It is unfair and factually false to suggest that the commanding general of U.S. military forces in the Middle East, Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, is hawkish on Iran because he wants revenge for Iranian attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq during the 2003-2011 period.
But that’s what Julia Ioffe suggested regarding an Atlantic piece by Kathy Gilsinan on Thursday. Gilsinan claims McKenzie is hawkish because he “saw the Iranian threat firsthand when he led a Marine Expeditionary Unit during the Iraq War, when Iranian proxies and allies were routinely attacking U.S. troops.” Ioffe says:
The military man pushing the Iran conflict forward, in part because he was in Iraq when his men were being blown up by Iranian-made IEDS. By my girl @kgilsinan. https://t.co/4jhYqCPLhv
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) June 20, 2019
Ioffe and Gilsinan present an ill-informed narrative here.
First off, there’s the issue of history. As the commanding colonel of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit during its 2005-2006 deployment to Iraq, McKenzie would have been briefed on Iranian operations. But very few Iranians were in the 22nd MEU’s area of operation in Anbar province. Like other Marine units, the 22nd MEU was focused on contesting al Qaeda in Iraq along the Euphrates river corridor between Al-Qa’im on the Iraq-Syrian border and Fallujah. For more than a month of its deployment, the 22nd MEU was based in Hit, a town on the Euphrates swing northwest of Ramadi.
The threat in Hit wasn’t sourced from Iranian explosives. It was sourced from a mix of AQI fighters under command of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and disaffected Anbari tribesmen. Again, not Iranian-backed Shia militias.
Yes, the 22nd MEU took casualties from improvised explosive devices during their deployment. But AQI’s explosives profile at that time rarely if ever utilized Iranian explosively formed penetrator devices. That’s partly because the Iranian militias and AQI were in a very bloody war with one another. Instead, AQI’s modus operandi was to launch explosives attacks involving suicide car bombs packed with shrapnel and improvised explosives hidden on patrol routes. McKenzie’s blood feud, like the rest of the Marines during the Iraq War, was thus never focused on Iran. The Iran feud argument would have far stronger credibility if applied to former Army officers such as Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. who served in areas of Iraq with heavy Iranian activity.
But what lesson would McKenzie take from that time in Iraq?
Well, I would expect respect for young Marines and a desire to find political solutions to conflicts wherever possible.
After all, as William Knarr records, the 22nd MEU’s 2005-2006 deployment was complicated by constantly shifting operational areas which fostered a “lack of continuity [in Marine unit deployments and] adversely affected intelligence collection and community relationships … citizens of Hit did not trust the transient Coalition forces and perceived the Coalition as noncommittal and disinterested in the community’s well being.”
It wasn’t until later in 2006 that the Marines had the force presence and authority to separate the tribes — the Albu Nimr tribe in particular — from AQI. Alongside special operations activity, that separation was instrumental in AQI’s annihilation.
McKenzie knows that it was politics as much as riflemen that helped win the Marines’ great victories in Iraq.
To blur the lines between AQI and Iran, as Ioffe and Gilsinan do, isn’t just to ignore history. It’s to make a critical strategic error. As I noted for the Atlantic in 2013, the rise of ISIS was primarily sourced in Sunni anger over Iranian-driven sectarianism. McKenzie’s need to deter Iranian aggression will thus be tempered to fostering multisectarian cooperation in Iraq. This general isn’t looking for a new war.
