCHOR
Marines Sites & Forums
By R.W. "Dick" Gaines
GySgt USMC (Ret.)
1952-72
Semper Fidelis
~~~~~~~~~~
China's military and Sun Tzu: What every American should know
by Dick Gaines (Login Dick Gaines)
Forum Owner
China's military and Sun Tzu: What every American should know
James Henry
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 19 January 2004
The Chinese military is extremely nationalistic in the worst possible way. There seems to be little doubt that China sees Asia and the Pacific region as its own special sphere of influence, an interest threatened by a powerful American presence.
This is common knowledge in the intelligence community. For example, Al Santoli, an analyst at the American Foreign Policy Council, went public with it several years ago. Clinton was even briefed on the Chinese military's ambitions and nationalistic fervor — and a fat lot of good it did.
As one insider sighed: "He doesn't seem to care." And this is why he allowed so much advanced technology with powerful military applications to casually pass into Chinese hands. Imagine the tragic consequences for Britain if Chamberlain* had allowed its radar technology to be sold to Nazi Germany so he could fatten his political war-chest. And yet, that is exactly what Clinton did.
Despite China's aggressive behavior, Clinton ordered the Pentagon to strengthen contacts with the PLA. This was one helluva a one-way street and was guaranteed to significantly improve the PLA's battlefield tactics and refine its use of technology. And what did Americans get out of it? Don't even think about it. But this has all happened before.
The Treaty of Versailles forced Germany to dismantle its armaments factories. It also limited its army to 100,000 men and stripped it of all heavy weapons, especially tanks. What had been the Imperial German Army was to be transformed by General Hans von Seeckt into the Reichswehr, a lightly armed militia.
However, Seeckt schemed to evade the treaty's conditions and Lenin's Russia was the main means by which he did it. Trotsky was keen on a military deal with Germany that would allow German tank crews, pilots, etc., to train in Russia and German officers to train Russian troops. The Germans would also send in specialists to rebuild Russia's factories for the production of tanks, planes and other military hardware.** These activities were unofficially affirmed by the 1922 Rapallo treaty that culminated in the infamous 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact.
How did they get away with it? Well, in a sense, they did not. Not only did the French know that secret aspects of the treaty were intended to violate the Treaty of Versailles but British intelligence informed the British government of what was going on. Moreover, shortly after the war, Brigadier-General J. H. Morgan warned London that German militarism was as strong as ever. But only the French were prepared to heed the warning, so deep was their fear of a resurgent and unrepentant Germany.
Despite intelligence warnings and palpably false statements by the German government, the British government treated the French as paranoid. Amazing as it will seem to most readers, Germany and Russia's cozy military relationship continued, with the odd squabble, right up to the Nazi attack on Russia. No wonder Stalin was stunned by Hitler's surprise attack.
Strip this sorry story to the bare bones and we find a similar tale unfolded under the Clinton administration. The administration's attitude toward Beijing is strikingly similar to that of Moscow's toward Berlin up to June 22, 1941. It too was a one-way street, with the ironic exception of tank design.
The Germans learnt all they needed to know about the Red Army and its capability. That knowledge almost lost Europe to Nazi barbarism. But the Clinton kindergarten rabble, stuck in its '60s time warp, was unable to comprehend any of this. To their mentality, there is no history, there is only the moment — nothing else counts. This is why it found nothing wrong with selling out to the Chinese military, of making arrangements that endangered national security.
What is there to fear? they asked. Everything, is the answer. Only those ignorant of history, completely untouched by war and severed from all moral moorings could say of powerful tyrants: What is there to fear?
About 2,500 years ago, SunTzu wrote what is probably the world's oldest military manual. Every Chinese officer has studied it. He began with the statement: "The art of war is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin." This is what the likes of Bismarck and Seeckt thought and it is what the Chinese military think for no militaristic state can think otherwise. This is what he said of leaders: "The general (commander in chief) is the bulwark of the state. If the bulwark is complete at all points, the state will be strong. If the bulwark is defective, the state will be weak."
Just try comparing Clinton, or any of the current crop of presidential wannabes, with Truman or Eisenhower. The next quote was definitely written for Democrats: "By attempting to govern an army in the same way as he administers a kingdom, being ignorant of the conditions which obtain in an army, he causes restlessness among the troops."
This quote also sums up those 'feminist' fanatics whose idea of sexual equality in the military is to have men and women share the same body bags. Wondering why the Chinese military are keen on cooperation with the Pentagon? Sun Tzu has the answer: "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a 100 battles."
Sun Tzu had some insightful things to say about espionage. "What enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men is foreknowledge." Well, Clinton certainly gave Beijing plenty of that. Though Sun Tzu divided agents into five classes we need only concern ourselves with what he called "inward spies".
These were the officials of an enemy state. Spies were so important to Sun Tzu that he considered no one should be better rewarded. I am not suggesting that Clinton and his kindergarten pals were Chinese agents just because they were liberally rewarded, far from it: only that they have behaved in a way that would classify their actions as those of "inward spies" because their indifference to national security had the same consequences.
*Chamberlain was a naive man and certainly blinded himself to Hitler's nature and real intentions. But despite his errors of judgement, he was always the patriot who genuinely cared about his country.
**The Germans also set up holding companies in a number of countries to manufacture weapons.
http://www.brookesnews.com/041901china_print.html
http://www.brookesnews.com/041901china_print.html
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This is...
Gunny G's...
GLOBE and ANCHOR
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By R.W. "Dick" Gaines
GySgt USMC (Ret.)
1952-72
Semper Fidelis
~~~~~~~~~~
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1065864/posts
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The Warrior Cult - Why Women Cannot be a Part
Captain John F. Luddy, USMCR
I was once asked by a friend to recommend his son for the U.S. Naval Academy. I asked in response, "Does your son want to be a professional killer?" "Well no, of course not. He wants to be a peacemaker." I replied, "Well, then tell him to enter a seminary."
John Silber, Straight Shooting, 1989
In 1983, when I was just beginning to fancy myself a man and was looking for a place to prove it, some well-known slogans offered and answer: "The Marines are looking for a few good men;" and "Maybe you can be one of us . . the few, the proud, the Marines." Another was even more direct: "We never promised you a rose garden." The message was clear: To join America's warrior elite would mean some harsh treatment much physical and perhaps emotional discomfort, and perhaps emotional discomfort, and no sympathy. I did not expect to be appreciated for my "diversity" I might bring to the Corps or to get much "sensitivity" in return. Like tens of thousands before me and thousands since, I was not to be disappointed. And, although it may seem hard for many of today's critics of the military, I didn't want it to be otherwise.
Much has changed in the past decade. When I was an officer candidate, the worst a drill instructor could say to you was: "Candidate, do you want to be an individual?" But in judging the quality of the force today, individual opportunities are becoming more important than the effectiveness of the group, and gender and racial representation are becoming more important than performance. Indeed, such exalted ideas as "diversity" and "sensitivity" are now among the Pentagon's foremost concerns. While the utility of these notions is questionable, even the most tranquil civilian environment, they are entirely incompatible with the military's main purpose: to transform a group of individuals into an efficient unit for the purpose o inflicting extreme and deliberate violence - in the words of one Army major, "to kill people and break things." Not long ago the Marines stopped calling for "a few good men," not because they, or for that matter the other Services, no longer need them, but because it is no longer politically correct to define the military service in masculine terms.
Accompanied by mandatory "sensitivity training" and considerable praise from some military leaders, notions that strike at the very core of military life have been advanced without some very basic questions being asked. How can the military accommodate women in an activity as thoroughly masculine as combat? How can it encourage diversity when, in achieving victory, individuals generally mean nothing but units almost always mean everything? And how can it foster sensitivity to care in an organization whose principal purpose requires developing the insensitivity to kill? As the military is feminized, diversified, and sensitized, these questions need answers. For if this misguided preoccupation with the individual continues, history will record the next decade as a time when the armed forces of history's greatest military power mastered all external threats, only to be vanquished by foes right here in America.
America's False Sense of Security
Insulated by wide oceans on two flanks and benign neighbors on the other two, most American's view their nation's defense through lenses of ignorance and apathy; this is largely a good thing, certainly far better than the familiarity with war of a Bosnian, Afghani, or even many western Europeans. Many Americans are slightly uncomfortable with the Armed Forces and fail to understand the fundamental differences between military life and their own. This creates fertile round for well-meaning, malicious, or simply foolish agendas.
Each period of relative peace - after both World Wars, the Korean War, Vietnam, and now the Cold War - has brought to the military both rapid dismantling and questionable experimentation. Today America - including the military, which generally knows better - must function without any clear external threat to focus its mind. Her global interests and the threats to them have not gone the way of the Cold War, but we Americans seem to have a hard time learning this lesson in any but the hardest way possible, as when Saddam Hussein teaches us. Until it does - and it always does eventually - the public is inclined to ignore the military and lose sight of the importance of the warrior's essential characteristics.
If the United States were the Netherlands, none of this would matter so much. But we're not. No other nation has the worldwide commitments we have. When a crisis erupts anywhere in the world, no one calls the Dutch to solve it. Other nations cannot afford to be so foolish. Israel, for instance, is surrounded by enemies and must place the combat effectiveness of its forces above all other considerations. Addressing the question of whether to place women in combat units, Israeli historian Dr. Martin van Crevald recently noted that, contrary to popular belief, the Israelis do nothing of the sort. He went on to observe:
We would not survive probably for five minutes if it weren't for our superb, well-trained, well-prepared combat-ready forces. Everything in the Israeli armed forces is geared towards that . . . To me, the very fact that this issue is being discussed and this meeting is being held simply shows that you really don't take the military very seriously.
The Demise of the American Warrior
Although diversity and sensitivity are indispensable ideals in a pluralistic society, the military must play by a very different set of rules because it has very different expectations of its members. American society tolerates a level of independent behavior that would cripple any military force. While the American military strives to reflect society's composition and values wherever possible, soldiers inevitably surrender many freedoms that civilians take for granted because, unlike civilians, they regularly face death just because they're told to. The military is not "just another part of society."
America depends on the Armed Forces to serve as a defensive line behind which a society based on individual freedom and opportunity, diversity, and sensitivity can flourish. To man this line, we must transform young civilians into warriors. Diversity? In order to form effective units that can win wars as quickly and painlessly as possible, the civilian recruit's individual identity must be subjugated to the needs of the unit and the realities of the battlefield. Sensitivity? Because a warrior's principal purpose is killing people, mush of his sensitivity must be stripped away. Cohesion, unity, and single-minded commitment to the overriding course of combat effectiveness are the essential ingredients.
The call for sensitivity first came after Vietnam, when it was thought that the end of the draft made it necessary to enlist large numbers of women to meet manpower requirements. Practical factors, such as differences in physical strength and the restrictions on cohabitation as well as strong cultural resistance to deliberately requiring young women to kill and be killed, kept women in such support roles as clerks, logisticians, communicators, and nurses. The so-called combat arms, such as infantry, artillery, and tank units, whose sole purpose was to hunt down and kill the enemy, remained a male preserve. Thus a fundamental tension was created between what were effectively two different aspects of military life.
The fact that both aspects were equally important, and that the killers could not function without those in support positions, kept everyone fairly content as long as military service was viewed as a team effort. Trouble was, the same recruiting pressures that required the Services to seek women in the first place also forced them to change their sales pitch. Military service was no longer an act of selfless patriotism, typified by that famous "I Want You" poster of World War II. It became instead a means of personal growth and wider career opportunity, as in "Be All That You Can Be."
The difference between these two messages is vast. Once opportunity became the objective, "equal opportunity" could not be far behind. Soon the military was caught between the rock of selling itself to meet manpower levels and the hard place of telling women the being "all they could be" only went so far. Among a relative handful of career women officers and against the shrill cries of feminists on the outside, the wise and necessary distinction between combat and non combat roles was lost.
The warrior's existence is always harsh and often brutal and demands a willingness to share great suffering. To some this sound barbaric, especially after the Gulf War's pristine images of precision weapons controlled by computers usually at great distances from the enemy. But the inner spirit, which for centuries bound men together in the face of death and destruction, remains vitally necessary. At this most basic level, the profession of arms is inherently and undeniably masculine. And, since combat requires men on occasion to be downright beastly, warriors must possess an aspect of masculinity that women will and should find distasteful.
As Michael Levin writes in Feminism and Freedom, "Because the maintenance of order requires physical strength and aggressiveness, it has been a male task in every society that has ever existed." Combat veterans regularly attest to the primal masculine power necessary to overcome fear and win in battle: from Gettysburg to Omaha Beach, this spirit has often been the only means of overcoming the stark terror men have felt when facing almost certain death. If the brevity of the last war made us forget this, the brutality of a future one may make us remember.
The argument for opening combat assignments to women, now a major feminist objective, goes something like this: The military ought to set job standards and let the best person have the job. If battles were fought and won by individuals, this approach might work. But in spite of individual acts of heroism and leadership, combat is a team endeavor, where success depends entirely on the team's level of cohesion - the "male bonding" that some women like to belittle. The awful truth is that male bonding works, which explains why military leaders preparing for combat spend most of their time trying to develop it. Male bonding is what takes the hill. And male bonding just doesn't happen with women around.
The cohesion required throughout the military, and especially in combat, cannot develop in an environment of sexual tension. Along with disrupting the way men relate to each other, it is an inescapable fact that men and women have been programmed for millennia to view each other in ways that sometimes get in the way of good judgment and hat distract from a sense of shared purpose. Similarly, if we accept their persistent claim to be just lie everyone else, we must assume that young homosexual men will be as distracted in a barracks full of men as their heterosexual peers would be in a women's locker room. Neither 30 years of sexual revolution nor all the "sensitivity training" in the world will change this human reality. And what makes it so serious a problem in a combat unit is that the price of bad judgment is so much higher than in the civilian world - not embarrassment or a lawsuit or getting fired or losing a promotion but getting mutilated or killed. Sexuality distracts, distractions hamper good judgment, impaired judgment in combat gets people killed.
In Weak Link: The Feminization of the American Military, Brian Mitchell describes the effect that women had on the Service academies when they were integrated in the 1970's. It foretells what women would bring to the necessarily intimate confines of a combat unit:
A new factor had entered the equation. A force more powerful than the call of duty, the pride of honor, or the bonds of comradeship so completely reversed the polarity of social relationships . . . that even when men contained themselves they could not rest indifferent to its presence . . . The men were charmed. They could never see the women as just cadets, and they could never treat the women as they treated other men . . . [The academies] were no longer the strange and cold conclaves of unsentimental militarism, where young men first learned the pain of separation, where love was delivered in sealed envelopes at distant intervals . . . where cadets could be prepared for lives of sacrificial hardship and deprivation, where they could learn leadership and gain confidence without the fearful disruption of suddenly running into someone with whom they were falling in or out of love.
Ultimately, the women-in-combat argument fails apart because of a profound paradox. The presence of women in their midst requires men training for war to be sensitive, even as women are expected to join them in becoming insensitive enough to bayonet people. Secretary of the Army Togo West recently declared that prohibitions against women in combat prevented them "from reaching their full potential." Surely no one who has ever seen combat could think this way. Given war's necessary brutality among women, the attempt to adapt women to the business of war is and ultimately futile endeavor, and assigning them to units that might reasonably become engaged in combat and training them for such emergency engagements are misuse of an important resource. Indeed, it is folly.
(Captain Luddy is a defense policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation. This article first appeared in the Marine Corps Gazette, December, 1994. It was reprinted with permission in hearth, Spring, 1995.)
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This is...
Gunny G's...
GLOBE and ANCHOR
Marines Sites & Forums
By R.W. "Dick" Gaines
GySgt USMC (Ret.)
1952-72
Semper Fidelis
~~~~~~~~~~
16 January
MILINET: A Military Wife's Night Out
By: Mrs Lori Kimble
I was sitting alone in one of those loud, casual steakhouses that you find
all over the country. You know the type--a bucket of peanuts on every
table, shells littering the floor, and a bunch of perky college kids racing
around with longneck beers and sizzling platters.
Taking a sip of my iced tea, I studied the crowd over the rim of my glass.
My gaze lingered on a group enjoying their meal. They wore no uniform to
identify their branch of service, but they were definitely "military:" clean
shaven, cropped haircut, and that "squared away" look that comes with pride.
Smiling sadly, I glanced across my table to the empty seat where my husband
usually sat. It had only been a few months since we sat in this very booth,
talking about his upcoming deployment to the Middle East. That was when he
made me promise to get a sitter for the kids, come back to this restaurant
once a month and treat myself to a nice steak. In turn he would treasure
the thought of me being here, thinking about him until he returned home to
me.
I fingered the little flag pin I constantly wear and wondered where he was
at this very moment. Was he safe and warm? Was his cold any better? Were
my letters getting through to him? As I pondered these thoughts, high
pitched female voices from the next booth broke into my thoughts.
"I don't know what Bush is thinking about. Invading Iraq. You'd think that
man would learn from his old man's mistakes. Good lord. What an idiot! I
can't believe he is even in office. You do know, he stole the election."
I cut into my steak and tried to ignore them, as they began an endless
tirade running down our president. I thought about the last night I spent
with my husband, as he prepared to deploy. He had just returned from
getting his smallpox and anthrax shots. The image of him standing in our
kitchen packing his gas mask still gives me chills.
Once again the women's voices invaded my thoughts. "It is all about oil,
you know. Our soldiers will go in and rape and steal all the oil they can
in the name of 'freedom.' Hmph! I wonder how many innocent people they'll
kill without giving it a thought? It's pure greed, you know."
My chest tightened as I stared at my wedding ring. I could still see how
handsome my husband looked in his "mess dress" the day he slipped it on my
finger. I wondered what he was wearing now. Probably his desert uniform,
affectionately dubbed "coffee stains" with a heavy bulletproof vest over it.
"You know, we should just leave Iraq alone. I don't think they are hiding
any weapons. In fact, I bet it's all a big act just to increase the
President's popularity. That's all it is, padding the military budget at
the expense of our social security and education. And, you know what else?
We're just asking for another 9-ll. I can't say when it happens again that
we didn't deserve it."
Their words brought to mind the war protesters I had watched gathering
outside our base. Did no one appreciate the sacrifice of brave men and
women, who leave their homes and family to ensure our freedom? Do they even
know what "freedom" is?
I glanced at the table where the young men were sitting, and saw their
courageous faces change. They had stopped eating and looked at each other
dejectedly, listening to the women talking.
"Well, I, for one, think it's just deplorable to invade Iraq, and I am
certainly sick of our tax dollars going to train professional baby killers
we call a military."
Professional baby killers? I thought about what a wonderful father my
husband is, and of how long it would be before he would see our children
again.
That's it! Indignation rose up inside me. Normally reserved, pride in my
husband gave me a brassy boldness I never realized I had. Tonight one voice
will answer on behalf of our military, and let her pride in our troops be
known.
Sliding out of my booth, I walked around to the adjoining booth and placed
my hands flat on their table. Lowering myself to eye level with them, I
smilingly said, "I couldn't help overhearing your conversation. You see,
I'm sitting here trying to enjoy my dinner alone. And, do you know why?
Because my husband, whom I love with all my heart, is halfway around the
world defending your right to say rotten things about him."
"Yes, you have the right to your opinion, and what you think is none of my
business. However, what you say in public is something else, and I will not
sit by and listen to you ridicule MY country, MY president, MY husband, and
all the other fine American men and women who put their lives on the line,
just so you can have the "freedom" to complain. Freedom is an expensive
commodity, ladies. Don't let your actions cheapen it."
I must have been louder that I meant to be, because the manager came over to
inquire if everything was all right. "Yes, thank you," I replied. Then
turning back to the women, I said, "Enjoy the rest of your meal."
As I returned to my booth applause broke out. I was embarrassed for making
a scene, and went back to my half-eaten steak. The women picked up their
check and scurried away.
After finishing my meal, and while waiting for my check, the manager
returned with a huge apple cobbler ala mode. "Compliments of those
soldiers," he said. He also smiled and said the ladies tried to pay for my
dinner, but that another couple had beaten them to it. When I asked who,
the manager said they had already left, but that the gentleman was a
veteran, and wanted to take care of the wife of "one of our boys."
With a lump in my throat, I gratefully turned to the soldiers and thanked
them for the cobbler. Grinning from ear to ear, they came over and
surrounded the booth. "We just wanted to thank you, ma'am. You know we
can't get into confrontations with civilians, so we appreciate what you
did."
As I drove home, for the first time since my husband's deployment, I didn't
feel quite so alone. My heart was filled with the warmth of the other
diners who stopped by my table, to relate how they, too, were proud of my
husband, and would keep him in their prayers. I knew their flags would fly
a little higher the next day.
Perhaps they would look for more tangible ways to show their pride in our
country, and the military who protect her. And maybe, just maybe, the two
women who were railing against our country, would pause for a minute to
appreciate all the freedom America offers, and the price it pays to maintain
it's freedom.
As for me, I have learned that one voice CAN make a difference. Maybe the
next time protesters gather outside the gates of the base where I live, I
will proudly stand on the opposite side with a sign of my own. It will
simply say, "Thank You!"
**************************************
(Lori Kimble is a 31 year old teacher and proud military wife. A California
native, Mrs. Kimble currently lives in Alabama.)
~~~~~~~~~~
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By R.W. "Dick" Gaines
GySgt USMC (Ret.)
1952-72
Semper Fidelis
~~~~~~~~~~
History Rewarded in the Present
By: Shanna Gunn January 09, 2004
This is a photo that Guy has carried in his wallet for over half a century, a snapshot of him just prior to heading into the battle zone
Most of us think of World War II as very important part of American history, but we don't think of it as affecting our current daily lives.
But for Guy Stratton, who fought with the Marine Corps at Iwo Jima, WWII is still very much an important part of his life in the present as he has just received his Purple Heart award for wounds received in 1945.
Guy Stratton has lived a life that sounds a lot like a movie script. He was involved in many bloody and violent battles, which he describes as, "battle is like rain; it gets pretty heavy and then it lets up."
He witnessed the flag raising on Iwo Jima that was captured by Joe Rosenthal on Feb. 23, 1945 in perhaps the most famous war photograph of all time.
"That was actually the second flag raising on Iwo Jima, Stratton said, "the first raising was done with a smaller flag. When a nearby naval ship offered the 28th Regiment a larger flag, Rosenthal was there to watch them raise the larger flag to replace the first."
Stratton was born Lincoln County, but raised from age six in Huntland, where he left in April 1943 to join the Marines.
In 1945, Stratton went to Iwo Jima with I Company, 3rd Battalion, 26th Regiment, 5th Marine Division.
While engaged in a firefight on Iwo Jima, Stratton was injured by a piece of shrapnel approximately 3 in long, 1 ½ in wide and ½ in thick. He had tried to make himself as small a target as possible, but says that his entire right side was exposed.
The shrapnel hit him flat on the side of the kneecap; Stratton said it felt as if his kneecap was knocked right off his leg. It wasn't though, because the shrapnel hit him flat, rather than slicing through.
While the injury was painful, Stratton knew it wasn't bad enough to get him sent out of battle, and he had seen too many men killed upon being sent back into battle after sustaining an injury and visiting the regimental first aid.
So, in order increase his luck, he just had the wound bandaged by the company corpsman and went on without visiting the regimental first aid station, so his wounds were never officially recorded.
If it hadn't been for another friend and soldier, Gayle Zeller, Stratton might not have lived through the war at all.
Stratton and Zeller were in a grenade battle with the enemy, and in a culvert together they took a grenade hit that would have surely killed Stratton, but Zeller's body protected him. Zeller was badly injured and Stratton was determined to get his buddy back to the regimental first aid.
There were stretcher bearers at that time whose job it was to pick up the injured off the battlefield and take them back for medical attention, but they were not allowed to go up to the line of fire. Stratton went to ask them to come get his friend Zeller, but they refused. So, Stratton asked two fellow marines to help him; they also refused-until they were asked at gunpoint.
The three of them then went and retrieved Zeller to took him back to safety. Stratton never knew how long Zeller lived after that, he only read that he died later of injuries.
Stratton was one of only 25 in the company that stayed through the entire 36-day campaign. All of the other 236 marines that started out with the company were either killed or evacuated due to major injuries.
About 10 years ago, Stratton decided to get in touch with Zeller's family, but he didn't remember where he was from. A call to a mutual friend, Jimmy Turner, was all it took to find out that Zeller was from Pine Island, Minnesota.
Turner remembered the name of the small town, because he knew he used to share homemade cookies that were sent to Zeller from Pine Island.
So Stratton called the only Zeller listed in Pine Island, and found it was Gayle's brother, Clayton. Clayton was astounded that someone called him after 50 years to tell him what happened to his brother; he said that they had received the official notice saying he died of wounds received in combat, but they never knew the story of how it happened, until Stratton called.
Stratton has stayed in touch with his buddy's brother for the past ten years now.
Stratton returned stateside in Feb. 1946, and was discharged in July 1948, and went to work at that time in Peoria, IL for Caterpillar.
On a visit back home to Tennessee in 1950, he decided to marry the girl next door, literally his neighbor growing up, Alice Bryant.
They set a wedding date for six months later and after the wedding Alice went back to Illinois with her new husband.
They moved back to Winchester in 1957, and Guy went to work at Arnold Air Force Base in Tullahoma in 1959, where he remained for 28 years before retiring in 1987.
Alice worked at the Winchester Hospital, now Southern Tennessee Medical Center, until 1980.
Guy is now 79 years old and still rides a motorcycle, like he has all his life, beginning as a child riding on the back of his brother's Harley.
Guy and Alice used to ride all over the country on his motorcycle, especially after his retirement. Guy says he has ridden his motorcycle to California twice in his life, further evidence that Guy Stratton is truly a survivor. He has survived many dangerous battles in WWII, and sadly, he has now had to survive the passing of his wife to Alzheimer's in 2001.
In order for Stratton to receive his Purple Heart now, he had to locate two witnesses that were with him at Iwo Jima to verify the wound that he received. Stratton had stayed in contact with some of the friends he'd made in the Marines all those years ago, so he was able to locate the witnesses he needed.
Stratton's son, Marine Lt. Col. Guy A. Stratton, who is stationed at the Pentagon, wants to see his father properly rewarded for his sacrifices to this country. His son has organized an award ceremony for his father to have his Purple Heart bestowed upon him by the Marine Corps Commandant at the Pentagon in Washington D.C. on Feb. 13, 2004.
Following the ceremony, Stratton and his son will be leaving to travel together to New Orleans for an Iwo Jima Reunion on Feb. 19th.
GUY STRATTON IN 1944-This is a photo that Guy has carried in his wallet for over half a century, a snapshot of him just prior to heading into the battle zone.
--Photo provided
GUY STRATTON TODAY-Stratton is shown above with the certificate received with his Purple Heart award for wounds received in the battle of Iwo Jima, on February 28, 1945.
--H-C Photo by Shanna Gunn
©The Tullahoma News 2004
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By R.W. "Dick" Gaines
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1952-72
Semper Fidelis
~~~~~~~~~~
US marines anger army over Iraq tactics
By Robin Gedye
(Filed: 08/01/2004)
The US Marine Corps has angered the American army by suggesting that it could do a better job in Iraq than the soldiers already on the ground.
An internal document leaked yesterday showed that the "Corps", not renowned for its subtlety in warfare, is emphasising restraint in the use of force, cultural sensitivity and a public message that it does not belong to the army.
Some army officers are angry that the document, seen by the Washington Post, has broken an unwritten military code by implying that a replacement unit or force could do a better job than the one it is relieving.
The marines are preparing to patrol the volatile Sunni Triangle area of western Iraq, currently occupied by the 82nd Airborne Division, and due to take over by the end of next month.
Maj-Gen James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, said he planned to lead a two-pronged effort in an area that has proved by far the most hostile towards coalition forces.
While targeting insurgents who attack marines, he intends to run a campaign that will reduce support for terrorists among Iraqis.
In what is, at the very least, a recognition that US military tactics in Iraq have been heavy-handed, marine officers said they intended to use heavy weapons and bombs only as a last resort.
Air strikes and artillery have sometimes been deployed by the army to intimidate the population before ground troops move in for searches.
Marines, who will be taught a few words of Arabic, will be encouraged to interact with the local population, counselled on religious etiquette and forbidden from wearing sunglasses when talking to Iraqis.
In a tactic used by marines in Vietnam, platoons will live in Sunni towns and villages to train Iraqi police.
• In a goodwill gesture, the US-led administration in Baghdad is to free 500 prisoners detained as low-level security threats, with the first batch released today.
Related reports
How Chemical Ali cheated death
External links
Marines to offer new tactics in Iraq [7 Jan '04] - Washington Post
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Marines to Employ New Tactics in Iraq, Report Says
Wednesday, January 07, 2004 2:10 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Marines who will soon take over occupying much of western Iraq from the U.S. Army are planning tactics that include a reduced use of force, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
Citing an internal Marine document and interviews with senior officers, the report said the working plan for Marines moving into the Sunni Triangle emphasizes cultural sensitivity and a public message that the new troops aren't from the Army.
Maj. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, based at Camp Pendleton, California, told the Post he plans to lead a two-pronged effort.
The first involves capturing or killing insurgents who attack Marines as part of opposition to their presence in Iraq.
The other part of the plan is to diminish support for the insurgents among the Iraqi population.
The Sunni Triangle, north and west of Baghdad, has been where most attacks on U.S. troops have occurred over the past six months. The western part of the Sunni Triangle is seen by many in the Army as the toughest ground in Iraq, the Post reported.
Marines deployed in the region will be taught some Arabic, counseled on religious etiquette and ordered never to wear sunglasses when talking to Iraqis as part of a plan to show respect for the local population, according to the newspaper.
The Marine planning document said that -- as in Vietnam -- platoons will live among the people in many of the occupied towns and villages to facilitate training of the Iraqi police and civil defense forces, the Post reported.
Army officers and other military professionals who have seen the document summarizing the Marines' approach viewed it as an implicit criticism of the Army's tactics and results in the Sunni heartland, The Post said.
According to the article, some called it unfair and ill-advised second-guessing, but others viewed it as a constructive attempt to learn from the hardships and mistakes of the Army in western Iraq.
The Post reported that the commander of the Marine Corps force scheduled to deploy soon to Iraq said he does not see the Marine approach as a criticism of the Army.
Rather, Maj. Gen. Mattis said, in a telephone interview, the planning document reflects intense discussions and "the free competition of ideas in the world," according to the newspaper.
The document was a summary of points made at a two-day Marine planning session last month in California, the report said.
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By R.W. "Dick" Gaines
GySgt USMC (Ret.)
1952-72
Semper Fidelis
~~~~~~~~~~
The Terror War's Inevitable Fog
By Arnold Kling Published 01/09/2004
Ridgway turned to Humphrey and said there was one thing about the war which puzzled him.
"What's that?" Humphrey asked.
"I have never known what the mission for General Westmoreland was," Ridgway said.
-- David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest
David Halberstam's post mortem of the bureaucratic process that took the United States into the Vietnam war influenced me profoundly. My outlook on business, investing, entrepreneurship, software development, technology, and public policy all have been affected by his book, which I first read thirty years ago when I was an undergraduate.
What I took away from reading and re-reading Halberstam was the view that human beings make decisions in the context of incomplete information. We suffer from inadequate knowledge, cognitive biases, and conflicting expert opinions. I call this human condition The Inevitable Fog.
The remainder of this essay (which is long -- it may be easier to print it out rather than try to read it on line) is a tour of the world of inevitable fog. First, I describe the way various aspects of life are affected by fog. Then, I review David Halberstam's thinking about Vietnam. Next, I look at the various fogs of Iraq. Finally, I discuss the fog of the overall war on terror.
The Prevalence of Fog
The familiar expression "fog of war" refers to the difficulty that generals have in seeing all of the relevant forces on the battlefield and beyond. In fact, everyone involved in a war suffers from its fog. During World War II, many American GI's, aware only of the mistakes on our side, were convinced that the United States was going to lose. What they saw were logistical mishaps, waste, unexplained changes in direction, and other signs of incompetence on the part of their superiors. The very term SNAFU is an acronym coined by grunts for "situation normal: all f---ed up."
One sees the same phenomenon in business or civilian government organizations. The leaders never see the entire picture. Meanwhile, as grunts we gather around the water cooler and trade stories which supposedly demonstrate that our bosses are idiots and our co-workers on the other side of the building are jerks. A business organization makes a seemingly suicidal amount of mistakes every week, but in the fog of business its competitors are committing errors at roughly the same rate.
Stock market investing takes place in a fog. At any point in time, there are plausible future scenarios under which the fair value of the market indexes could be double what it is today, and other scenarios which suggest that the market's true value is half its current level. Similarly, there are plausible scenarios under which particular stocks or groups are screaming buys, and equally plausible scenarios under which those same stocks are must-sells.
No one lives in more of a fog than an entrepreneur. Almost by definition, you are the only one who believes that your business idea makes any sense. Nine times out of ten, the skeptics are right. I describe my own entrepreneurial career, which turned out better than most, as A Sequence of Miscalculations.
Software development takes place in a fog. In a project that follows a textbook "lifecycle" process, coding does not begin until the developers have a final, precise written set of requirements. Nowhere in the history of software has a program been developed according to that model. Instead, the Geeks begin work in a fog about what the Suits really want. They make their best guess, deliver a prototype, and then the Suits and the Geeks start to argue. When the two sides reach a point of being hopelessly deadlocked, a version gets released.
Technological progress has many sources of fog. We do not exactly know which scientific studies will lead to interesting results. When something important is discovered, we do not necessarily know which are the most promising applications. We do not know which promising applications will actually be successful in the market. Thomas Edison thought that a phonograph would be used by business executives to record and ship speeches to workers.
No wonder venture capital investing seems like a shot in the dark. Given the fog that surrounds innovation, a venture capitalist that happens to back a couple of winners with one fund may have a string of losers with the next.
Perhaps the most important point of all is that government officials operate in a fog. If one looks at all of the imperfections and shortcomings of the market, then there appears to be a nearly infinite set of opportunities for the government to improve on private sector outcomes. However, it is important to remember that the information that government has is often no better than what is available to private individuals.
For the private sector, one of the most important signals that cuts through the fog is the profit and loss statement. If nothing else, a company that makes too many mistakes will find itself out of business. Government programs are insulated from such signals. I believe that as the pace of innovation has increased in our society, the relative inefficiency of government has gone up. Both private-sector operations and government programs become anomalous and obsolete more rapidly. However, government anomalies persist, while in the private sector market discipline serves to weed out failure. The more dynamic the economy, the larger the drag exerted by the government.
Vietnam, Halberstam, and Fog
Much as I admire The Best and the Brightest, I believe that David Halberstam himself is not above the fog. His account of the Vietnam era suffers from cognitive biases which are evident, even though Halberstam had mastered the New York Times reporter's subtle art of injecting his opinions via adjectives. Thus, American hawks are described as "rigid" and "hardline," while he introduces doves as "nuanced" and "flexible."
When Halberstam discusses our South Vietnamese allies, they are "feudal," "corrupt," and remnants of a "dying order." On the other hand, our adversaries are characterized as "modern," "indigenous," and a "revolutionary force." I long to grasp Halberstam by the lapels and ask him: if the Vietnamese Communists were so in tune with the general population, why was their regime so repressive? Why did they have to murder and drive out so many hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese when they took over? Why is it that in the middle school near where I live in suburban Maryland the most common name in the PTA phone directory is Nguyen?
One way to appreciate the fog that still surrounds the Vietnam war is to look up "Krulak" in the index of Halberstam's book as well as in The Savage Wars of Peace by Max Boot. Both Halberstam and Boot describe Victor Krulak as a Marine Corps Major General, short in stature, with the nickname "Brute." There, the similarity ends.
Boot describes Krulak as "a first-rate fighter and thinker." Boot presents Krulak as the bureaucracy's Rambo, a man who could have won the Vietnam war had the civilians not held him back. Boot describes his approach as follows:
"It would take aggressive small-unit foot patrolling, especially at night, to gather intelligence and disrupt guerilla operation. Above all, it would mean training local people to defend themselves... Krulak wanted to combine this pacification strategy with the bombing and mining of Haiphong harbor."
Halberstam sees Krulak as "the military's most skilled bureaucratic player... where his special assignment was to destroy any civilian pessimism about the war and to challenge the civilian right to even discuss military progress, or lack thereof." Krulak was active in what Halberstam views as the military's conscious effort to deceive civilians about the prospects for success in Vietnam.
" as the official minutes of the special counterinsurgency group reveal for that crucial period ('February 7, 1963 Krulak says real progress is being made in the struggle. Vietcong morale is deteriorating... March 14, 1963 Krulak says Vietcong activity is at a level 50 percent below last year... May 9, 1963 Krulak, back from a Honolulu meeting with Harkins, says that all trends are favorable... May 23 Colonel Francis Serong, Australian guerilla fighting expert, expresses doubt on the Strategic Hamlet Program saying it is overextended, and that it has left vast areas from which the Vietcong can operate freely. Krulak immediately and violently challenges him...')" (ellipses in the original)
Halberstam's Krulak is a vicious hawk, painting a falsely optimistic picture in order to stiffen the resolve of the civilians to maintain the war effort. Boot's Krulak is a sophisticated counterinsurgency fighter, trying to substitute a patient, population-centered strategy for the costly "search-and-destroy" approach used by U.S. commander William Westmoreland.
I am in no position to pass judgment on which writer has captured the real Krulak (perhaps there is a grain of truth in each). The point is that much about Vietnam remains unclear. Even after the fact, the war is covered in fog.
The Downfall of an Elite
The title The Best and the Brightest refers to the hold that a social and intellectual elite had on foreign policy in the 1950's and 1960's. This gave our leaders a narrow base of experience on which to draw. To put words in Halberstam's mouth, they thought that they could deal with the threat of a Communist takeover in Vietnam the way that a Wall Street lawyer might deal with a hostile takeover bid for a major corporation: play tactical hardball, show your resolve, get the adversary to back down, and negotiate a reasonable settlement.
Even the corporate takeover metaphor would represent a less inbred power structure than what Halberstam described. Hostile takeovers emerged as a phenomenon in the 1980's, when Wall Street had opened up and become more flamboyant. The investing public was treated to stories of "the poison pill," "the Pac-Man defense," and so on. This sort of media-reported warfare would have been anathema to the establishment figures who joined the Kennedy Administration. In those days, Wall Street lawyers valued discretion. Issues between corporations were to be resolved at the luncheon club, not in the newspapers.
Thus, Halberstam pictures America's leaders in the 1960's as having traveled in small circles -- elite prep schools, entrance to college based as much on family connections as merit, and a Wall Street atmosphere of rationality and discretion. They proceeded to apply what worked in that context to an underdeveloped Asian country half way around the world.
As for Vietnam itself, Halberstam's view in a nutshell is that it was simply a replay of the civil war in China that resulted in the Communist takeover in 1949. In both cases, the luck of the historical draw gave the Communist side the better leaders, the more highly-motivated forces, and the broader base of popular support. In China, the United States stood aside and let events take their course. We did not do that in Vietnam, in large part because the repercussions of "losing" China had been so traumatic for the Democratic Party and for the State Department.
Halberstam's view is that losing in Vietnam was inevitable. Regardless of what took place on the battlefield, in contemporary language our "nation-building" was a failure.
Halberstam characterizes our military leaders as dense, with an almost sadistic desire to throw more and more bombs and troops into the jungles of Vietnam. He argues that the Joint Chiefs wanted the war badly enough that they helped to manipulate the civilians into it. I suspect a different military-civilian dynamic, which I will discuss below under combat operations in the Fogs of Iraq.
The Fogs of Iraq: Pre-War
As with Vietnam, the question of the necessity of the Iraq war is thick with fog. There is the issue of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as well as the larger strategic context in the war against Islamist terror.
On the issue of WMD, the United States parted company with France and Germany, among others. For this, the American left blames Bush ("he lied!") while the American right blames the other governments ("axis of weasels!").
My sympathies tend to be with the right. I think of Saddam Hussein's prewar behavior as analogous to a guy with a criminal record walking down the street in an overcoat with what appears to be a gun underneath. The police tell him to open up his coat, and he refuses. At that point, if I were the police, I would assume that he has a gun and proceed accordingly.
However, my point is not that the left or the right was clearly correct on the WMD issue. My point is that the WMD issue was part of the inevitable fog.
The other pre-war issue is how regime change in Iraq fits in to the overall war against Islamist terror. There, it seems to me that the fog will take a long time to lift. I will return to this issue in the final section of this essay.
The Fogs of Iraq: Combat Operations
There was a brief period a few weeks before Baghdad fell during which the fog of war was quite thick. Our offensive appeared to be stalled, and our media painted a picture that was very pessimistic. It was in that environment that I wrote Can You Comment?, a satirical attempt to view the state of the war from the perspective of the Iraqi regime's perspective. My point was that their side's problems had to be worse than ours.
At the low point, reporters found a number of ex-military officers -- and some current officers -- who argued that we needed many more troops. To me, this is reminiscent of Vietnam, in which our military seemed to always be asking for more troops and more freedom of operations.
In estimating the troop requirements for any operation, there are going to be some generals whose guesses are high and some generals whose guesses are low. During Vietnam, our civilian leaders wanted to believe the lowest estimates. This had two consequences. One was that it biased the civilians in favor of the most optimistic generals. The other consequence was that many in the military felt that there were not sufficient resources to achieve success, and they applied pressure for more. Halberstam interprets this as political hawkishness ("demands for escalation") on the part of the military, when in fact it was more likely that it represented, as it did in Iraq, a genuine concern to avoid failure. In both situations, there were military officers who believed that victory required a larger force. Given the inevitable fog, there are bound to be officers who feel that way, and sometimes they will turn out to be correct.
As events unfolded, we succeeded in Iraq with a lower number of troops than the most conservative generals thought was necessary. Perhaps unlike in Vietnam, where in the beginning the civilians only listened to the generals with the most optimistic assessment, for Iraq our leadership was not overly biased in its selection of force levels. Maybe they chose an invasion force that was close to the "average" of what generals thought was needed. Or perhaps in Iraq the civilians also insisted on lower troop levels than prudence would have dictated, but we just got lucky.
The Fogs of Iraq: Post-War
In my opinion, it is no surprise that the majority of American casualties have occurred since the fall of Baghdad and the end of major combat operations. Post-war Iraq was bound to be quite difficult. Compared with the pre-war period or the period of combat operations, post-war Iraq comes much closer to resembling Vietnam. In Vietnam, our success ultimately depended on our ability to establish a local government that could provide security and stability. In Iraq, we arrived at the same point only after the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled.
The quote with which I began this essay was a scene in Halberstam's book from late in the Johnson Administration, in which an aging retired general asks the Vice-President of the United States if the American commander in Vietnam ever was given a clearly-defined mission. In post-war Iraq, the mission of U.S. troops becomes less clear with each passing day. This does not mean that they should be withdrawn, but it does imply that we can expect continued challenges to their physical safety and to their morale. As this New York Times story reports, "In nearly 100 interviews and conversations in the last four weeks, soldiers across Iraq expressed a complex set of emotions and sentiments toward their rebuilding mission."
The future of Iraq depends on questions that are largely political and cultural. Can the three major ethnic groups arrive at a peaceful power-sharing arrangement? Can a society where family and tribal ties are still important make the transition to western-style markets and democracy? Will a secular leadership emerge that is strong enough to maintain separation of mosque and state, or is there no one more powerful than the imams? Will Iraq's leaders be sufficiently independent of the United States to bolster Iraqi national pride yet still remain friendly to us? These are issues that are beyond the control of young American troops, notwithstanding our soldiers' well-deserved status as Time's "person of the year." The linguistic and cultural gulf between Americans and Iraqis is so wide that it would seem foolish for any of us in the United States to place any large bet on the shape that Iraqi society will take five years from now.
As a candidate for President in 2000, George Bush expressed scorn for the concept of nation-building. Given America's experience, from the former Soviet Republics to Haiti, his skepticism is well founded. Halberstam's thesis is that in Vietnam the military battles were meaningless, because the nation-building war was always a lost cause.
In Iraq today, most of the fog hangs over the nation-building issues:
* Should elections be held soon, to give Iraqis a sense of "ownership" in their government, or should the country first have a Constitution that guarantees the rights of ethnic minorities?
* Should the United States work with and encourage religious leaders, or should we try to limit their power and instead encourage the formation of secular political parties?
* Should we work with the tradition tribal leaders of Iraq, or will their corruption compromise our values too heavily?
* If we wait too long to turn power over to the Iraqis, will we become hated there? If we turn power over too soon, will the Iraqis lack the skills and training to govern effectively?
It seems to me that these are the choices that America faces in Iraq, and as far as I can tell they are not being discussed outside of the Bush Administration. The nation's op-ed pages seem focused on partisan mudball fights. The Democratic nine dwarfs keep bringing up "internationalization," which strikes me as a solution in search of a problem. Farther out on the left (and even among some "mainstream" Democratic columnists and ex-officials), one hears Chomsky-esque ravings against the military-industrial complex, Halliburton, etc.
One can see the lack of serious discussion at a more grassroots level. James Surowiecki attempted in a comment on Brad DeLong's weblog to elicit some constructive suggestions for Iraq policy. Surowiecki wrote:
"I suppose my real concern is that most of the critics don't have any solutions, that they don't know what to do, not just about Iraq but about Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, and so their fallback position is to talk about what a terrible job Bush is doing, which is true but doesn't really help America right now, nor does it make it likely that Bush will be defeated in November. People are not going to vote Bush out unless they believe that his opponent has a plan to fix Iraq and, more important, a plan to keep them safe. Tax policy, trade policy, the environment, civil liberties: on all these issues Bush's critics (of which I'm often one) offer substantive criticisms and substantive alternatives. But on Iraq, I've heard little, aside from the opposition to the $87 billion to reconstruct Iraq (which would have left Iraq where, exactly?), the insane proposal to force Iraq to borrow the money for its own reconstruction and, of course, the chorus from ANSWER about helping the Baathists resist the colonial occupation. This doesn't cut it."
It seems to me that Surowiecki bent over backwards to try to obtain a reasonable response. You can see for yourself how well it worked (scroll down for Surowiecki's comment and the follow-ups).
Perhaps no one in the press, politics, or the public has anything of substance to say concerning the real issues and choices that we face in Iraq. In that case, the decent thing to do would be to admit that they have not the foggiest idea what they would do differently. But I think in fact there is room for more ideas and opinions.
I believe that there is a lot of potential for things to work out well in Iraq, as this New York Times Magazine story about an Iraqi entrepreneur indicates. However, as Americans try to influence developments in post-war Iraq, we are bound to make some mistakes. And regardless of how wise we might be, ultimately it will be the Iraqis themselves who determine the future of their country. Today, that future is shrouded in the inevitable fog.
The Fog of the Terror War
Even for a war, the fight against Islamist terror seems unusually foggy. Do we know whether our dedicated enemies number in the hundreds or in the hundreds of thousands -- or perhaps even the millions? Do we know whether it is state sponsorship or religious incitement that is more important in creating and sustaining the terrorist movement? Do we know whether greater democracy and economic development will be a salve or an irritant to the moderates?
Years from now, historians might determine that the initial responses to September 11 were all that was needed to efface the capability of the terrorist networks. In retrospect, removing terrorist bases in Afghanistan and taking steps to break up their funding system might turn out to have been sufficient to reduce terrorist attacks down to nuisance levels. If that is the case -- which I think is unlikely -- then the war in Iraq was of no strategic benefit to the United States. We are left only with a justification that it freed the Iraqi people, a rationale which by itself few Americans would consider compelling.
At the other extreme, years from now we may look back and see that the Western and Islamic worlds were headed toward a major collision, in which the September 11 attacks and the Iraq war were merely initial skirmishes. In that case, the world's future will hinge on the outcome of that major collision, not on the war in Iraq.
In between those two extremes are scenarios in which the outcome in Iraq matters. The strategic significance of President Bush's vision for democracy in Iraq is that it represents a model for how he believes that the trend toward Islamic militancy can be stopped.
Recently on TCS, Michael Vlahos suggested that the President's vision and strategy are more ambitious and challenging than is commonly understood. Vlahos implies that we have bitten off more than we can chew. He argues that, "U.S. strategy demands submission to the secular from the moderate Islamist, surrender or death from the radical Islamist, and a 'just fade away' from the current Muslim ruling establishment."
Vlahos raises important issues that are too often ignored in the partisan debates. His thoughts go deeper than the rabid pro- and anti-Bush rhetoric that fills the media.
In Vietnam, there were hawks who argued that Communism would be a disaster for that country. There were doves who argued that we could not build a viable non-Communist state in South Vietnam. Beneath the fog, it turned out that both sides were correct.
In the war against Islamist terror, President Bush has said that victory requires widespread change in the Islamic world. A skeptic could suggest that -- particularly in the stark terms laid out by Vlahos -- the President's goals are unattainable. Both sides could turn out to be right.
To me, it seems clear that the defeat of radical Islamists is important for Americans and for the world. It is at the more tactical level where I believe that debate and discussion are needed, and yet that is where the contributions of the President's opponents are so meager. The segments of America that Surowiecki challenged, including our campus intellectuals and many partisan Democrats, have taken a powder, refusing to engage the issue of terrorism and U.S. strategy with the seriousness it requires. Today, the American left is only clear about its desire to bring down the Bush Administration. Otherwise, they seem to the rest of us to be in the deepest fog of all.
Copyright © 2004 Tech Central Station - www.techcentralstation.com
Story Here!!!!!
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Marines Sites & Forums
By R.W. "Dick" Gaines
GySgt USMC (Ret.)
1952-72
Semper Fidelis
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Now, the Marines
January 14, 2004 1:14 am
IN 1960, "The Magnificent Seven," a film about seven gunfighters who for 20 dollars each defend a poor Mexican village from a small army of brutal bandits, premiered. Its true-life sequel came out five years later in South Vietnam's I Corp.
There, groups of 14 Marines (plus one indispensable Navy corpsman) began living day and night in hamlets, training local militia to fight, sharing their privations, and guaranteeing rural Vietnamese that the Viet Cong no longer would confiscate their crops, money, and sons. The "stars" of this production, soon to be restaged in Iraq, quickly knew their worth: The VC offered 10,000 piasters, dead or alive, for any Marine serving in a Combined Action Platoon.
Not only are CAPs returning when Marines this March begin replacing the 82nd Airborne soldiers now stationed in the western part of Iraq's bloody Sunni Triangle. So is the interservice soreheadedness surrounding the program. Some Army officers complain that the Marines' plan--which calls for greater sensitivity to Iraqi customs, the forswearing of heavy ordnance to punish whole towns, and broadcasting the clear message "we're not the Army"--is an implicit criticism of the larger service. It is. Again.
In 1965, Marine commander Gen. Lew Walt, recoiling from the sweeping "search and destroy" missions ordered by his superior, Army Gen. William Westmoreland, said, "The Marines have never felt that the war stands to be won by the grand maneuvers of large forces, by brilliant marshalship in the Tannenberg or Chancellorsville image, but rather in the villages." Westmoreland tolerated, but did not order the Army to mimic, Marine CAPs, which, unlike the Army chief's turbulent strategy, prevented Vietnamese farm families from becoming landless refugees.
CAPs worked in South Vietnam. They actually won hearts and minds, and not just for a day: Vietnam Marine Bing West, a friend of these pages, has written of returning recently to the Vietnamese hamlet where he lived and fought to find lovingly tended shrines to his fallen comrades. As the late Gen. Walt wrote, "Of all our innovations in Vietnam none was more successful, as lasting in effect, or as useful for the future as the Combined Action Program.Increasingly, we became the fish swimming in the sea of people, with the guerrilla flopping on the bank, gasping for air."
Iraq, it's true, may be another kettle of fish altogether. Marine CAPs will not be pitching their bunks in friendly--perhaps not even neutral--villages. Iraq and Vietnam are different places with different histories, religions, and temperaments. By some estimates, a third of Iraqis, disproportionately dwelling in the Sunni Triangle, support outright violence against coalition troops. Can vows of restraint withstand suicide bombings and hate-filled mobs ready to repay benevolence with a bullet in the back?
In his book "Semper Fi Vietnam," military historian Edward Murphy tells the story of Lance Cpl. Miguel Keith, all of 19, a CAP Marine in Quang Ngai Province in 1970 when his hamlet came under ground attack. Though wounded, Keith moved to positions held by village militiamen and directed their fire. Spotting five enemy infiltrators, Keith charged them, killing three and wounding the others. Flattened by a grenade, Keith got up and charged into 25 more attackers, killing four and scattering the rest. He died of his wounds, the last Marine in South Vietnam to earn a Medal of Honor.
Courage enriched by compassion and intelligence--this is what the Marines aim to bring to the war in a different form than any yet employed by an Army unit, however worthy. Who knows? The bandits who would rule Iraq may soon put a price of 10,000 dinars on the heads of CAP members. In this generation's shadowy war, that would be a magnificent measure of progress.
http://www.freelancestar.com/News/FLS/2004/012004/01142004/1230682
http://www.freelancestar.com/News/FLS/2004/012004/01142004/1230682
Copyright 2001 The Free Lance-Star Publishing Company.
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Marines Sites & Forums
By R.W. "Dick" Gaines
GySgt USMC (Ret.)
1952-72
Semper Fidelis
~~~~~~~~~~
Methodist Oaks resident believes she's oldest surviving Marine veteran
As one of the first women to join the Marine Corps, Edith Ferris commanded platoons and served as a transportation officer. She had worked her way up to captain when the Marines discharged all women in the early 1950s.
By LEE HENDREN, T&D Staff Writer
Today as The Methodist Oaks celebrates its 50th anniversary, making it one of the oldest retirement communities in South Carolina, one of its residents is marking another feat of longevity.
Edith Ferris says she believes she is the oldest surviving woman veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps.
Sixty-one years ago, World War II raged across the globe and all of the U.S. military branches were under pressure to rapidly multiply their numbers.
The Army created the Women's Army Corps or WACs. The Navy started the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, or WAVES. And the Coast Guard established the SPARS.
For a brief period during World War I, the Marine Corps enrolled a little more than 500 women in clerical positions at its headquarters in Washington.
When the Marine Corps announced on Feb. 13, 1943, that it would admit women, its commandant, Lt. Gen. Thomas Holcomb, balked at creating a "reserve" force with a cute acronym.
"They don't have a nickname, and they don't need one," Holcomb said in a 1944 interview with LIFE magazine. "They get their basic training in a Marine atmosphere at a Marine post. They inherit the traditions of Marines. They are Marines."
That approach was appealing to Ferris, who joined the Marines on March 23, 1943. "I was the first one in Michigan," she said.
Born in Detroit, Ferris graduated from high school and attended college for a period of time before leaving to work in a store. She married Edward James Leppan, and they built a house in Royal Oak and settled down to rear a family.
But fate had other plans for this feisty lady. After three miscarriages, doctors told her she would not be able to bear children. This was crushing news to both her and her husband.
So she decided to join several other members of her family in the military. "My oldest brother was in the Seabees," she said, but that work didn't appeal to her.
"My brother, the master sergeant in the Marines, asked would I like to join the Army or the Navy? I said, 'What about the Marines?' He said they didn't have women Marines at that time," Ferris recalled.
Later, "I read in the paper that they were having ladies in the Marines. I went down to the recruiting station, and they said, yes, in February, and I said, 'Sign me up!'"
"I didn't know what I was doing," she said with a laugh. "I was discontented about not having babies."
"They said, 'You're the first woman Marine in Michigan,'" Ferris said. "They said, 'Is your husband coming?' My husband went with me (to the recruitment office) but they said they couldn't accept him because he had a perforated eardrum. I hadn't known it."
So "he was a civilian, and I was in the Marines, and I couldn't get out because I couldn't get pregnant," Ferris said. Her husband eventually filed for divorce, citing Ferris' military obligations.
Ferris and the other earliest women Marines underwent basic training at Hunter College in Bronx, N.Y. "The Navy trained us," she recalled. She was salutatorian of her class.
"I was then sent to Camp Lejeune, N.C., and I got a stripe" and was promoted to platoon sergeant. She was one of just 13 in her class to graduate from Officer Candidate School and received the rank of second lieutenant.
"Then I was a commanding officer of recruits and assistant transportation officer at Cherry Point, N.C.," she said.
Women Marines were not sent overseas during that time. Ferris was promoted to first lieutenant and then to captain before all women were discharged from the Marine Corps in the early 1950s.
"After I got out of the service, I went on the (GI Bill) to Florida State University in Tallahassee, Fla.," where she earned a bachelor of science degree in social work.
After working for two years in Alexandria, Va., she got a scholarship to the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., where she finished her master's degree.
But her subsequent job involved "little babies," and "it was too emotional and I had to quit," she said.
As an American Red Cross hospital field director for U.S. military services, her postings included New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Louisiana, New York and Alaska. She also worked for Goodwill Industries in California.
For 11 years she was a rehabilitation counselor in the California Institute for Women, the prison where the infamous "Manson girls" are held. It also houses the Golden State's death row.
Ferris retired and moved to Florida but returned to Washington to supervise the relocation of Vietnamese refugees for the American Red Cross.
After retiring again, Ferris and her recently widowed sister learned about Bradford Village in Santee from an AARP magazine and bought a house there.
Health problems prompted the sisters to move to The Methodist Oaks. Her sister has since passed away, but Ferris maintains a lifestyle as active as her health allows.
An apparent stroke left Ferris with a condition called aphasia. Experts said she would never again be able to speak. Ferris was determined to prove them wrong and has regained much of her ability to speak.
Once a Marine, always a Marine.
T&D Staff Writer Lee Hendren can be reached by e-mail at lhendren@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5552. Information on the early years of women in the Marine Corps was obtained from the "Military Officer" magazine.
50th anniversary program today
Today at 3 p.m. in the Nancy Freeman Stringer Memorial Chapel, everyone is invited to attend The Methodist Oaks' 50th anniversary celebration program.
United Methodist Bishop Lawrence McCleskey will be the keynote speaker. The Methodist Oaks Choir will perform. The Methodist Oaks will debut its commemorative 50th anniversary video and DVD. An anniversary cake and other refreshments will be served.
http://www.thetandd.com/articles/2004/01/06/news/news1.prt
http://www.thetandd.com/articles/2004/01/06/news/news1.prt
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This is...
Gunny G's...
GLOBE and ANCHOR
Marines Sites & Forums
By R.W. "Dick" Gaines
GySgt USMC (Ret.)
1952-72
Semper Fidelis
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National Review online
December 10, 2001
Marines Turned Soldiers
The Corps vs. the Army.
By Mackubin Thomas Owens, professor of strategy and force planning at the Naval War College
The United States Marine Corps is a separate service within the Department of the Navy. Marines traditionally operate "from the sea" in conducting expeditionary tasks. The traditional focus of the Marines — and of its sister service, the United States Navy — has been on the world's littorals. So why were Marines the first major contingent of U.S. conventional ground forces sent into landlocked Afghanistan?
According to some news reports, as well as Internet traffic, this is a topic of great concern among officers of the U.S. Army. According to Katherine McIntire Peters in the issue of Government Executive Magazine dated November 29 ("Marine Deployment Irks Soldiers") the fact that the Marines have carried out what appears to be a textbook Army mission — the seizure of an airfield in a theater of operations far from any shoreline — has "sparked fury among many mid-grade [Army] officers." Many soldiers see the Marine deployment as further evidence that their beloved service has become increasingly irrelevant since the end of the Cold War.
This is an overreaction. There will be plenty for the Army to do, both in Afghanistan and in the phases of the war against terrorism that will follow it. But the episode does illustrate the degree to which the security environment has evolved over the past decade, and the fact that responsiveness, flexibility, and adaptability are the characteristics most necessary in military forces of the future. The Army is adapting, but given what that service was asked to do for 50 years, it has further to go than the other services.
The problem the Army faces is geopolitical. To protect its worldwide interests, the United States must be able to project power globally. But given its geographical position, the United States can project power only by overcoming what the former commandant of the Marine Corps, General Charles Krulak, has called the "tyranny of distance." The tyranny of distance creates a dilemma for ground forces — a tradeoff between rapid strategic deployability on the one hand, and lethality, sustainability, and self-protection on the other. Thus, an airborne unit can deploy more quickly than any other ground force — but it lacks the killing power and sustainability necessary to win once it gets on the ground. On the other hand, an armored unit, though it possesses the latter characteristics, takes a long time to get into the theater of war.
During the Cold War, the United States handled the tyranny of distance problem by identifying the most likely theaters of war and stationing Army and tactical Air Forces there during peacetime, as a deterrent. Of course, the defense of Europe required more forces than the ones already there, so equipment for reinforcing forces was prepositioned in theater. In the event of an emergency, troops would be flown from the continental United States (CONUS) into theater, where they would "marry up" with their equipment. This approach worked as long as we were planning against an identifiable adversary, the Soviet Union, but became less relevant as the security environment became less certain.
On the other hand, the Marines focused during the Cold War on "contingencies," short-fuse emergencies that could arise anytime or anyplace. The Marines effectively sold their role as a flexible, adaptable "force in readiness," ready to respond with tailored, task-organized forces to any crisis across the spectrum of conflict. They evolved from a stress on amphibious assault to a broader understanding of amphibious operations, developing such capabilities as maritime prepositioning and what is now called "operational maneuver from the sea." Marines never claimed to be the only land force necessary, but they did organize and plan to deploy rapidly with a force capable of holding the line until heavier forces could arrive.
As part of this role, the Marines developed an "operational concept" that exploited a flexible Marine organization, the Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF). An MAGTF combines a command element, a ground-combat element, an air-combat element, and a logistics-support element that can provide a flexible, task-organized force ranging in size from a few hundred Marines to a multi-division, multi-air wing force of over 100,000.
For the Army, the tyranny of distance manifested itself during the Gulf War of 1990-91, when it took the United States nearly six months to deploy the ground-combat power thought necessary to defeat Iraq. The problem only became more acute as time went on.
One response to the tyranny of distance problem was to increase the nation's reliance on airpower. Indeed, airpower advocates seized upon the Gulf War to argue that force planning models were biased in favor of land power. They claimed that the actual conduct of the war demonstrated that land power was now less important than it once had been, and that the balance of U.S. forces should thus be shifted to emphasize airpower.
The war in Afghanistan seems to have refocused attention on land forces. The combination of airpower, special forces, and surrogate ground forces provided by anti-Taliban Afghans has worked extremely well, but it increasingly looks like ultimate success against al Qaeda will require forces beyond SOF on the ground.
So once again, why are "soldiers of the sea" the first conventional ground forces in landlocked Afghanistan? The short answer is that the Marines were in theater and the first ones available to the unified commander, General Tommy Franks. Two Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs), MAGTFs built around a reinforced infantry battalion and a composite aviation squadron, had been moved into the region as the United States made plans to go after al Qaeda in Afghanistan. These units possess substantial tactical mobility and firepower. The most rapidly deployable Army organization — say, a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division — lacks both.
The fact is that the Army is in a state of transition from a force designed to fight and win the nation's land wars to a more adaptable, more easily deployable force capable of a greater range of missions. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki has been pushing hard to transform the Army, but he faces a difficult job. An important part of the resistance he faces is cultural. According to one online account, posted by a mid-grade Army officer, the Army has "tied itself culturally to the theory and practice of Second-Generation War. This focus centers on requirements to mobilize heavy forces for massive wars of attrition in Western Europe — what the Germans used to call Materialschlacht... [Thus], the Army's high-cost offensive crown jewels — armor and mechanized infantry units — have trouble getting out of Fulda Gap — psychologically as well as physically. One Army wag recently summed up the current situation... 'We have the world's fastest strategically immobile Army.'"
The types of missions for which land forces will be needed in the future will be expeditionary in nature. As former Marine Commandant Gen. Carl Mundy was fond of saying, "'Expeditionary' is not a mission. It's a mindset." The Marines have developed an expeditionary mindset over decades; the Army is only now coming to grips with it. As Tom Ricks wrote in his excellent book, Making the Corps, "The Marines tend to display a kind of funky joie de vivre, especially in the field. In their own parlance, they know how to 'pack their trash,' something the Army is learning slowly and painfully as it too becomes 'expeditionary' in hellholes like Somalia and Haiti."
Whether we like it or not, the United States has embarked on an era of "imperial policing." Although the U.S. does not possess a formal empire, the liberal world order we seek requires that we take the lead in underwriting the global security environment. The Marines have developed the culture and mindset necessary to play a major role in this world. The Army is still working on it. But as Gen. Shinseki admonished those in his service who were not enamored of his transformation plan, "If you dislike change, you're going to dislike irrelevance even more."
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-owens121001.shtml
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Marines Sites & Forums
By R.W. "Dick" Gaines
GySgt USMC (Ret.)
1952-72
Semper Fidelis
~~~~~~~~~~
Military's care recovery law bad, Marine Corps' top enlisted man says
By James W. Crawley
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
January 4, 2004
Along with duty to country and educational benefits, no-cost medical care for service members and their families is a big reason recruits join the military.
But recruiters don't mention a little-known law that allows the military to garnishee insurance and court settlements from service members and dependents injured in traffic accidents and other nonmilitary calamities.
Even the Marines' top enlisted man, Sgt. Maj. of the Marine Corps John Estrada, wasn't aware.
"We come into the military with the understanding that (medical care) is free, but I found out that it's not really free after all," said Estrada, who has served for 30 years, including tours at all three Marine bases in San Diego County. "They need to tell people when they come in about this law," he said.
As the Corps' sergeant major, Estrada, 48, isn't some anonymous noncom. He is the face of the Marines' 158,000 enlisted men and women.
He advises the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. Michael Hagee, on enlisted issues such as pay, morale and family support services.
But Estrada only learned about the 41-year-old law, called the Medical Care Recovery Act, when the Navy filed a claim in November on insurance proceeds from a May traffic accident in which his wife, Midge Estrada, was nearly killed by a wayward driver. She suffered brain damage and spent more than two weeks in a coma.
The Navy wants the proceeds from Estrada's and the other driver's auto insurance policies – an estimated $100,000 total.
The money would help reimburse the Navy for his wife's hospital bills, including emergency brain surgery, weeks in intensive care, a military air ambulance flight from Sacramento to Washington, and physical and occupational therapy. The bill could reach $1 million or more for care that could last for years.
"They're trying to get a quarter from me to pay off a million-dollar bill," Estrada said, suggesting that any insurance payout would have little effect on the Navy's budget but a huge impact on his finances.
He said it's money the family needs to take care of expenses that military benefits don't cover, such as baby-sitting, nonmedical costs and a replacement vehicle for the car destroyed in the accident.
Estrada, who was the top enlisted man in the 3rd Marine Air Wing at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station until June, said he is taking up the fight not so much for his wife but to inform other enlisted men and women and their families about the law.
"If a person in my position is unaware of the law, there's a lot of others who aren't aware of that law," he said.
Millions have been collected for reimbursements.
Last year, the Navy obtained nearly $11 million in reimbursement from insurance claims and court decisions that would have gone to sailors, Marines and their dependents. Over the past two years, the total reimbursements were about $21.5 million.
"It's an $11 million-a-year business for the Navy," said Pat Leonard, deputy director of the claims, investigation and tort litigation division of the service's Office of the Judge Advocate General.
Leonard said the collection effort saves taxpayers because most of the recovered money is funneled back to the military to cover medical care. About $1.8 million is used to pay attorneys, staff and expenses at three claims offices, including one in San Diego, that process reimbursement requests, she added.
The attorneys file claims for reimbursement against insurance companies. The government also can join lawsuits filed by an injured service member. It does not dock anyone's pay or bank accounts.
During fiscal year 2003, which ended Sept. 30, the Navy filed 8,796 claims involving Marines and sailors.
The Navy would not comment on specific cases, citing privacy.
The Army and Air Force also collect medical reimbursements, known as affirmative claims in military legalese.
Last year, the Pentagon collected a total of $27.6 million.
On average, the military collected $1,410 per case that involved recovery. The Navy had the highest collection average, $1,642 per case, last year.
"Not in every case do we send a demand and they send us a check," Leonard said. "Sometimes we get a check. Sometimes we get a check in two or three years."
In most cases, the Navy settles for less than the hospital bill, she said.
Estrada and others may have little recourse, said attorneys familiar with the law.
"It's completely fair," said Gene Fidell, a Washington attorney who represents service members. "The government has paid hard cash to run the base hospitals and pay doctors, so why shouldn't they go forward and try to get some of those expenses back?"
While Fidell agrees with government policy to seek money from the at-fault driver's insurance, he said it doesn't seem fair to also seek proceeds from a service member's own insurance policy, such as in Estrada's case.
"Legally, the government has the right, but this is not the type of situation the law envisioned," Fidell said. He suggested that the law should not hurt a service member's financial situation.
2003 was a trying year for the Estrada family.
The sergeant major served in Kuwait and Iraq with Miramar-based Marines during the winter and spring. As the fighting subsided in Iraq, Estrada was selected in April for the top enlisted post.
Midge Estrada, his wife of 13 years and a former Marine officer, was waiting on the tarmac when he returned to Miramar on May 13.
On May 15, she flew back to Sacramento, where she and their two preteen children were living. As she was driving home from the airport, a pickup truck rammed the rear of her 1994 BMW, catapulting it sideways into the back of another pickup.
While everyone else walked away from the collision, Midge Estrada was left in a coma, suffering severe head trauma, a collapsed right lung and other serious injuries. For days, doctors feared she would die.
Slowly, she started coming out of the coma.
Since May, the 39-year-old has had to relearn how to talk, read and walk. She still has trouble remembering things. Her hair is finally growing back over the scars from brain surgery. She'll have a year or more of additional therapy, but may never be the same person she was before the accident.
"It's a tough injury to get better from," she said recently. "I think I'm getting better."
Meanwhile, Estrada has been trying to care for his wife while holding a high-profile job that places hard demands on his time, with frequent travel and long hours at work. Family and friends have helped at home with Midge and the children.
Estrada's concern about his family's welfare escalated in December, when his attorney called to say the Navy had placed a lien on any insurance settlement from his wife's case.
"I feel like we've had insult added to injury," Estrada said. "Haven't we suffered enough?"
He added that no one has returned his calls seeking information about the claim.
"I'm not blaming the military," Estrada said. "We just have a bad law."
James W. Crawley:
(619) 542-4559; jim.crawley@uniontrib.com
Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20040104-9999_1m4lien.html
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This is...
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GLOBE and ANCHOR
Marines Sites & Forums
By R.W. "Dick" Gaines
GySgt USMC (Ret.)
1952-72
Semper Fidelis
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