Marines who give an extra measure for Iraq

LA Times:

Marine Cpl. Saul Mellado could be back in California, finishing the final months of his enlistment in a safe billet at Camp Pendleton.

Instead, the 23-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen from Mexico is patrolling these war-torn streets only recently wrested from insurgent control — and bracing for an expected counteroffensive.

Mellado, a machine-gunner, knows these streets: the adults who eye the Marines with suspicion and the children who beg for candy and water. He was first dispatched to Ramadi in late 2004, a deployment during which 15 Marines in his unit — the 2nd Battalion, 5th Regiment — died and more than 200 were wounded.

Under Marine Corps rules about "short-timers," Mellado could have skipped this return to Ramadi six weeks ago. But like 200 other members of the battalion — a quarter of its number — he asked to have his enlistment extended. Unlike a reenlistment, the move earns the Marines no bonus money, no promotion and no promise of a job shift or posting to a favored duty station.

"For a lot of the guys, this is their first tour," Mellado said as his Humvee moved slowly through the rubble-strewn streets. "If anything happened to them, and I could have helped them, I couldn't stand that."

Mellado's wife, Kirsten, is pregnant with their first child, a boy. Mellado has no plans to take leave to see the birth, and it is unclear whether a webcam will be available so he can see the infant.

"I'm here so our sons don't have to come here and fight someday," he said.

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Officials say extensions are not uncommon among the Marine Corps' 24 battalions, even as some return to Iraq for their third combat tour. In fact, they say, few records are kept because they are so common.

But Marine generals who review the manpower of all infantry battalions say the 200 from the Two-Five, the most decorated battalion in the Corps, make up the biggest group.

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"I just told them: 'We've been together this long. We need you — the young Marines need you,' " (Sgt. Maj.) Jordan said.

In an infantry battalion, a sergeant major serves as the embodiment of institutional values to younger "grunts." At 44, Jordan has been in the Marine Corps for 27 years.

"Finally I just told them, 'Everybody who is with us, move to the right side of the room,' " Jordan said. Only a handful stayed put. About 175 moved immediately to the right side.

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The Two-Five, whose motto, "Retreat, Hell," stems from the World War I battle at Belleau Wood, has drawn one of the tougher assignments in what remains the toughest city in sprawling Al Anbar province. Phone service is spotty, sewage runs in many streets, and any sign of local government is minimal.

But Marines say that residents, encouraged by tribal sheiks and imams, have turned against the extremists and, among other things, are pointing out the location of hidden roadside bombs.

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The rest of that motto is "we just got here." It is a motto that Democrats should learn. Marines are special people and many of them are in this battalion. One of the ways you can tell that the war has not taken the toll on the Marine Corps as much as critics claim is that you have guys who are able to go on a third and fourth tour. If the Marines were taking as many casualties as the people opposed to the war claim, they would not be around to go back to Iraq.

Wretchard gets a note from a Marine officer who is returning to Anbar and notes the differences. The officer comments:

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Here's the real takeaway though: this never would have happened without some sort of American presence in Iraq. It was not diplomats that turned the tribes, it was military officers. That is the secret that will be hard to swallow: we are in an age wherein the opposite of the 'exit strategy' will have to be the lynchpin of strategy: presence, not early exit, is what is required in these broad swaths of the world that where instability threatens US interests. The key will be not to figure out whether to be there or not, which is the current debate. The key will be to figure out how much to be there and in what form: soldier, diplomat, spy, or some other category that has yet to be determined: perhaps a combo of all three, or perhaps some privatized version of any one of them.

While the Marines and Army units in Anbar have accomplished much, we should not forget that al Qaeda pushed the tribes into our arms, and fortunately for the tribes we were there to help. The real test of policy in the coming months is whether our troops will continue to be there when other tribes are ready to move to our side.