The Sweetest Deal Ever

Three stone houses and a cluster of sandbagged bunkers cling to a slope above the Korangal Valley, forming an oval perimeter roughly 75 yards long. This is Firebase Vimoto. There are nearly 30 Afghan soldiers here. Their senior mentor, Cpl Sean P. Conroy, of Carmel, NY, is 25 years old. His assistant, LCpl Brandon J. Murray, of Fort Myers, FL is 21. On the ground, far from the generals in Kabul and the policy makers in Washington, the hour-by-hour conduct of the war rests in part in the deeds of men this young, who have been given latitude to lead as their training and instincts guide them. Each day they organize and walk Afghan Army patrols in the valley below, some of the most dangerous acreage in the world. Each night they participate in radio meetings with the American posts along the ridges, exchanging plans and intelligence, and plotting the counterinsurgency effort in the ancient villages below. In Corporal Conroy’s war, two Marines train Afghans in weapons, tactics, first aid, hygiene and leadership. They keep the firebase supplied with ammunition, water, batteries and food.1

The “strategic corporal,” predicted along with the envisioning of the “three block war” in Gen Charles C. Krulak’s May 1999 Marine Corps Gazette article, “Cultivating Intuitive Decisionmaking,”2 has since materialized into a fixture—and proven hero—of the long war on the streets of Iraq. A decade after his introduction, however, the strategic corporal today has been joined (and sometimes upstaged by) the strategic private first class (PFC)—an unavoidable evolution as the Marine Corps’ involvement in years of sustained warfare has paralleled unprecedented change and growth in technology and information availability.

This strategic PFC reflects the expansion of direct Marine engagement with citizens and enemy fighters in various parts of the world, likely a portion of which was only imagined at the end of the 20th century. The magnitude and speed with which technological changes—the Internet, satellite access, blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and so on—have transformed society since 1999 have exponentially increased the potential positive (and adverse) impact our young Marines can make, and thus compounded the challenges for those Marines’ leaders. Whereas before, the strategic corporal on the streets of Mogadishu might be seen on Cable News Network stating or doing something that briefly captured the public’s eye, the strategic PFC of today often has immediate access to a worldwide audience from anywhere on the globe—and knows how to capitalize on that access.

Col David Lapan, Public Affairs Officer, Headquarters Marine Corps, described his idea of the strategic PFC recently to a crowd of Marine commanders, explaining that the advent of military blogs and the explosion of social media have created this entity we must now recognize. But it goes beyond the Internet and social media and simply the Marine’s ability to connect with people around the world online. Today’s most junior Marines face challenges in some regard no different from those of their Tripoli, Guadalcanal, and Hue City counterparts, but in other ways more unusual and perhaps more daunting than anything faced just a decade ago.

The hardships of living in places like Korangal Valley, in the heart of the enemy and with allies who don’t speak the same language, have not changed. The impact our corporals and PFCs can instantaneously make has changed. Witness Abu Ghraib, “haji girl,” and the puppy throwing incident. But the impact is not always negative, of course, as Cpl Conroy and LCpl Murray demonstrate in C.J. Chivers’ outstanding article. Mr. Chivers reminds us:

...the war in Afghanistan defies generalization. Each province, each valley, and each village can be its own universe, presenting its own problems and demanding its own solutions.3

Indeed, those various universes of provinces, valleys, and villages are the three blocks of 1999 on steroids. In this modern “overseas contingency operation,” PFCs of Cpl Conroy’s caliber serve on embedded training teams and make strategic decisions on a daily basis (as do their counterparts in the Iraqi theater).

The recently released concept paper, Evolving the MAGTF [Marine Air-Ground Task Force] for the 21st Century (20 March 2009), referenced the strategic corporal saying that concept’s premise “that future operations will be more complex in character and require an increased level of junior leadership and tactical acumen”4 supported the need for “increased excellence at the individual, squad, and platoon levels” identified in another recently published concept document, Enhanced Company Operations.5 But these “future operations” that were “more complex” for the corporal in 1999 are doubly so for our PFCs today. Evolving the MAGTF also emphasizes:

. . . the way in which military interaction with the populace has been complicated by the speed of information today. Because of the ability to pass information around the world near-instantaneously, minor tactical actions in remote locations can become major strategic events. Our adversaries have been very effective at employing dispersed, cellular organizations to exploit this reality and promote their strategic message. Friendly forces, including small, dispersed units, are under enormous scrutiny. Their actions must not only be consistently reasonable, legitimate, and successful—they must be perceived to be so.6

When the Marine Corps was called on to reenter Iraq in early 2004 and realized that it actually did “do windows” despite previous assertions that sustained presence was not in the Marine Corps playbook, our corporals and, yes, PFCs rapidly became experts in a multitude of missions. Small wars and MOOTW (military operations other than war) became SASO (stability and support operations) and COIN (counterinsurgency), and hybrid challenges (“the blurring of conventional war, irregular challenges, terrorism, and criminality”7) reemerged at front stage center.

Marines of 2009 have become experts at urban warfare, desert warfare, and mountain warfare during repeated combat deployments (sometimes during the same combat deployment); speak foreign languages; know significant aspects of the human terrain, including Iraqi and Afghan culture and enemy tactics; know how to innovate and are “combat hunters”; and are simultaneously statesmen, teachers, public affairs officers, contracting officers, water plant experts, sewage disposal consultants, electricians, school construction workers, tribal feud negotiators, foreign police trainers and soldier instructors, crime scene investigators, and our Nation’s spokesmen and still can close with and destroy any enemy on a moment’s notice. They man HMMWV turrets despite having lost buddies to sniper fire and ride in mine resistant ambush protected vehicles (MRAPs) across deadly terrain even though they’ve been caught in three improvised explosive device attacks previously. The percentage of high school graduates is 96.3,8 and 73 percent of them have been to the fight already.9 To lead young warriors like this today, it is helpful to keep some additional things too easily taken for granted in mind.

They joined in a time of war. In 1999 the biggest immediate threat we faced was the looming year 2000 crisis. Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and televised beheadings were realities when these admirable hard chargers signed up to wear the eagle, globe, and anchor.

Their selfless patriotism and willingness to sacrifice should be remembered when they must be counseled for typical “judgmental infractions of youth” and/or administered nonjudicial punishment. The fact that some of them might need to be reminded to salute at the exchange or to remove their Yankees hat at the theater doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re disrespectful, irresponsible, or disloyal. They’re Marines; they’re strategic PFCs, but they’re still young.

They are tech-smart. Not only can they fix the avionics on an MV–22 or repair the engine on an MRAP in 110-degree weather, but they also know how to build websites, blog, tweet, and download and create podcasts. As leaders we too must strive to understand these things—not just for a frame of reference but ultimately to capitalize on the benefits of such developments along with our PFCs. The Navy Marine Corps Intranet/Marine Corps computer policy is evolving but still lags grossly behind. Leaders need access to sites, such as YouTube, to see what their Marines are up to, and all should have better access to a wide range of Internet-related information resources, such as enemy websites, host-nation cultural and social media, etc.

We should all strive to better understand the complex nature of the warfare in which we’re engaged—multiple theaters; draining operational tempos; fickle public support for the mission; ironies, such as zero-defect policy on drug use yet rules of engagement that prohibit destroying poppy fields or targeting heroin farmers; and the like. The Marines of 1999 were no less dedicated or courageous than those of 2009, but the demands and expectations of today’s warfighters are arguably greater.

Just as we’ve identified and embraced our strategic noncommissioned officers and PFCs, so too should we be cautious of what many have called the “tactical general.” As P.W. Singer wrote:

Our technologies are making it easier for leaders at the highest level of command not only to peer into, but even to take control of, the lowest-level operations. One four-star general, for example, talked about how he once spent a full two hours watching the drone footage of an enemy target and then personally decided what size bomb to drop on it . . . . The ability to watch and then reach into a battle in real time certainly helps commanders not only to become better informed, but also take personal responsibility for the decision made in combat. Indeed, who knows commanders’ intent better than the commanders themselves? But the line between timely intervention and micromanagement is a fine one.10

Remembering this fine line, and regaining some of our lost “centralized command, decentralized control” philosophy by again empowering our strategic PFCs to act within the broad limits of commanders’ intent (as in the days before the visual opiate of streaming unmanned aircraft system feed) is sage advice. The Commandant outlined his vision for the Corps of the future in Marine Corps Vision and Strategy 2025, explaining:

Our training and education programs will provide skills that enable civil-military and combat operations and are particularly important in complex environments. The ability to conduct both types of operations, simultaneously, is the essence of the force as a ‘two-fisted fighter’—capable of offering an open hand to people in need or a precise jab to an adversary in an irregular warfare environment; while at the same time, ready to wield a closed fist in the event of major combat operations.11

Our strategic PFCs of today have indeed proven themselves to be the two-fisted fighters so envisioned. 12

The strategic PFC comes from a more liberal generation than his 1990s counterpart, is more likely to be a Democrat, and very possibly has two sets of parents or a single mother. He also forms the backbone of the finest fighting force the world has ever seen and is smarter, better trained, and more experienced than most of his Marine comrades of previous conflicts. The completion of C.J. Chivers’ story describing Cpl Conroy’s war in the opening of this article makes it easy to remember why Marines are truly our Nation’s greatest assets in this time of prolonged peril:

They defecate in a rusting barrel and urinate in a tube that slopes off a roof and drains into the air. Fly strips surround them. They have no running water; their sleeping bunker stinks of filthy clothes and sweat. The corporal has tied a flea collar through his belt loops; he needs it like a dog. His four-year enlistment ended last month, but he extended for nine months when promised he would be assigned to a combat outpost in Afghanistan . . . . ‘This is the sweetest deal ever,’ he said one evening between firefights. ‘There is no other place I could get a job like this . . . .13

Marine Gen Robert E. Hogaboom, a 34-year veteran of World War II who died in 1993 at the age of 90, was remembered by his widow, Maurine, as “a visionary who got things done.”14 The Sean Conroys and strategic PFCs of today are also “getting things done.” In this hybrid warfare environment, they deserve our faithful and devoted leadership, the true embodiment of Semper Fidelis. Earning the privilege to lead Marines like them—that’s the sweetest deal ever.

Notes

1. Chivers, C.J., “Training Afghans as Bullets Fly: A Young Marine’s Dream Job,” New York Times, 1 May 2009, p. 1.

2. Gen Krulak wrote:
Marines involved in these amorphous conflicts will be confronted by the entire spectrum of tactical challenges in the span of a few hours and, potentially, within the space of three contiguous city blocks. Thus, we refer to this phenomenon as the ‘three block war.’ Success or failure will rest, increasingly, with the individual Marine on the ground—and with his or her ability to make the right decision, at the right time, while under extreme duress. Without direct supervision, young Marines will be required to make rapid, well-reasoned, independent decisions while facing a bewildering array of challenges and threats. These decisions will be subject to the harsh scrutiny of both the media and the court of public opinion. In many cases, the individual Marine will be the most conspicuous symbol of American foreign policy. His or her actions may not only influence the immediate tactical situation, but have operational and strategic implications as well. If we accept the maxim ‘battles are won and lost [first] in the mind of commanders,’ we can safely assume that the three block war, may very well be won or lost in the minds of our ‘strategic corporals.’

3. Chivers, p 1.

4. Flynn, LtGen George J., Evolving the MAGTF for the 21st Century, Marine Corps Combat Development Command, 20 March 2009, p. 5.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., p. 4.

7. Ibid., p.1.

8. Commandant of the Marine Corps (CMC) remarks, 2d Marine Division Association Banquet, Camp Lejeune, 30 January 2009, p. 3, via CMC’s homepage available at http://www.marines.mil/units/hqmc/cmc/Documents090130—2d%20MARDIV%20Assn%20Banquet%20-%20transcript%20—%20Final.pdf.

9. CMC’s opening statement during testimony before the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), 14 May 2009.

10. Singer, P.W., “Risk Assessment: Unmanned tech advances blunt decision skills,” Marine Corps Times, 23 March 2009, p. 38.

11. Marine Corps Vision and Strategy 2025, Headquarters Marine Corps, Washington, DC, 2007, p. 6, available at http://www.marines.
mil/units/hqmc/cmc/Documents/MCVS2025%2030%20June.pdf.

12. CMC HASC testimony, 14 May 2009, CMC Bullets, p. 4.

13. Chivers, p. 1.

14. Wilkinson, Sue, “The Marine Who Made St. Mary’s City,” River Gazette, p. 15, available at http://www.smcm.edu/rivergazette/_assets/PDF/may05/marinewhomadeSMC1.pdf, accessed 31 May 2008