Fighting Words

Interservice rivalry takes a toll on troops in Iraq.

Most soldiers concede there is room for improvement in just about any military operation, but the public criticism of the Army's approach was offensive to many. "God bless the United States Marine Corps, but if they think they know how to handle the Sunni Triangle based on their experience in the South they are mistaken," said one Army officer in Baghdad. Until then, the Marines' experience in Iraq had been largely confined to southern Iraq, where the overthrow of Saddam was a welcome event.

That limited experience did not inhibit Marine Corps officers from expounding on how they would better manage the problem of providing security in the face of violent resistance in areas such as Fallujah. Lt. Col. Carl Mundy III commanded a Marine battalion in southern Iraq last summer and is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. In a Dec. 30, 2003, op-ed in the New York Times, Mundy wrote that Marines returning to Iraq in March would "work once again to win over Iraqi hearts and minds. This philosophy will stand in contrast to the new get-tough strategy adopted by American forces in the Sunni Triangle." Mundy acknowledged that the Army faced "a dynamic much more volatile than the one we faced in south-central Iraq," but said it would be a "mistake" to think the Marines' velvet-glove approach couldn't be applied in the Sunni Triangle.

Mundy was echoing the comments of Lt. Gen. James Conway, commanding general of the 25,000-member 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, which on March 21 replaced the Army's 16,000-member 82nd Airborne Division in the violent area west of Baghdad. In interviews with reporters, Conway had implicitly criticized the Army's methods of sealing off villages harboring insurgents, responding to mortar attacks with artillery and arresting relatives of known resistance fighters.

Without a doubt, the Marines bring enormous capability and institutional knowledge to the job in Iraq. Yet in the early days after they took over from the Army it was easy to believe the bravado of some Marine Corps leaders was misplaced. In late March, Fallujah erupted in violence notable even in Iraq. Gunmen ambushed and killed four civilian security workers and then mutilated their bodies in a public display reminiscent of Somalia. How did the Marines respond? They established a blockade around Fallujah, sent tanks and helicopter gunships into the city and reportedly staged door-to-door raids on homes.

Before the Marines arrived, the Army's tough tactics were yielding positive results, according to Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack Jr., commander of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. Attacks against soldiers had decreased nearly 60 percent from the previous month, he told reporters in March.

The Army's approach to security in the Sunni Triangle was based on hard experience. From the beginning of the war in March 2003 to the Army's handover of control to Marines two months ago, 65 Americans were killed in the region and more than 500 were injured.

The Marine Corps now is gaining its own painful experience in the region. During the service's first three weeks in control, dozens of Marines died in combat.