Read One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at War Online
Authors: Bing West
One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at War (38 page)
16
credible proposals
Lt. Cols. William Jurney and Dale Alford, Majs. John Nagl and Jim Gant, Capt. Matt Golsteyn, and Col. Randy Newman, to name only a few, all advocated creating conventional and Special Forces task forces to work intensively with the Afghan forces, at a fraction of the size and cost of our standard force structure.
17
lessons from Vietnam
On both sides—the North Vietnamese Army with its guerrilla Viet Cong groups and the United States with Special Forces and Combined Action Platoons—the concept of placing experienced leadership among less capable forces was frequently applied.
18
“We are in this thing”
Pentagon press briefing, December 10, 2009.
19
kill the enemy and train
Gates,
Duty
, p. 572.
20
Petraeus
After 3rd Platoon and General Petraeus had both left, Marine Gen. John Allen took command in mid-2011. “We will prevail,” he said. “The insurgents have been ejected from the population by counterinsurgency operations.… We will continue the counterinsurgency campaign as long as we can, or until we might get a change in mission.” General Allen video talk posted at
wn.com
on May 20, 2012, videotaped August 11, 2011.
21
“our country”
Lt. Gen John Kelly, speech in St. Louis, November 11, 2010; see Appendix A.
22
“Troops risking their lives”
Gates,
Duty
, p. 475.
23
“resolve that terrorists”
President Barack Obama, State of the Union address, January 28, 2014.
24
“This is how”
President Obama, address at West Point, May 28, 2014.
25
“be viewed as a strategic defeat”
Gates,
Duty
, p. 567. In the fall of 2013, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff addressed the topic before the Association of the U.S. Army. “I simply don’t know,” Adm. James Winnefeld said, “where the security interests of our nation are threatened enough to cause us to lead a future major, extended [counterinsurgency] campaign.” Counterinsurgency as nation building ended with a thud.
26
“To fight a war”
Quoted in Tom Donnelly, “Currents of Cooperation, Currents of Conflict,” AEI Center for Defense Studies website, May 24, 2010.
27
“A set of ties”
Aaron B. O’Connell,
Underdogs: The Making of the Modern Marine Corps
. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012, p. 41.
28
“We become”
Aristotle,
Nichomachean Ethics
,
classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.2.ii.html
.
BY BING WEST
One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at War
The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan
The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq
No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah
The Village
Naval Forces and Western Security: Sea Plan 2000 (editor)
Small Unit Action in Vietnam
The Pepperdogs
WITH SGT. DAKOTA MEYER, USMC (RET.)
Into the Fire: A Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan War
WITH MAJ. GEN. RAY L. SMITH, USMC (RET.)
The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the U.S. Marines
B
ING
W
EST
, a Marine combat veteran, served as an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. He has been on hundreds of patrols in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. A nationally acclaimed war correspondent, he is the author of
The Village; No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah; The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq;
and
The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan
. Most recently, he was the co-author of Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer’s memoir,
Into the Fire
. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Infantry Order of St. Crispin, West is the recipient of the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the Colby Award for Military Writers, the Andrew J. Goodpaster Prize for military scholarship, the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation award (twice), Tunisia’s Médaille de la Liberté, the Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Association Award, the Father Clyde Leonard Award, the Free Press Award, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars News Media Award. He lives with his wife, Betsy, in Newport, Rhode Island.