Posted on 02/12/2005 5:44:33 PM PST by Former Military Chick
WASHINGTON -- When a Marine lieutenant general last week said in public it was "fun to shoot some people" much hand-wringing ensued. The public outcry revealed less about him than it did about the hypocrisy of the United States.
It is not unreasonable to expect such a senior officer to exercise better judgment than that, and indeed he was "verbally counseled" by the commandant of the Marine Corps.
The judgment the Marine Corps expected Lt. Gen. James Mattis to make was that a "civilian" audience would not respond well to such bald truth. (It was, in fact, a room full of defense contractors who tend to be more cavalier about warfare than actual soldiers, as they profit directly from it. But there was a civilian television crew present.)
"Actually it's quite fun to fight them, you know. It's a hell of a hoot," Mattis said at a panel discussion sponsored by the Armed Force Communications and Electronics Association in San Diego last Tuesday. "It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up there with you. I like brawling.
"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil," Mattis said. "You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."
To his credit, Mattis did not try to weasel out of the controversy by saying he meant to be "deliberately provocative," a common excuse proffered by public figures criticized for what they say. Anyone who has ever met Mattis knows this is how he talks all the time, and he means every word.
Let's get a few things out of the way: I am not quite objective when it comes to Mattis. I've embedded with units under his command for each of the last two summers in Iraq, and I came away with an overwhelmingly positive impression of both his professionalism and personal character.
The Marines I embedded with held him in awe and several volunteered to me they would jump on a grenade to shield him. I know he feels the same way about them.
However, this is not a defense of Mattis, who has already been eloquently defended by the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, fellow Marine Gen. Peter Pace.
"The last three times that that general has been in combat, when he was leading Marines in Afghanistan and the two times that he led his division in Iraq, his actions and those of his troops clearly show that he understands the value of proper leadership and the value of human life," Pace said last week.
This is instead an indictment of a country that frets for days whether a general speaks palatably enough about combat while apparently forgetting that it is we who sent him there to ply his trade. Mattis, who commanded the 1st Marine Division until last fall, spent three of the last four years in combat.
The U.S. military is a lot of things, chief among them a powerful killing machine that our nation, with almost no official debate, unleashed twice on countries most Americans couldn't find on a map before the bombs began to fall. The Council of American-Islamic Relations, a civil-rights organization that has consistently criticized the Iraq war -- in large part because innocent Muslims would die in the war and the occupation -- took justifiable offense at his words.
"We do not need generals who treat the grim business of war as a sporting event," said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad in a statement.
Many Americans were more forgiving but still understood the problem.
"Well of course he feels that way, and it's perfectly appropriate to say that to his Marines to get them steeled for combat," a friend and veteran of the Persian Gulf war told me. "But he shouldn't say it here."
We apparently don't mind that we have sent Mattis to kill in our name. We just don't want to hear about it. And if by God he has to talk about it, can't he at least be ambivalent about the "grim business," like the rest of us?
I think I expected ambivalence when I embedded with the 2nd Battalion , 4th Marine Regiment in downtown Ramadi last summer, at the time perhaps the most dangerous place for U.S. troops in all of Iraq. I found instead a mix of camaraderie, sadness, adrenaline, fear and revenge. There was ambivalence about the reasons given for the war. But there was not ambivalence about the fighting. People tried to kill them every single day. They meant to kill them first.
Last May, members of the 2/4 dropped in on an elementary school they had paid an Iraqi contractor to rebuild. He told them he was finished, but before they handed over the cash, they wanted to see that the work was actually done. So they got into four Humvees loaded with soccer balls, coloring books and candy and went to the school. They were in and out within 10 minutes. By the time they got outside, children were crowded around the trucks, scrambling for the candy and toys they had come to associate with the Marines.
This part was actually something they all look forward to -- tossing balls to the kids, seeing happy faces in a town that was roundly hostile to them.
Within moments the air around them exploded: two "insurgents" down a side alley had fired a rocket into the crowd of children, killing five instantly and wounding many others.
Marines are trained for crisis. Some went after the shooters. Others, carrying wounded children, ran from door to door to try to call an Iraqi ambulance. No one would let them in. Still others tended the children lying like litter around the Humvees. That's when a second rocket came, tearing the leg off a Marine who was tending to the injured kids. He died a week later.
I defy anyone to suggest to the Marines present that day they should feel ambivalent about killing their enemy in Ramadi.
When I returned to Mattis' headquarters after my time with the 2/4, he summoned me into his office -- rarely a good thing -- and asked for my observations. I was still sorting out my thoughts, so I repeated something a young lieutenant told me: If nothing else comes out of this war, the Marines have a battle-hardened force.
Mattis nodded, not at all ambivalently. He then told me this: Go into any VFW or American Legion Hall in the United States and the true combat veterans are easy to spot. They are invariably huddled together off to the side. They are not talking about war, or battles, or the friends they lost. They talk about anything but that.
After General Mattis' experience last week, perhaps we know why. We don't want to hear it.
Good one. Thanks for the post.
". . .a room full of defense contractors who tend to be more cavalier about warfare than actual soldiers, as they profit directly from it."
What an asinine statement.
"Cavalier"? Is this guy nuts?
A vast majority of contractors have previous military experience, to include combat.
He rides around as an embed and thinks he is qualified to comment on "contractors." What an as*.
But I disagree with her in this: "we" can't take it. The collective.
I grew up surrounded by WWII men. I grew up with the good stories, the funny stories, and the horrid ones that can sometimes still shake and awaken a WWII vet from sound sleep. They get together with their pals and they remember good stuff, they piece together bits of who was were with what unit and when and what happened.
And then there were the VietNam vets who came home. I heard their funny stories, their good stories, and the horrid ones. Because I appreciated what they did.
Gen Mattis is still in his warrior garb. And speaking, fresh, from the field.
And I thank him.
I know Pamala Hess from Rumsfeld's press conferences. She's cute, too.
They say when Admiral Halsey saw the damage as he took the Enterprise back into Pearl Harbor he said, "When this war is over the Japanese language will only be spoken in hell."
When news people asked Halsey if there were any good Japanese he said, "Yes, one that has been dead for six months."
General Sherman once said he feared if he killed all the reporters there would be news from hell before breakfast.
In the Wilderness, when General Lee began his attack, some of General Grant's new staff, experienced in being fed their lunch by General Lee began to whine fearfully about the supply trains into the Wilderness and the return trains out. They fretted to Grant he needed to do something right now or Lee would cut off his trains. Grant responded, "When this army is defeated, and I am driven from this line, it will only be when we have so few men left that they won't want any trains."
In Gulf War I, newsmen asked General Powell how a smaller allied force could hope to handle a massive Iraqi army experienced in the ways of the desert. Powell, a latter day deciple of General Grant, by the way, said, "The strategy is simple. First we are going to cut it off. Then we are going to kill it."
This can go on and on. General Mattis sounds to me as though he would fit right in.
I don't think we don't want to hear about it .. it's just that most of us understand the context within which he said it. But we're well aware that the cowards would purposefully not understand why he said what he did.
But .. what people don't understand is that if you don't have that attitude about the enemy and you take every death personally (even though it was necessary), I can guarantee you will have a very emotionally damaged person coming home from a war. A soldier is there to kill the enemy and no soldier should have to justify that.
If I had children going into combat, Mattis is the person I would want to lead them; not some silly PC idiot who would be afraid to act and end up jeopardizing my child's life.
Congratulations to Pamela Hess. Excellent article. I hope she doesn't get in trouble for writing it.
great article...BTTT
Excellent post.and comment "we can't handle the truth--says it all so much better than I.Would not want to go into
a combat zone without knowing the men to my right and left
and those behind me did not feel exactly as Mr.Mattis
expressed himself. He is example of WHY the USMC is perhaps
the least affected by the corruption and decay that has rendered our society at risk.The Marines yet reflect the Founding principles.
"To us, it was fun," said Diaz as half a dozen members of Alpha Company laughed about the house that was inadvertently destroyed when they meant to just pop open the door. "We get to go out and blow things up."
This is a quote from another article posted earler. Appears General Mattis has corroborating statements feom soldiers in Task Force 2-2.
Semper Fi,
good aricle
I wouldn't say he was haunted by it. He certainly made peace with his duty, and was proud that he had honorably served his country and helped win a war. However, he was sobered by it. It was a somber thing, not a knee slapping "Ya shulda seen 'is head explode" jubilance that one could call fun.
Bears repeating. And note that the thugs firing into a group of children are the ones Michael Moore compares favorably to the American "Minutemen"...
Good find, thanks!
Yep, alot of greybeards out there doing contract work with a lifetime's worth of military experience, to include combat. I'm one of them and as old as I feel as a contractor among the green suiters I support, I'm just a youngster in comparison to some of my co-workers.
CNN - U.S. keeping troops in Gulf, just in case - Feb. 24, 1998
Maybe this is it (dateline: May 24, 2004):
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/Smith200405240852.asp
Unnamed reporter: Tell us a little more what happened yesterday out near the Syrian border. I understand Marines that were involved, but I believe they were in your task force or were working together with your task force.
Gen. Mattis: What is the nature of your question?
Unnamed Reporter: What happened yesterday at 3 a.m. in Al Qaim? Was there a wedding on? A wedding celebration?
Gen. Mattis: You joined us a little late, as I said to the young lady here, I said how many people how many people go to the desert 10 miles from the Syrian border and hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest civilization? Over two-dozen military-aged males... let's not be naïve. Let's leave it at that.
(Question unintelligible)
Gen. Mattis: I can't...I've seen the pictures, but I can't...bad things happened. Generally...in Fallujah, I never saw a Marine hide behind a woman or a child or hold them in their house and fire out of the building. I don't have to apologize for the conduct of my Marines. I think the enemy, that was here, owes the entire world an apology (tape garbled) validation against us saying somehow they suddenly shot at a wedding part in the middle of the desert (tape garbled).
(Question unintelligible)
Gen Mattis: No, I was busy meeting with two of my commanders. I was busy. But no, General Latif would never ask me to do that. No the mayor would never do that. The mayor...this is a civilian matter. We're trying to restore civilian authority, not impose the American solution. If they can make it work, it's going to be an Iraqi solution. All the doubters, who three weeks ago said it couldn't possibly work, are now grudgingly saying, well, something worked. ****
The MSM automatically played out, worldwide, that our troops had shot up a "wedding" party. Did the MSM consult the State Department? Democrats? Intel? before running with the headline? What airtime did they give the US side before running with this allegation, they got from whom? Did the MSM retract the story? Perhaps they assumed no one would really want to hear the story. The facts.
Most agree with your assesment-- the "already captured" media in America is like a demented old watch dog who remembers when it was a real watchdog and dreams it yet is.
PRoblem is it has no teeth,and can barely stand , and all it does is stink and drool. And pretends it produces
"all the news fit to be broadcast" when all it does is
propagate falsehoods.
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