One Bullet Away
Attended the annual Lt. William S. Bush Breakfast at the USS Constitution yesterday morning with Ia Drang vet Larry Gwin, a lot of old Marines, and speaker Nate Fick.Â
Lt. Bush has the unfortunate distinction of being the first United States Marine Corps officer killed in combat on Aug. 19, 1812, as he prepared to board HMS Guerriere. From USMC Lt. John Contee’s letter to his brother Lewis: Â
 In the heat of the action the Marines were called aft; led by the illustrious Bush, who, mounting the tadffrail, sword in hand, and as he exclaimed “Shall I board her” received the fatal on his left cheekbone, which passed through to the back of his head, thus fell that Great and Good officer, who, when living was beloved& and now gone is lamented by all. His loss is deeply regretted by his country and friends, but he died as he lived, with honor to both.”
Former Marine captain Nathaniel Fick was the speaker and offered some quick thoughts on the media, Iraq and Afghanistan. He served in both places in 2002-03, in Iraq with Rolling Stone’s Evan White of “Generation Kill” fame embedded in his platoon, and while pursing an MBA at Harvard spent last summer teaching at the coalition’s counter-insurgency academy in Kabul.Â
(Fick, of course, is the author of the magnificent must-read, “One Bullet Away,” a title drawn from the Marine leadership principle and somewhat fitting yesterday given the morning’s dedication to Lt. William Bush. If you do not currently own Fick’s book, you can buy it here. Read ”Generation Kill” first to meet Fick and his Marines, from an outsider’s perspective. Also required reading, “Baptism: A Vietnam Memoir” by our mutual friend, Ia Drang vet Larry Gwin, for a similar companion reading experience with “We were Soldiers Once…And Young.”)
Back to Fick, on the media: Embedding like democracy is the best of a lot of flawed options, and with virtually no major media embedded these days, war coverage ”stinks.”  Fick noted there are a lot of complex practical constraints … if it bleeds it leads, plane that lands safely isn’t news, adversarial press tradition … that have contributed to distorted coverage. He doesn’t buy the simplistic, dismissive ”liberal media” explanation.Â
(This happens to be one of my subjects so forgive me an interjection. I’d go beyond “war coverage stinks” and suggest the war is in fact not being covered by the major news organizations at all. It’s bizarre. I would agree with Nate’s basic point. In almost any contentious news issue, abortion, war, Bush 43, Clinton 42, etc., there are a number of complex factors at play that lead to perceptions of bias, and explains why the hard left is as dismissive of the press as the hard right is. The “When did you stop beating your wife” is in large part a product of the adversarial approach, that often makes reporters approach pols and their projects in much the way cops approach husbands after finding a dead wife. If they didn’t do that, they wouldn’t be doing their jobs. The media in general and even heavily liberal-leaning news organizations are not monolithically liberal. However, polling has shown the profession leans heavily that way, roughly 70-30 split liberal vs. conservative, and there is a lot of direct evidence in the weighting of stories, choice of language, assumptions, that shows anti-war/Bush bias so prevalent as to be institutional at some organizations.  That aside, I am mystified by the failure of our nation’s premier news organizations to cover the biggest story going. The work of Yon and other freelance embeds has proven a greater indicator of facts on the ground and predictor of the direction of the war than all the reporters who largely stayed in Baghdad and relied on local hires for proxy ground views, then had the gall to sneer at military flaks. Sorry, Nate, about blathering on. Back to you.)
On Iraq: Fick described the three phases of the war as being 1st, vs. the regime and the jihadists; 2nd, when regime loyalists and jihadists were joined by homegrown insurgents, something that could have been sharply limited by better economic measures, and the 3rd, intentionally provoked sectarian warfare, which is the worst of the three and hardest to combat. He noted there is dramatic improvement there since the Sunnis figured out al Qaeda does not represent their interest, and said the three pressing U.S. national interests in succeeding Iraq at this time are denying al Qaeda the safe haven of another failed state; preventing a larger regional war; and averting a genocide for which he helped set the terms.
On Afghanistan: Fick said he is very optimistic, not least because of the cailber of some of the Afghan officers he met, whom he said in some cases get Afghan counter-insurgency better than his American students did. His example: when he asked an American what he would do to gain control of such-and-such an area, the American said he would take out these three Taliban leaders. The Afghan said he would get to the mullahs and see to the interests of the local leaders and the women, who just like here have a lot more influence than they get credit for.  Fick noted that in all small-unit contacts, our side wins, every time. “It’s not going to mean anything unless we follow up.” More roads, more clinics, more schools. Security should not simply proceed but accompany and more substantially follow economic development. Fick, a Kilcullen and Nagl fan, laid out some counter-insurgency standbys: “The best weapons don’t shoot … the more you focus on force protection, the less safe you are (political advocates of withdrawing to big bases, over-the-horizon bases, take note) … the more force you use, the less affective you are (the smallest bomb in the US arsenal, 250 lbs, is too big for him). Fick also noted that while the south and east are problematic, he was able to move around Kabul and other parts of the country freely. Glass high-rises are going up in Kabul without blast walls. Best laugh line: He met a guy who is syndicating “24″ in Afghanistan, and asked how he thinks a terrorism show with Muslim villains is going to fly there. The guy replied that they polled on that, and found Afghans don’t have a problem with depictions of Arabs as terrorists.
Topics: Afghanistan, Iraq, media, military
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:05 am on Friday, November 9, 2007
10 Responses to “One Bullet Away”
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November 9th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Coming administrations would be very wise to tap the introspective and forward thinking talents of today’s military officers in shaping America’s foreign policy. Because the politicized clowns they will get from the private sector and academia (think “Whiz Kids”) and from government (think State Dept) are clearly not going to measure up.
These guys are good.
November 9th, 2007 at 10:30 am
[...] Reading his post, I kept thinking: “When diplomacy fails, they send in the Marines.” [...]
November 9th, 2007 at 11:21 am
Web Reconnaissance for 11/09/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
November 9th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
I agree with VotC that the best leadership of tomorrow is going to come from the military of today.
November 9th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
I disagree with you Jules.
Tim McGurk of Time and Haditha; TNR’s Scott Beauchamp stories; The absolute bullshit and distortions produced specifically to serve as propaganda for the enemy over Abu Graib, Gitmo, etc…
This goes way beyond stupid. This is all about the industry of journalism so loaded with leftist activists and knee-jerk anti-Americans that they’ll swallow anything, hook like and sinker, as long as it has America or Americans as the villains.
There is an active, full blown, enemy sympathizing element in our news media that acts purposely as a 5th column in full consciousness of their perfidy and betrayals.
November 9th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Grimmy, it isn’t necessary to have very many people who are consciously 5th column. All that is required is a few, and a mob who unthinkingly follow them (for whatever reason). I suggest that middle-aged women who bare their bodies in protest, for instance, are doing so more for psychological reasons than political ones. People who unthinkingly accepted ideas taught in our schools are equally accepting, and equally unthinking, of the conclusions drawn from those ideas.
November 9th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
“To the Knife” - An Outline for a Pro-Victory Strategy in the Media War at Home
The sad truth is that - the heartfelt, persistent and generally sensible efforts of those who support the efforts of American troops in Iraq cannot ultimately succeed if they - those efforts - are generally portrayed by the main-stream media as the ran…
November 9th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Saltydog, a tacit acceptance of the fifth column is as much a factor in institutional bias as an active participation in it. With tacit acceptance the active few are allowed to carry their program to fruition. Witness the Anbar awakening, when those who were accepting finally turned, the active few began to diminish. This is not meant to argue against your comment which is correct.
BTW, my eyes hurt for two weeks after seeing the pictures at Zombies place, could you not remind me of it please?
November 9th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
saltydog:
As a society, we’ve given too much slack for too long to too many who indulge in betrayal. Such slack has become so institutionalized that those who openly and aggressively adhere to the cause of our enemy during this and other times of war are now considered to have “just a difference of opinion”.
Treason has become so trendy that none dare call it what it is, anymore.
November 10th, 2007 at 3:00 am
Hey guys, I didn’t say that these idiots deserve a pass, just that they’re idiots. They are willfully blind followers, the dregs. The ones to go after are the ones who offer them grace and absolution for their pathologies. There aren’t that many. Take care of the leaders and the drones will fold back into the terror of the cowardice that allowed them to be drones in the first place.