thedrifter
02-27-04, 06:07 AM
Good Marines Make Good Neighbors
Why a Vietnam War counterinsurgency program is being tried again in Iraq.
By Mark Mazzetti
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2004, at 7:44 AM PT
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif.—The U.S. military has spent decades trying to purge its bitter memories of Vietnam. But as it gears up for a yearlong deployment in Iraq's violent Sunni Triangle, the 1st Marine Division is resurrecting one of the few tactics that worked in Vietnam, the corps' counterinsurgency strategy: the "Combined Action Program," or CAP. The revival of this counterinsurgency program represents an experiment by the 1st Marine Division, which replaces the Army's 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq next month. With CAP, the Marines are betting that a kinder, gentler approach to Iraqis will pacify the bloody Sunni Triangle more effectively than the 82nd Airborne's harsh tactics have.
CAP was designed by Marine strategists as an alternative to the Army's "search and destroy" tactics used throughout the Vietnam War. From 1965 to 1973, Marine platoons—along with South Vietnamese Popular Forces, or PFs—spent months living in villages in Central Vietnam. "In the places where we used the CAP program, we ran the Viet Cong and NVA out of the area," says Noel Williams of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, which is assisting the 1st Marine Division as it applies the Combined Action Program to Iraq. The Marines and PFs worked in rice paddies with impoverished villagers during the day and ran patrols against the VC at night.
By living among the Vietnamese instead of on a fortified American base, CAP Marines forged relationships that helped develop a web of local intelligence. "It was just like running a neighborhood watch, except that I was scared all the time and people were shooting at me," says Ed Matricardi, who in 1967 served in a CAP platoon in a village south of Phu Bai.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2096027/
Sempers,
Roger
:marine:
Why a Vietnam War counterinsurgency program is being tried again in Iraq.
By Mark Mazzetti
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2004, at 7:44 AM PT
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif.—The U.S. military has spent decades trying to purge its bitter memories of Vietnam. But as it gears up for a yearlong deployment in Iraq's violent Sunni Triangle, the 1st Marine Division is resurrecting one of the few tactics that worked in Vietnam, the corps' counterinsurgency strategy: the "Combined Action Program," or CAP. The revival of this counterinsurgency program represents an experiment by the 1st Marine Division, which replaces the Army's 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq next month. With CAP, the Marines are betting that a kinder, gentler approach to Iraqis will pacify the bloody Sunni Triangle more effectively than the 82nd Airborne's harsh tactics have.
CAP was designed by Marine strategists as an alternative to the Army's "search and destroy" tactics used throughout the Vietnam War. From 1965 to 1973, Marine platoons—along with South Vietnamese Popular Forces, or PFs—spent months living in villages in Central Vietnam. "In the places where we used the CAP program, we ran the Viet Cong and NVA out of the area," says Noel Williams of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, which is assisting the 1st Marine Division as it applies the Combined Action Program to Iraq. The Marines and PFs worked in rice paddies with impoverished villagers during the day and ran patrols against the VC at night.
By living among the Vietnamese instead of on a fortified American base, CAP Marines forged relationships that helped develop a web of local intelligence. "It was just like running a neighborhood watch, except that I was scared all the time and people were shooting at me," says Ed Matricardi, who in 1967 served in a CAP platoon in a village south of Phu Bai.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2096027/
Sempers,
Roger
:marine: