Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, from Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq and Beyond PDF
Preview Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, from Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq and Beyond
CONTENTS Cover Page Title Page Dedication Epigraph Map PROLOGUE INJUN COUNTRY CHAPTER ONE CENTCOM YEMEN, WINTER 2002 WITH NOTES ON COLOMBIA “Yemen was vast. And it was only one small country. . . . How to manage such an imperium?” CHAPTER TWO SOUTHCOM COLOMBIA, WINTER 2003 WITH NOTES ON EL SALVADOR “The future of military conflict was better gauged in Colombia than in Iraq. . . . In Colombia I was introduced to the tactics that the U.S. would employ to manage an unruly world.” CHAPTER THREE PACOM MONGOLIA, SPRING 2003 , , WITH NOTES ON MACEDONIA BOSNIA AND TAJIKISTAN “Mongolia was a trip wire for judging future Chinese intentions. . . . Col. Wilhelm was determined to make the descendants of Genghis Khan the ‘peacekeeping Gurkhas’ of the American Empire.” CHAPTER FOUR PACOM THE PHILIPPINES, SUMMER 2003 , 1898–1913 WITH NOTES ON THE PHILIPPINES “Terrorists used these poor, shantyish, unpoliceable islands as hideouts. . . . Combating Islamic terrorism here carried a secondary benefit: it positioned the U.S. for the containment of China.” CHAPTER FIVE CENTCOM AND SOCOM AFGHANISTAN, AUTUMN 2003 ’ WITH NOTES ON PAKISTAN S NORTHWEST FRONTIER “Because al-Qaeda was a worldwide insurgency, America had to fight a classic worldwide counterinsurgency . . . here, amid the field mice and the mud-walled flatness of the Helmand desert, there was only constant trial- and-error experimentation in light of the mission at hand.” CHAPTER SIX FROM THE ARMY TO THE MARINES— FORT BRAGG AND CAMP LEJEUNE, NORTH CAROLINA WINTER 2003–2004 “I had entered a world stripped to its bare essentials, the inhabitants of which had taken a veritable monastic vow of poverty.” CHAPTER SEVEN CENTCOM HORN OF AFRICA, WINTER 2004 WITH NOTES ON EAST AFRICA “ ’Who needs meetings in Washington. . . . Guys in the field will figure out what to do. I took ten guys through eastern Ethiopia. Everywhere people wanted an American presence.’ A new paradigm was emerging for the military, one that borrowed more from the French and Indian War and the Lewis and Clark expedition than from the major conflicts of the twentieth century.” CHAPTER EIGHT CENTCOM IRAQ, SPRING 2004 WITH NOTES ON NICARAGUA AND VIETNAM “I looked around in broad daylight to see the roofscape of Al-Fallujah covered with thousands upon thousands of old mufflers and tailpipes, guarded by U.S. Marines, standing atop the city with fixed bayonets. . . . Yet the American Empire depended upon a tissue of intangibles that was threatened, rather than invigorated, by the naked exercise of power.” EPILOGUE THE INTERIOR CONTINENT Author’s Note and Acknowledgments Endnotes Notes Glossary About the Author Other Books by Robert D. Kaplan Copyright Page To the memory of Marine 1st Lt. Joshua Palmer of Banning, California, born November 28, 1978, killed in action April 8, 2004 And to all the other U.S. Marines killed or wounded during the fighting in Fallujah, Iraq, in April 2004 Major Victor Joppolo, U.S.A., was a good man. . . . We have need of him. He is our future in the world. Neither the eloquence of Churchill nor the humaneness of Roosevelt, no Charter, no four freedoms or fourteen points, no dreamer’s diagram so symmetrical and so faultless on paper, no plan, no hope, no treaty—none of these things can guarantee anything. Only men can guarantee, only the behavior of men under pressure, only our Joppolos. —John Hersey, A Bell for Adano, 1944 Imperialism moved forward, not as a result of commercial or political pressure from London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, or even Washington, but mainly because men on the periphery, many of whom were soldiers, pressed to enlarge the boundaries of empire, often without orders, even against orders. —Douglas Porch, professor at the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, 1996 In a campaign against Indians, the front is all around, and the rear is nowhere. —Erasmus D. Keyes, Fifty Years’ Observation of Men and Events, 1884
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