Inside The Wire

The Church of Violence:
A High-Energy Physics Approach to Maneuver Warfare

Seize the initiative. The enemy has a say in every fight. Deliver orders simply, execute with violence and aggression. On contact, establish overwhelming fire superiority. Move. Move to close with the enemy…kill them. Move through your enemy's gaps, and then beyond them…slide along his surfaces. Speed. Speed over time is tempo. Tempo is itself a weapon. The question is not whether you will see the face of the enemy, but when. Every command you give could get one of your Marines killed – if this happens as the result of your incompetence, you will never sleep again. Nor should you. Failure is not an option. If it comes as a result of something you could have prevented or done better or not done at all…. Above all else: it's not "about" you anymore, lieutenant. Confused? Ask questions now, because today is your last day of peace. Tomorrow, violence.

The Battle for Iraq and Our Long War

In the global war on terror – the western world's "long war" – the most asymmetric and dangerous of all battlefields is proving to be the 24-hour news cycle – a mercurial and continuous event that neglects history, the dark nature of man and the virtues of the West. As pollsters deliver the pulse of the nation (a pulse dangerously accelerated by the violence they have just seen on CNN and Fox News) through the porous arteries on K Street and into the corridors of Congress, we perform a serious calculus under the worst of circumstances: weighing the cost of national treasure, the virtue of human sacrifice and diplomatic capital against 30-minute spins and 1,200-word editorials and exposés. The daily headlines seem to paint a clear enough picture: Our people are dying in Iraq, and the situation is getting worse. Iraqis aren't capable of a democracy, and why should we care?

Fighting Fires

When five firefighters from the San Jacinto Ranger Station were overwhelmed by flames in the Esperanza fires on 26 Oct 2006, the first report I heard was that "five firefighters have just died trying to protect an abandoned house." How sad, I thought. What a shame. How terrible that those five men gave their lives for a deserted piece of property. 

Later that afternoon, an ambitious news team climbed to a canyon bluff overlooking the fire. The footage they captured made my heart stop. The inferno was fierce, violent and just plain frightening. It consumed acres of arid land in minutes, leaping roads and canyons, slowing for a moment only to catch the wind like a ginger sail and gain speed again toward the next home or terrain feature. There was a certain rhythm to the blaze –the kind of violent rhythm familiar to many Marines – it was the rhythm of chaos and fear.

20/20 Leadership: Clear Vision for the Small-Unit Commander

The small-unit commander has many competing responsibilities. The most important is to foster an environment of excellence. The bedrock of leadership excellence at the small-unit level – which I define as an infantry rifle platoon and below – are (1) flexibility, (2) creativity, (3) commander's intent, (4) enthusiasm and (5) combat velocity. Sound strategy wins wars and solid tactics, battles. Superior small-unit leadership, though, seeks only mission accomplishment and to keep fighters alive at the dangerous fault line where strategy and tactics collide.

Each principle of leadership excellence has two dimensions: nearsightedness and farsightedness. Without both, an effort is unbalanced and the unit's vision blurred. Truly excellent combat leadership requires 20/20 vision: the ability of subordinate leaders to execute the mission (nearsightedness) and the ability of the junior commander to communicate the desired priorities and capitalize on the momentum created by subordinate leaders (farsightedness).

No Fun, No Problem: 10 Steps to a Better Iraq

In the Third Battalion, First Marine Regiment, we have an underground society of sorts. We call it the LPA – the Lieutenant Protection Agency. Ostensibly, it's composed of the young, motivated and educated junior commanders of our battalion. In reality, we are nothing more than a hodgepodge of confused and disorientated criminal justice majors with bars of gold and sterling silver. Any of us can call an LPA meeting at any time to do what young naval officers have done best since the Age of Sail: complain. Besides complaining about hair regulations and uniform standards ("Why do the length of my sideburns and the color of my socks matter in a combat zone anyway?"), we complain about other very important things, like girls, nonstateside chewing tobacco, girls, the most recent Yankees–Red Sox game and, umm, girls.

Cowboys in Dress Whites

Our grandfathers knew what "style" is all about. They knew how to work an iron over a white shirt. They knew how to shine a pair of shoes, sew a button onto a blazer, align their belt with their gig line, tie a perfect tie, remove lint from a dark coat, polish brass buckles and buttons and wear a distinctive pair of cufflinks that said as much about their personality as their resume. They knew it mattered to show up at work with a crisp haircut and a close shave. They knew a few other things too, like how to hold a woman at the small of her back when they danced or to light up a cigarette and make it look cool.

Nowadays we wear slip-on shoes (ooh, so comfortable), we don't comb our hair (so Emo), we pay more for jeans that've already been torn (and stained) for us, we dance like we have epilepsy and we haven't worn a blazer since Mom made us wear one to Joshua Bergman's Bar Mitzvah (and when we lit up that cigarette behind the Temple, by the way, we looked like a bunch of degenerates).

Driving Me Crazy

Listrology: List-Making for the Junior Officer

Certain milestones in a man's life are truly noteworthy – like mastering a complicated trade, witnessing the birth of his firstborn child or reading a really long book without any pictures. 

Men accomplish many things in a lifetime that are unapologetically fantastic; the promotion to first lieutenant is not one of them. The truth is, we take no proficiency test, we go before no convened board of our seniors, we face no obstacle. The only thing between me and a formal recognition by our warfighting community (and Congress for that matter) that we're ready for the next level of command is something we did best as second lieutenant: nothing.

21 Things the War in Iraq Taught Me

Mail is something special in Iraq. 

I remember, after my first year at the Naval Academy, the sailing team competed in a race to Bermuda––we actually did well, took 2nd place and arrived at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club to cocktails and beautiful sailing groupies ("beautiful" being relative to our 19-year-old, at-sea-for-a-week perspective). Somewhere between North Carolina and that tiny paradise I was at the helm with our senior watch officer – a former Army air-cavalry pilot in Vietnam. I remember sitting underneath that huge sail in the middle of an endless Atlantic pressing him for war stories.

Blue-Collar Combat

The Marine Corps infantry is a blue-collar job. When I was a newly commissioned second lieutenant I used to tell my old man that I was going to do this until it's not fun anymore. Truth is, there's nothing fun about it. Challenging, hell yes. But fun, no.  

Blue-collar work isn't supposed to be fun.

'Blue-Collar Combat' is a state of mind centered on professional service, physical toughness and the utter confidence that the work you do will ensure a better future for your children. Blue-Collar Combat is the essence of Marine Corps leadership. As an ethos it allows that war is certainly an ugly thing, but perhaps not the ugliest of things. As the driving force behind Marine leadership this ethos acknowledges (with rolled-up sleeves and dirty hands) that an end to war tomorrow would be the best of things, but until then, the morning patrol must continue…and it needs me.

An Airbus, Cheap Red Wine and a Call to Arms

I'm writing this, my first Get the Gouge article, on an airplane. They've called this one an "airbus"—which I like because "bus" is a more honest assessment of what's going on here. I'm half drunk spilling my Casa Mayor red (an absolutely wretched cabernet sauvignon from Chile's Colchagua Valley) all over myself and meditating on the two things that have torn at my soul every waking moment since I first saw "Tora! Tora! Tora!" and Jenny Glisner's underpants: war and women.

Fight Like a Champion: Thoughts on Laughter, the Big "I" and a Beautiful Blonde in Tight Jeans

During bad times I tell my platoon that "laughter is the best medicine." The problem is, I'm lying. As Rolling Stone columnist P.J. O'Rourke corrects me, "Laughter is in fact not the best medicine. Penicillin is the best medicine, followed by tetracycline and the sulfa drugs…." 

Even though laughter may not be the best medicine, I do know that the most important thing in life is to have a sense of humor. A sense of humor is definitely more essential than food, O'Rourke reminds us, because if you have a sense of humor, you can laugh even when you're starving, while if you laugh too hard on a full stomach, you'll throw up.