Marine memories: What one guy didn’t learn at the Infantry Officer Course

By Matthew Collins, OJA
Best Defense office of jarhead analysis

The battlefield is not as empty as the training areas in Quantico. You and the bad guys make up a small fraction of what is happening in the country. This perspective is important.

In Iraq, we peaked at roughly 180,000 troops plus a smaller number of contractors. On any given day, we figured we were fighting about 20,000 operational bad guys with an active support network of maybe 100,000. This was among the more than 25 million people in Iraq.

In those 25 million people, you will find hustlers, criminals, humanitarians, opportunists, heroes, and a lot of people who just want to survive. The bad guys have much better understanding about how this society works. You are going to have to sort these things out quickly.

People are not born terrorists, anymore than they are born saints. They are made so by their decisions and their circumstances. Some of these decisions and circumstances, you will be able to influence. Others you will not. The process of becoming a terrorist is not irreversible. You will kill some and capture others, but most will simply quit. They are an all volunteer force as well.

Much of your time will properly be focused on the tiny fraction of population that are planting bombs and shooting at you. Do not let those people distort your view of the rest of the people. Remember David Kilcullen’s advice about the conservation of enemies. Do not create more bad guys than you eliminate.

Matthew Collins spent ten years as a Marine Intelligence officer and is a graduate of the Infantry Officer Course. He spent two years, from 2005 to 2007, as an Iraq Analyst on the Joint Staff/J-2 Iraq Office. The opinions expressed are his own.