Marines Preparing Iraqis to Stand on Their Own

A hundred miles and a world away from Baghdad, the transition of authority over Iraq is racing forward at the levels of the city, the village, the neighborhood, the highway traffic circle, the meeting hall.

One Iraqi at a time, as a popular Marine slogan has it.

This, the Marines hope, will be their last big push in the sand- and dust-blown western Iraq, the epic openness known as the “Wild West.”

It is a campaign being fought on two fronts. Edgy but hardened and mostly inured, Marines endure sometimes-daily insurgent attacks, roadside bombings, small-arms fire and intermittent mortar and rocket shelling. The other front occupies just as much of their attention and is equally dicey: readying Iraq’s uncertain police and civil defense forces to carry on the battle for security and stability in the nation.

Marines talk among themselves about making history out of the aftermath of war. They talk about the gravity of month’s end, when the formal transition takes place. They wipe the sweat off their weather-chafed faces and struggle -- it is an honest and ongoing struggle -- to believe in the emerging ragtag security forces that they have established, and that represent America’s hope of friendly Iraqis standing on their own.

“I feel very good, optimistic,” said Lt. Col. Fahad Abdal Aziz, a former Iraqi military officer who commands the 503rd Battalion of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, the 889 men, more or less, who are to assume the front lines of the war against insurgents across 4,350 square miles of western Iraq in less than two weeks.

“We are united and ready to handle the job on July 1,” Aziz said. “We will take care of them.”

In anticipation of the transfer of governing authority, Marines throughout the region are lowering the profile of their patrols and supply routes along the roads and in the towns that line the upper Euphrates River, in the strip of palm groves and cultivated fields that provides a ribbon of green through sizzling brown rock, sand and dust, canyons and plateaus.

A platoon of Marines has moved into the civil defense corps barracks here in the city of Hit (pronounced heat) to try to bring last-minute order and inspire initiative among Iraqi defenders. They have begun joint patrols with Iraqis under the rubric of a Joint Command Center.

The Marines promise to sign a memorandum of understanding by Thursday that will spell out the terms of the security transfer.

Then: “99% of what happens after July 1 will come out of the JCC,” said Lt. Col. Phil Skuta of Williamsport, Pa., commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 7th Marine Regiment, the “Devil Dogs” who are responsible for this chunk of Iraq, which on a map looks remarkably like a small-scale California.

The battalion’s Marines who share quarters with Iraqi government defenders rely on a single outdoor camp shower under temperatures well above 100 degrees. They shave with bottled water over a slit trench. They eat one hot meal a day. They sleep crammed together in the barracks, with space for only a cot and the room to stand next to it. They laugh uneasily about the “mad mortar man” who sends shells and rockets their way a few times a week.

“We’re playing a part in history,” said Lt. John Webre of New Orleans. “If we’re successful, we can influence Iraq to be successful.”

The problem confronting the Marines is the different attitudes toward the fight that they and the Iraqis have. The Marines approach the fight against terrorism and insurgency with their well-known squared-away resolve -- “hoo-rah,” meetings at oh-eight hundred sharp, lock and load, yes sir. The Iraqis? In nearly every regard, from the responsibilities of rank to the rigors of the clock, Iraqis approach their task with an outlook that is entirely their own -- one that challenges the Marines’ faith in their abilities.

Marines in this region see posted in their headquarters a suggestive quote from T.E. “Lawrence of Arabia” Lawrence:

“Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are here to help them, not to win it for them. Actually, also, under the very odd conditions of Arabia, your practical work will not be as good as, perhaps, you think it is. It may take them longer and it may not be as good as you think, but if it is theirs, it will be better.”

Lawrence’s long-ago advice is not always easy for Marines to accept. Inspecting the Iraqi defense corps supply room, Marines gasp to see a vast, incoherent heap of blankets, boots, uniforms, flak jackets -- handed out by the armfuls without any record whatsoever. Marine privates and lance corporals chafe at having to make daily rounds to pick up the trash and cigarette butts that follow the uniformed Iraqi defenders as sure as the wind. Military police drive in convoys to the city to provide 50 Iraqi policemen with rifle-range training, and none show up.

Sometimes, the Marines look over their shoulders, their thoughts flying back to their fathers’ war. On those occasions, the name “Vietnam” passes in conversation, always with a hanging question mark.

“We have a long way to go,” said Lt. Jason Goodale of Washington, D.C., commander of the 2nd Battalion’s Marines CAP, or Combined Action Platoon. Not since 1971 in Vietnam has the Marine Corps instituted the CAP concept to try to win the “hearts and minds” of a populace caught in conflict.

“These people are on the brink of either success or failure,” he said. “It’s our job to push them to the right side of the line.”

What few here bother to ask themselves is what happens if the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and the municipal police, increasingly threatened and targeted by insurgents, cannot hold the line, or cannot gain in the fight. Those decisions belong to commanders in Baghdad and Washington. Here, Marines who indulge themselves in reflection continue to devise theories for success, or alternatively for the prospect of failure -- although pessimists buck the company line only in private.

“If people weren’t dying here, I’d be all about it,” said a sergeant who insisted that he not be identified. “But I’ve lost two buddies here. Was it worth it? I don’t know.”

Even the optimists are cautious, mindful of American impatience for results.

“We put ourselves in something of a Catch-22,” said Maj. Rick Smith, a homicide detective from Phoenix who commands the civil affairs group for the 2nd Battalion. “We’ve got to have security before stabilization. But we’ve got to have stabilization before we really can have security.

“I’m optimistic that those two things can be accomplished, but in small steps. You could liken it to the color code for homeland security. We were in the black when we got here. We got things to red, both security and stabilization. Now we’re slowly moving to yellow.”

What feeds his hope? Two things. Here and there, ordinary Iraqis are coming forward, if only circumspectly, to report the activities of insurgents in their neighborhoods.

Second, residents are beginning to show emotion about the promises of new Iraqi sovereignty.

“You see them,” Smith said. “They get choked up. They have tears in their eyes.”