Gen. Mattis on the Marines in Iraq
Excerpts from interview with Camp Pendleton's commanding general

By: Denis Devine and Mark Walker - Staff Writers | Sunday, June 24, 2007 7:00 AM PDT ∞

Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis is commanding general of Camp Pendleton's I Marine Expeditionary Force and commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces Central Command, which includes the Marines fighting in Iraq.

He spoke to North County Times reporter Mark Walker and Opinion Editor Denis Devine in his Camp Pendleton office on Tuesday. The following are excerpts from that conversation:

A transcript of the entire two-hour interview has been posted at nctimes.com/perspective. You can also listen to the interview online by clicking here

Walker: Obviously, we've heard a lot of reports of sheiks working closely with the Marines now in Anbar, turning their fight toward al-Qaida ... To what degree is that now occurring in Anbar and how is that changing the dynamics in Anbar today?

Mattis: ... Here, due to some enemy actions ... the enemy digs himself into a rut. ...

What are some of the mistakes the enemy has made? Well, how about cutting off heads of 12- and 13-year-old boys and throwing them on the steps of the Ramadi hospital? How about killing a sheik and leaving his body for four days in the August heat out there without turning it over to the family? This sort of thing.

These are mistakes, and war, at times, is decided at times by whoever makes the fewest mistakes. And when you stick, as difficult as it is in this morally bruising environment, with the ethical high ground and we do that overwhelmingly. We are the good guys, not the perfect guys, but we are the good guys. ...

But the constant bombs going off, and while the U.S. media, the Western media, may portray this as "a bomb went off today," a bomb didn't go off, it was not an act of God. Intentional murder of innocent people eventually sours anybody.

So as the enemy does this more and more often, you can now see that they're gambling. Their gamble is that they can create a picture of chaos, within the country but more especially unwittingly promoted by the media, from tactical events, explosions set off in certain towns of strategic significance.

They need to break the American will. They need to make the war look like it's either at best going sideways, at worst getting worse, before the people all turn on them.

Unfortunately, they lost in al Anbar. The people turned before the Americans were forced out.

Now what you have is a reverse inkblot strategy. ... In counterinsurgency, you see the inkblot strategy, you take over here and you move out here. What you're seeing is al-Qaida being squeezed. They used to own Fallujah and they don't have it anymore. They used to own Ramadi; we've walked congressmen down the streets of Ramadi. How's that for a change over a few months? We have in many cases got a significant bounce off the people who realize, not that they love us, but that we're, we're the good guys. ...

Some people will say we are arming the tribes. That's absolute just ignorance, is what that is.

No. 1, most of the people coming over to us were parts of tribes that fought us just a few years ago. They have plenty of arms. We're not handing out arms. We are training them. We are bringing them and paying them as part of the police. That way we bring them inside some kind of an organizational construct, so we don't have militias out there. But what we're doing in effect is taking advantage of their irregular forces and saying the al-Qaida aren't the only ones who are going to have irregular forces, we are too. And again, a country that armed Stalin to defeat Hitler can certainly work alongside enemies of al-Qaida to defeat al-Qaida. ...

I just caution people that this is not yet irreversible either. You've got to maintain your balance and your enthusiasm. But at the same time, we are winning, and the enemy is losing.

Devine: I'm interested in your analogy of arming Stalin to defeat Hitler, because are we then looking at arming an enemy that we will fight, either directly or by proxy, for the next several decades?

Mattis: ... Where do the tribes fit in, is what you're asking, two years from now.

As the al-Qaida are beaten down, and as they lose their place in the sun out there, they are now being exposed, attacked by Iraqi troops, Iraqi police, the people. ... There is going to come a time where we're going to want to say we don't need all these folks.

Now how do you make certain you don't just disband another army? That didn't work too good the first time around, as I understand it.

So what do you do? I think what you do is you take a couple pages out of what the U.S. military did after the Cold War, when we started downsizing. We said there are certain training programs for the troops getting out, we sent some off to learn how to be teachers, others got vo-tech, others got just tuition assistance to help them go to school.

But basically you keep them on active duty, but instead of going out on patrol that day, because you no longer need them, they go to vo-tech school. ... They're going to get full pay and allowances and you'll go to carpentry school, you'll go to plumbing school, you'll go to air-conditioning repair school, I'll go to automotive repair. You hold them on active duty, you pay them, and you somewhat look like approaching this like President Roosevelt approached the Civilian Conservation Corps. We're using military discipline, you take these folks and you give them an offramp and, by the way, yes, you guarantee them a job. There is some role for government as you downsize and come out of this war at some point. So the tribes do fit in. You don't have another army that's running around out there. ...

As you see political and economic progress, you will again confront al-Qaida and their spiritually, politically, economically bankrupt approach.

If we were to look at Vietnam along these lines, you would see that the Communists there had the Viet Cong, their armed element, and the National Liberation Front, their political element. There is no political element of al-Qaida. They can kill. They can destroy. The reason is no one is going to sign up for their medieval Talibanic view of tyranny. And they know it, and that is why they have got to go with the bombs. ...

Devine: There's analysis that the success in Anbar has pushed al-Qaida into Diyala. Critics are saying that this is a "whack-a-mole" situation, squeeze the balloon and the air goes elsewhere. Can a threat like al-Qaida be attacked, defeated town by town, province by province, or does it have to be more of a coordinated strategic response?

Mattis: I don't think it is a either/or. It has to be coordinated but it has to be town by town. ...

If we move against them here, do they just show up somewhere else? They do. That said, they are finding themselves more and more often put into positions where they can't get any kind of nurturing, they can't get any kind of R&R, they can't get a place where they can catch their breath.

Now that means that there is going to be some sharp fighting, that is absolutely the case, but the fact is they couldn't move back into al Anbar because it was denied to them. That's a victory. The fact they've moved into Diyala, then we'll hunt them down there. It's the sort of thing we have to hunt them down wherever they go.

But that is true about this larger war that we're fighting. Iraq is a regional problem that is going to take a regional solution. And that just takes your construct and just widens it a little more. It's not just the provinces, but what are we going to do around Iraq, what are we going to do to get the region to help be part of the solution. ...

Devine: Politically, in the U.S., everyone is looking toward September and Gen. Petraeus' report. Does that affect the Marines' work in Iraq in any way?

Mattis: ... (Marines) are aware of what is going on in Washington, but it does not drive our operations in the sense that there is some timeline that causes us to do things more for the timeline's purpose rather than where we are at event-wise on the ground. ...

Does that mean that in the good areas you can't have somebody drive a car bomb in? In a country with millions of people and cars going everywhere, the enemy is going to get a car bomb out there once in a while. There are going to be good days and bad days, bottom line.

But in September, I believe that Gen. Petraeus is going to be able to point toward the situation that we confront and give a very coherent program for the way ahead. I am absolutely confident of that. ...

Devine: Do you have a sense of the percentage of foreign nationals that make up the al-Qaida fighters you are opposing in Anbar?

Mattis: ... It's not an area where we are getting a lot of these guys. But there is, I'd say, a constant trickle of them coming in, and there are a lot of them who are dead.

Walker: General, given the political backdrop (in the U.S.) ... what can the (U.S. forces) accomplish in the next six to 12 months?

Mattis: Well, insurgencies and counterinsurgency campaigns take time. But also reconciliations take time. ...

I have fewer notes that cause me to believe that sectarian lines are hardening.

From Sunni and Shia crowds cheering on their soccer teams to students going to school where there is both Sunni and Shia. I am just wondering if this reconciliation is going to be as difficult as I imagined.

We took Saddam and his police state off the top of these tensions and they all came bubbling up. And we were unwilling to use the same level of violence as Saddam was to quell them ---- that's not how we're going to do business ---- then obviously, especially if you have an al-Qaida-like enemy there and you have an unhelpful Iran on another border that's egging them on certain people and perhaps giving them logistics or training support, then you are going to have some messy times.

But this problem existed long before, this problem being violent extremists, existed long before 2003. And it is going to exist long after this presidential election. We are going to have to confront it and come up with a national policy. If you go back to the Cold War, we came up with containment was going to be our policy, as the internal contradictions of their system of tyranny worked to basically doom the communist system, Soviet system.

In this case we are seeing tyranny ---- it's just in a false religious garb. We have fought this before ---- it's just tyranny from people who say we are going to tell you how to think, how to pray and that girls will be treated like beasts, women will be treated like beasts. This is just another form of tyranny.

So what we have to do is come up with an approach, a framework that takes into account things that we find very uncomfortable. We sit here having a rational discussion. What if there are people that have no intentions of having a rational discussion, that as much as we want to think that religion is unimportant, there are in some people in this world, for political purposes I mean, for whom religion is ... everything. ...

And sincere, patriotic Americans can agree and disagree with where we are going, but we have to get to a point where we come up with a national understanding of this situation and build a consensus for how we are going to address it.

And with the continued disarming of Western European democracies ... we are going to see perhaps a heavier burden on America as we confront this in our leadership role. And so we are going to have to have young people who can go out and represent our country to other nations that can join up with us, and then over the next five to 10 years we create something that looks like a coalition of more tolerant people, how we're going to stop this tyranny and stop it in its tracks.

As we saw in al Anbar, violence only works so long. It's not going to go on forever. People get fed up with this, and they will band together to push back.

Devine: Lately, the model of South Korea as a long-term occupation has been floated. ... What do you think about a long-term peacekeeping presence in Iraq? Is that something that the Marines are prepared to do? ...

Mattis: These are not over with in two months or six months or one year.

As the enemy's effectiveness goes down, as the Iraqi security forces' effectiveness improves, you will see U.S. forces, especially conventional or expeditionary forces, line units, drop off. We'll probably see an increase in advisers. But overall, you'll see U.S. forces coming down. But we will maintain perhaps a different emphasis with the adviser duty. We may see U.S. logistics units there longer. ...

As we confront this, the Marines will be happy to fight them forever. We're quite happy to fight to defend this country, and if it's a matter of who has the stronger spirit, I have no doubt the Marine Corps will prevail.

Why do I say that? I can point to the statistics of I think the highest retention I think in our history the last couple of years, and it looks like this is going to be another great year for us. There is a degree of trust and confidence across our ranks that what we're doing is not only the right thing in Iraq but we're making progress, and that in itself is building, it builds the desire of people to stay on.

Yeah, there's no doubt in my mind the Marines can continue this. It's hard on the families. Hard on our families. But the families, I will tell you, many, many of the families, when I speak to them, come up and say, 'We support our husbands, we support our boyfriends who are off doing this.' So far, if the center of gravity for the Marine Corps is the spirits of our Marines and their families, they're holding. ...

Devine: Are they (the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit) part of the offensive that we see on TV right now?

Mattis: Well, yes, but if you went over there, you're going to find patient, persistent presence. You don't find triumphal entry into a town. So when you talk about the "offensive," it's a number of things going on, and this area they are going into is going to be very, very good for a number of areas that you read about most, and I'll just leave it at that.

Walker: ... Do you see ... anything arising from the whole ethics issues in the Haditha and Hamdania cases that are ongoing here affecting the morale or how the troops are approaching their jobs on the streets or on the ground in Iraq today?

Mattis: ... You see the moral bye, the passive voice, given to the enemy's intentional murder whereas an American mistake, for which we hold ourselves accountable, for which we always investigate. This is not a rogue, when the enemy does this, this is not a rogue unit, this is a unit actually going out and intentionally firing from a mosque or from a home or something like this.

But when we do it, it's a mistake and we investigate. Yet for some reason, the moral bye, the passive voice by our media, makes it appear like what the enemy is doing is just an act of God or some goddamned thing, whereas when we do it, it is something that, it's an ethical lapse. Yet where we have ethical lapses, we have shown ourselves to be accountable. ...

But that is a difficult challenge for young Marines on the street who know what they're doing to try to avoid killing people when the enemy is intentionally trying to draw that fire in.

So it's a constant ... leadership challenge to explain why we do the right thing in the face of an enemy that intentionally does the wrong thing.

And so, this is one of the areas that is most demanding of our young leaders ---- it is demanding not only intellectually, but it is demanding almost on the level of a passion ---- of how do you get the impression across to your troops that we do the right thing no matter what.

In the long run, you see the people of Anbar, skeptical of a largely Christian, all-American army in their midst, in a part of the world that does not go over well, buying into us. What is more telling than you having them joining the Iraqi military, joining the Iraqi police, taking casualties, signing up the next day after a recruiting station is hit? They're back the next day to sign up again. ...

Devine: What should the American people, via the North County Times, know about the next of couple of months in Iraq from the Marines' perspective?

Mattis: That the enemy will do everything it can to set a tone that everything is going downhill. And these tactics of desperation, the setting off bombs, this sort of thing, killing innocent people ---- yes, they're attacking our folks but increasingly ineffectively in the Marine area right now ---- it is just the normal challenge of war that our country has been through before when it fought tyranny.

You could read President John Adams, when he first confronts the tyranny coming out of the Barbary states, when we got to the shores of Tripoli, in our song. The bottom line: This problem has existed for quite some time, and as we're seeing elsewhere in the world, from the schoolchildren in Russia to the people riding the Underground in London to people going to a restaurant in Bali, this is not confined to just this area, and it's going to have to be addressed. So we might as well sit down and figure out how we're going to address it.

Walker: Five or 10 years from now ... what will be the lessons learned from Iraq?

Mattis: ... I think one thing we are going to have to confront ... is that we may be up against an enemy that sees conflict as the norm. If we see peace as the norm and conflict as the aberration, it means the enemy is going to have the initiative. ...

I think we will have found a new framework. It won't be containment. It will be a new framework with which to address this. I think the American penchant for going for technological solutions to, in war will have been proven to be a chimera, a mirage ---- you'll never reach it.

This war is a human problem. It needs human solutions. Technology can support, it cannot substitute for a good strategy, for human factors, for our troops are better trained and better educated. ...

I think we will have learned that wars like this ... - unlike industrial wars where we create ... an armed force that can move with speed; speed can actually work against you in this sort of a war because you don't learn the lessons that you need to in order to adapt to the specific conditions - so it will be the need for a more persistent presence as we try to preclude this sort of thing in the future.

And if we get into it, to stay there long enough to build trust, because trust is not built overnight. ...

If there is one abiding key, I think, to success in war it is seizing and maintaining the initiative. And in this kind of war, how you do that is in the human factors. In the small things, how do you build trust, you teach your men rudimentary language skills so you can just communicate ...

I think too that we will learn that information operations ---- which is just a nice way of saying getting our narrative out ---- will be as important or more important than the tactics.

Because this enemy is remarkably easy for us to nail once we confront them. That's not a problem. The problem is this example I gave of, today, "a bomb went off in Iraq." When the enemy gets a moral bye like that, you've got to be very, very careful to think you're winning a war against them just because you're winning the tactics. It's a war in which perception and not truth really informs the real actions and you have to watch how you apply force. ...

We have to recognize that our electoral process too may not provide the patience that's consistent with fighting this sort of war. So if you don't create a national consensus, a strategy, and have a good, bruising debate and come up with a some degree of forward progress on this, you just get this acrimonious debate that doesn't really inform either side. So we need to really get intellectual about it.

I think too we'll find that a trained and educated military is not an overhead cost to be reduced to the fewest number of troops ---- it's an investment in the security of this country. Just because it's not an aircraft carrier, a thing, if you ever get to the point of thinking that you can win the war without putting enough trained and educated troops, I'm not calling for big increases right now, but if you think you're going to pull this off using technology or some other cheap way of doing it, it's probably going to be unproductive for you.

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