Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead

The pause in the attack is suspended after three days. Mattis’s division heads toward Baghdad, morale high from a succession of battlefield victories. The reigning concern is whether Hussein will use chemical weapons when American forces cross the Tigris.

Twice during the attack, Mattis has to entreat one of his regimental commanders to press on faster to keep up with the rest of the Division. Mattis sends a helicopter to fetch him, and when he arrives he tells Mattis that he feels the invasion is being pushed too quickly and that it is costing him the lives of his men. Mattis expresses sympathy for this officer’s conundrum. He feels it is commendable for him to want to protect the lives of his troops, but he relieves the commander of his position. Mattis explains to his readers that the mission must come first and that hesitancy puts other units in danger. Furthermore, Mattis was unable to see a path forward where the officer would embrace the mission wholeheartedly. In his words, “You cannot order someone to abandon a spiritual burden they’re wrestling with” (107).

The Marines finally reach the outskirts of Baghdad. The main bridge into the city has a gaping hole in it. Mattis watches while his Marines bring up lumber to patch the hole. Artillery fire kills some of his men nearby. He hears other Marines shouting not to return fire from houses with women and children in them.

By April 6, 17 days after the invasion, Baghdad is taken. Mattis quickly pivots to restoring civilian services and protecting the city from looters. Marine commanders throughout Iraq become default mayors and sheriffs. Once again Mattis feels undercut by Washington when, without consulting American military commanders, the entire Iraqi army is disbanded. Mattis feels this action will only create more tension and violence moving forward.

Mattis is then told to hold elections, an order he protests, feeling it is too soon. The Coalition Provisional Authority persists, so Mattis begins the election process, but then he is told that it has been decided not to do elections yet. In all things uncertainty and chaos seem to have taken hold, and the Iraqis are finding the Americans to be unreliable and uncertain in their actions.

At summer’s end, Mattis and his division are sent home. Mattis says he had no confidence that they were leaving behind a country in a better state than what they found it in.

After a brief respite, Mattis gets word in November that his division is going to be sent back to Iraq. Insurgent activity has increased and become more organized. Mattis once again asks about long-term strategic goals, and also what blueprint the administration has for restarting the Iraqi economy, but receives no answers. Mattis sends his assistant, John Kelly, ahead to Iraq to report back on the current situation. Kelly informs Mattis that the Sunnis, who were formerly in power under Saddam, are now the minority and are waging guerrilla warfare against the Shiite majority and the Americans. Kelly tells Mattis that convincing the Sunni tribes to organize politically as opposed to militarily will be the key to long-term peace.

Mattis sees that he has the unenviable task of fighting the very people he will be trying to win over diplomatically. Mattis sends a mass communique to all his troops in February 2004, stating, “The enemy will try to manipulate you into hating all Iraqis. Do not allow the enemy this victory. […] I have added ‘First, do no harm’ to our passwords of ‘No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy’” (119).

When the Marines arrive in Anbar Province, the insurgency is most prevalent in Fallujah and Ramadi, two cities roughly 30 miles apart. The enemy is a confusing mixture of local jihadists, Al Qaeda, and rebellious tribes.

In March, some civilian contractors are killed in Fallujah, and their bodies are shown on television across Iraq and the United States. Mattis creates a plan to respond in a measured fashion, negotiating for the bodies and then systematically identifying and capturing those who were responsible for the act. Mattis feels that an incursion into Fallujah will only worsen matters. However, he is overruled by the Bush administration, which has been angered by the images seen, and ordered to attack Fallujah.

Mattis complies. He asks only that if they attack Fallujah, they not be stopped mid-assault by the administration. Mattis gives oversight of the attack to Colonel John Toolan. When Fallujah is attacked, an insurgency breaks out in Ramadi as well as other areas, so Mattis spends a good deal of time in helicopters overseeing the whole picture. Images of civilian casualties are shared around the world, causing public opinion to turn against the Americans. The Marines are successful in taking Fallujah, but they are ordered to stop the attack, as Mattis feared would happen.

Shortly thereafter the Abu Ghraib scandal breaks, showing American soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners. Mattis is compelled to hand over Fallujah to a ‘Fallujah Brigade’ made up of Iraqi soldiers. Mattis is certain that they will join the insurgents as soon as the Marines pull out.

Iraq begins to descend into civil war. The jihadist Zarqawi orchestrates bombings and assassinations using Fallujah as a base. Al Qaeda begins recruiting heavily among disillusioned Sunni youths in Anbar Province. Mattis sees the situation as one that will take years to fix, with the reigning goal to find ways to align Iraqi goals with American ones.

The sheikhs and tribal leaders do not give the Marines the information they need to undermine the insurgents. The pullback from Fallujah has convinced them that the Americans cannot be relied upon, as Mattis feared would happen.

The chaos has Mattis on the defensive in more ways than one. On May 19, 2004, Mattis approves an airstrike on a group of suspected insurgents near the Syrian border. Mattis is told that it is an Al Qaeda team that his Marines have been tracking for some time. After the group is destroyed, a British newspaper reports that the targeted group was a wedding party and that the bombing killed women and children as well as the bride and groom. Mattis denies that any women were found there and permits reporters to go survey the site in question. He claims that an “investigative report” confirmed his version of events but that by then it was too late and the wedding narrative had become established truth throughout the world.

Mattis becomes annoyed with the putative head of Fallujah, a man named Janabi who tried once before to assassinate Mattis at a meeting. Janabi is the head of the Fallujah Brigade, the militia that Mattis was forced to hand over Fallujah to. Mattis sets up a meeting with Janabi in the heart of Fallujah. Toolan is concerned the meeting may be a trap, and Mattis concedes the point. Mattis goes anyway, taking a handful of men with him, while Toolan hovers overhead in a helicopter with a battalion waiting on the outskirts of Fallujah. Mattis keeps a loaded weapon on his lap pointed at Janabi for the whole meeting. No attempt is made to kill or capture Mattis.

Shortly thereafter one of Mattis’s Iraqi allies is captured by Janabi and tortured and beheaded. Toolan asks for permission to take out Janabi, but he is told to stand down by the administration in Baghdad.

Mattis spends much of his time going from unit to unit, gauging the temperament of his men. His concern is that the grinding nature of insurgent warfare will make them cynical, or worse, brutal. In his own words, “our young men had to harden their hearts to kill proficiently, without allowing indifference to non-combatant suffering to form a callus on their souls” (144).

As Mattis nears the end of his two-year stint in Iraq, he makes one last plea to be allowed to go into Fallujah and clear out Zarqawi, Janabi, and their followers. His request is turned down. Mattis closes the chapter with a prayer written by a paratrooper in World War II that asks God to give him troubles in the world instead of peace.