Things That Make Me Think
While at Camp Pendleton we received classes on the cultural sensitivities of Muslims and the Iraqis in particular. Our Division Motto �No Better Friend� No Worse Enemy� was driven into our heads, along with Gen. Mattis� theme of �Think as if every Iraqi wants to kill you, but don�t treat them that way.� Once we arrived in country most of this seemed to out the window. Our FOB is small, about 1000m one way and 600m the other. We have two vehicle gates we can enter or exit from and both enter right onto ASR Jackson (Highway 8). Jackson is busy, traffic flows heavily through north Al Mahmudiyah at almost all hours, there are no traffic lights or stop signs, no speed limits, and it�s the main highway from Karbala to Baghdad. Yet when we leave our compound we make no attempt to wait for a break in traffic, instead a hardback hummer with a machinegun pulls out into the near lane, then another vehicle into the far lane (this is a divided highway) forcing all the vehicles on the road to check the current status of their brakes. Any vehicle failing to stop in time gets a burst into the grill; any further advancement gets a burst through the windshield. Many of the gunners signal the vehicles to stop by waving their hand toward the ground from the elbow, like dribbling a basketball, a sign used by the Iraqis only on their dogs, thereby offending them. Once the rest of the convoy/patrol has passed between the hummers the convoy screams along faster than the flow of traffic. This forces the Iraqis to pull over to the shoulder. If a vehicle fails to see the hummers coming they get yelled at as they are passed and rifles or machineguns pointed at them, in extreme cases tires are shot out. How many of us have been cruising through town and didn�t hear the ambulance siren coming up behind us? All of this is done from a force protection standpoint; one of the biggest threats, the first I experienced, is the Suicide Vehicle-borne Improvised Explosive Device (car bomb), so speed and aggression save lives, but I�m sure we make more enemies than friends. Ultimately I wonder if saving lives today won�t cost us lives in the long run.
In addition to firing at vehicles that cross marked trigger lines or approach our convoys we shoot at vehicles that get too close while on patrol. Often we stop during patrol to check out a house or set up a quick checkpoint to search for weapons or explosives. During short stops the Marines pile out, if on a vehicle patrol, and form a defensive perimeter, usually just standing in the road or along a wall. Hummers with machineguns are positioned along the roads leading into the area and Marines establish trigger lines in their heads about 30m out in front of them. Iraqi drivers are terrible; Jackson is a 4-lane divided highway, yet as soon as we stop traffic in one direction we have 5 lanes to deal with; the original lanes, the shoulder, median, and the opposite lane�s shoulder. Just dealing with correcting the traffic flow when we are done is daunting and we�ve simply given up; we let the drivers figure out how not to get killed. When we did our leader�s recon into Lutayfiyah we drove some of the back roads to get the lay of the town. On one stop I was talking to some local teenagers when I heard three shots. I went around the corner to see what had happened and there was one of our sergeants talking to a well-dressed man in the street. The man�s car was listing slightly to the driver�s side and a puddle was growing under the engine. When I came up to them I could hear them talking, the man was apologizing profusely for making a mistake, explaining that he was the local schoolmaster, was preoccupied with his work, and since he lived just around the corner wasn�t paying attention. The CO and I talked to him, made sure he was unhurt and checked his identification. A quick search of the car turned up nothing to significance and the sergeant and I pushed his car around the corner for him. Maj Durham explained that we would report the incident to our Battalion Commander, LtCol Smith, (standard procedure) and that if he took pictures of his car and came to the FOB on Tuesday he might get some compensation to help pay for repairs. Like most Iraqis he was obviously reluctant to come to our base, it might appear as if he was giving us information thereby putting his life and family at risk.
After days of being shelled in Lutayfiyah we finally got two days of good observation on the enemy�s firing positions. In both cases though we were a little too late with our return fires to affect the enemy directly. Still, shooting back relieves a lot of tension. On November 15th we got lucky and the 1st Cavalry Division CBR caught the enemy fire for us. We had rounds going back out in less than five minutes and they were spot on, they were quickly followed by artillery fires from FOB St. Michael. In all we covered a 300m area in fires over the course of 8 minutes, but again we just missed him. A foot patrol in the area heard the rounds being fired at us, saw our impacts and decided to move there to conduct a Battle Damage Assessment (BDA). The BDA was one cow and numerous chickens killed, an unknown number of animals wounded. When they got there the farmer told them he knew who had shot at us, but was afraid they would see him talking to us and asked them to leave and come back later. The patrol went back after dark and picked up the farmer. The farmer gave up a great deal of information, including the fact that he was now more afraid of us because we had proven we would shoot back with a lot of firepower and he couldn�t afford to lose any more livestock or his home. It seemed very odd to me that the locals would allow insurgents to use their land to fire upon us, they refuse to take action for fear they would be hurt. In the end it seems the only way to make them help us is to negatively affect them enough to force them to help us help them.
