Victory Point (6 page)

The last of the Soviet troops crossed the Amu Darya River on February 15, 1989. The shock waves of the war that saw over 13,500 Soviet deaths and tens of thousands of wounded would contribute to the downfall of the Communist state a few years later, and with that, the war in Afghanistan landed a far more crushing blow against the USSR than the Vietnam conflict ever could have on the United States.

In addition to over 40 million land mines—many disguised as toys to attract children—the Communists had left in their wake somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million dead, 1.5 million maimed and injured, 5.5 million refugees chased into Pakistan and Iran, over 2 million internally displaced, arsenic- and mercury-tainted water wells (one of their preferred tactics to render countless villages uninhabitable), and a virtually impotent puppet government now headed by a man named Mohammad Najibullah, who would see the demise of his power and lose his life in just a few years.

Afghanistan would descend once again into chaos in the years after the Soviet withdrawal, as the seven mujahideen parties and various ethnic groups moved from warring against the Red Kafir to attacking one another, further destroying an already crippled, destitute country. From Pakistan’s standpoint, Afghanistan no longer stood as a base of a foreign threat, and they had their “strategic depth” once again; both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia would continue to provide limited amounts of foreign aid, but not enough to rebuild a nation. The United States, however, pulled its support from the fighters completely, not so much because they had achieved the desired end state of a demoralized Soviet withdrawal, but because U.S. leaders had learned that a disproportionate allotment of American money had been funneled by the ISI to Gulbadin Hekmatyar, whom they regarded as a potentially severe threat to the United States—possibly another Ayatollah Khomeini—should he ever gain national power. Hekmatyar, who spurned the Reagan administration by refusing an invitation to the White House in 1985 to celebrate the mujahideen freedom fighters, openly decried the Americans as infidels—although he was more than happy to accept ISI-routed American funds. The warlord would go on to kill untold scores of civilians in the power struggle that ensued after the Soviet withdrawal, and then continue to vex American interests into the next millennium.

America seemed to have forgotten about Afghanistan by 1990; the internal conflicts of the country would reduce the crushed state to ashes in just a few years. But out of those ashes would rise yet another threat to the United States, one that would require not secretive international maneuverings, but direct action by American forces.

2

W
hile the Fourth of July stands as the most hallowed date on the historical calendar of the United States, for many Americans the less conspicuous date of 10 November ranks in the same echelon. Some actually consider this autumn day to be the most important of the year, eclipsing birthdays, religious holidays, even wedding anniversaries, as on 10 November 1775, at Philadelphia’s Tun Tavern, Captain Samuel Nicholas, under decree of the Second Continental Congress, established what would arguably become the most venerated, the most feared by America’s enemies yet beloved by its citizenry and allies, the most tireless, brave, and selfless, and the most daring yet professional family of war fighters in history: the United States Marine Corps.

Captain Nicholas, the Marine Corps’ first Commandant, who would designate the Tun Tavern as the Continental Marines’ headquarters and recruitment center (Nicholas appointed the Tavern’s owner, Robert Mullan, to undertake the recruiting operation), quickly stood up two battalions of Marines, who quenched their thirsts with the Tavern’s beer and feasted at the adjacent eatery, Peggy Mullan’s Red Hot Beef Steak Club at Tun Tavern. Not four months after their fateful birth, the Continental Marines entered battle for the first time, immediately establishing what would become an enduring tradition of fortitude and decisive victory at the Battle of Nassau, where Captain Nicholas and 230 of his Marines (accompanied by twenty Continental Navy sailors) stormed onto the shores of the Island of Nassau and captured the British stronghold of Fort Montague. Then, on 3 March 1776, these “soldiers of the sea” took all of the island, seizing a large cache of British cannons, mortars, and rifles—later to be used against their onetime owners.

In the centuries that would follow that christening expedition to the Bahamas, the U.S. Marine Corps would indelibly burn into historical records as well as the psyches of millions—if not
billions
—chronicles of virtually unimaginable travails pitting spirit, skill, courage, and camaraderie against malevolent adversity and often overwhelming odds throughout the globe, in all climes, from scorched desert, to dripping jungle, to piercingly cold alpine heights. Throughout their history—a history that began almost eight months before the very birth of the nation their ranks would shed so much blood to foster and pledge to defend to the last—the United States Marine Corps has produced victories not just exemplary, but iconic of the wars in which they fought.

In the First Barbary War of the early 1800s, the Marines would prove that they could succeed in combat for their country not only on the home front, but as a world-class expeditionary force capable of defending American interests anywhere on the planet. Ultimately arising out of a failed diplomatic attempt to maintain security of American merchant shipping through payoffs to pirates of the “Barbary States” (the modern African nations of Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco), the then-fledgling U.S. government dispatched a small group of Navy frigates—crewed by sailors and defended onboard by U.S. Marines—to the Mediterranean to protect American vessels from the marauders. Over the course of the following years, the U.S. Navy would fight a series of engagements in the region that resulted in mixed outcomes. The relative stalemate would end, however, in the spring of 1805 at the Battle of Derne, when U.S. Marine First Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon led five hundred of his men, accompanied by local mercenaries (whom he and his Marines helped train), six hundred miles from Alexandria, Egypt, across the scorching Sahara Desert over the course of forty-five days, to storm the heavily defended Derne outpost—Tripoli’s primary defensive rampart—as U.S. Navy ships supported their ground efforts by pounding the fortress with heavy gunfire. Once captured, O’Bannon personally raised the American flag above Derne, marking the first time in U.S. history that the American flag flew above foreign soil.

The Battle of Derne would become one of the most popularly enduring in all of the Marine Corps’ history, being referenced in the second line of the famous “U.S. Marines’ Hymn,” reading “To the shores of Tripoli.” The well-known Marine Corps officer sword, which would become the weapon issued for more years than any other in the U.S. military, also hails from this battle.

O’Bannon and his Marines’ training of and fighting alongside local forces marked the beginning of what would become a long-standing Marine Corps approach to waging war against America’s enemies—an approach that would yield immense dividends in theaters throughout the world in the decades to follow. Of course, ⅔ would continue to carry this tradition forward in Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush during their deployment over two centuries in the wake of O’Bannon and his mens’ work with indigenous fighters in the North African desert.

Counterinsurgency, or as the Marines often call the mission type, “COIN,” requires troops to work closely with local populations—proving their intention to aid and not to conquer and gaining a population’s trust and allegiance—to root out terrorists, insurgents, even rank criminals, securing and stabilizing a region to lay the foundation for rebuilding towns, villages, and basic infrastructure like water wells and smooth, all-season roads. Successful counterinsurgency campaigns engender economic development, improved education and healthcare institutions, capable and honest security agencies, and inspire the rise of democratic regional and national governments out of the ashes of oppression—goals ⅔ would steadfastly pursue during their deployment to Afghanistan in 2005. A counterinsurgency fight, while often “going kinetic” for short periods of time, will typically have Marines sending food, fuel, generators, bandages, and clean water “downrange” far more often than 5.56 mm and 7.62 mm rounds. Due to the expeditionary capability of the Marine Corps to go anywhere on the planet within just days or even hours to support American interests—from merging into global wars to interdicting small village-to-village skirmishes—the Marine Corps has engaged in countless tiny, yet significant, COIN fights around the world throughout its history, not to mention its undertaking of an array of noncombat humanitarian aid and assistance missions. Tactically far removed from the renowned amphibious assaults of distant beaches or the overland charges into walls of hardened enemy troops, Marines would weave the subtle concepts and practices of the counterinsurgency fight—like simply determining friend from adversary on a dusty third-world alleyway—deep into their doctrinal fabric through their decades of combat.

Some of the most significant U.S. Marine Corps COIN campaigns occurred early in the twentieth century, in the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, and Haiti, in what would become known as the “Banana Wars,” a name derived from American agricultural interests (foremost the United Fruit Company) having benefitted from the outcomes of these interventions against destabilizing insurgencies. For the Marines (and other service branches that would establish units to engage in counterinsurgency operations in years following the Banana Wars), one of the most significant outcomes of this era would be the codification of their unique style of fighting small guerrilla armies and bands of insurgents into book form: the
Small Wars Manual
. First published in 1935, the
Small Wars Manual
covered a wide range of diverse topics including tactics, psychology, supply plans, the occupation of towns, armed native organizations, light artillery, and animal transportation, among a series of other topics. The counterinsurgency precepts outlined in the
Small Wars Manual
, combined with the U.S. Marine Corps institution pioneered by O’Bannon of working closely with local fighters aligned with American interests, founded the conceptual warfighting framework on which ⅔ would build its success in Afghanistan. In the words of Major Rob Scott, ⅔’s executive officer during his address to the battalion’s officer corps while training for their Afghan deployment, “Gentlemen, the
Small Wars Manual
will be our Bible in this fight.”

Despite the achievements of the U.S. Marine Corps over the course of more than two centuries in places like the remote Pacific, Europe, Vietnam, the Caribbean, North Africa, Central America, and beyond, most American civilians (and even many in other branches of the U.S. military) don’t know what a U.S. Marine really
is,
or
how
Marines achieve their stunning victories. Stated simply, Marines are
naval infantry
—ship-borne troops historically moved throughout the globe by naval vessels, then delivered to terrestrial hot zones by amphibious landing craft. A force of highly trained and disciplined “soldiers of the sea” who emerge from crashing surf to charge into the fight, Marines have also been historically tasked with boarding other vessels and maintaining security on their own ships.

Marines have traditionally not only fought alone in battlefields and confrontations unsuitable for larger and hence less nimble armies, but side by side with conventional soldiers in a joint task force in conflicts where their fighting proved not just an augmentation of combat power, but a synergistic “force multiplier.” Much smaller than the U.S. Army, the Marine Corps can mobilize at the bark of an order for deployments of all types and sizes, and having been born and raised with their naval brethren (the Second Continental Congress established the Continental Navy less than one month prior to the birth of the Marine Corps), Marines historically have been able to deploy anywhere in the world, granted some proximity to a coastline. On ship, Marines aren’t just passengers, they are every bit as integral to a Navy flotilla as the sailors who command the craft, maintain those crafts’ engines, and navigate the flotilla through the high seas. And while Marines share slices of doctrine, tactics, and terminology and even some cultural foundations with both the Army and Navy, and although they administratively fall under the Department of the Navy, the U.S. Marine Corps represents a unique and distinct force with ever-evolving capabilities irreproducible by others, casting them as the tip-of-the-spear embodiment of the concept of global force projection.

Although their numbers measure just a fraction of those of the Army, Marines are almost always the “first to fight,” vehemently charging into combat against America’s enemies. As well, Marines represent the United States’ “911 force,” whom the president can send downrange for up to sixty days without a formal congressional declaration of war for “such other duties as the President may direct,” as outlined in the National Security Act of 1947. Resourceful, quick, and staunch in meeting any challenge regardless of type or scale, United States Marines stand alone in the world of war fighters not only in their history of battlefield conquest, but in their broadly diverse and adaptable mission spectrum, their expeditionary bloodline, and their centuries-honed ethos.

Truly understood by only the Marines themselves, the deep-rooted USMC ethos—their
way
—can best be described as a nucleus of values built of heritage, patriotism, discipline, competitiveness, and above all else, boundless fidelity—to their country and to all of its citizenry, to one another, and to the legacy of the Marine Corps. Their ethos allows them to push onward in a seemingly hopeless fight against an enemy of much greater size and firepower, ultimately not just to survive, but to stand atop a battlefield as victors, as they did in Belleau Wood. And in Khe Sanh. And in Iwo Jima. Marines become Marines not in order to fight; Marines become Marines to win, and to win decisively—for their country. Marines understand the concepts of surrender and defeat, but only as they apply to those against whom they fight. Never to themselves. They know America as the greatest country in the history of mankind, and to deprive the current or any succeeding generation of the opportunities America avails to its citizens, by allowing inimical forces any influence whatsoever over their nation, would be tantamount to shoving one’s own mother into a gutter.