Warlord
No Better Friend,
No Worse Enemy
by Ilario Pantano and Malcolm McConnell
Threshold, 416 pp., $26

On April 15, 2004, Marine lieutenant Ilario Pantano emptied a pair of M-16 magazines on two Iraqis he had reason to believe were insurgents, and placed a sign on their bullet-ridden car with a Marine slogan--a warning to other would-be terrorists. His book, Warlord, centers around this incident and the disciplinary hearing that followed. But the book also provides a much broader picture of the soldiers who are fighting this war, the constraints they face, and how we should deal with the wave of terror and sectarian strife that threatens Iraq's nascent democracy.

Pantano, who grew up in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood known as Hell's Kitchen, is the son of an Italian immigrant. He served in the first Gulf War as an anti-tank gunner and then later as an elite Scout Sniper. After the war, he went off to college and did stints on Wall Street and in the media. He was en route to a business meeting on September 11, 2001, when he popped up from the subway to discover the World Trade Center ablaze.

Five days later, he was on line at the Marine Corps Reserve Center on Long Island trying to reenlist, and later secured a spot at Officer Candidate School in Quantico. He was assigned as an infantry officer in the 2nd Battalion 2nd Marine Regiment (called the "2/2" or "Warlords"). In early 2004, with some 1,000 troops, the 2/2 took over Mahmudiyah and Latafiyah, small cities south of Baghdad.

Pantano's recollections of his time in these towns--dubbed the "Triangle of Death"--and later, Falluja, add some frontline color to the debates among policymakers.

Take the policy of "clear, hold, build," for example. We've learned that it's not enough simply to clear out the insurgents from their strongholds. We must also maintain a presence in these Sunni towns if we hope to create a secure space to reconstruct the local economy, develop a civil society, and foster indigenous leadership. Otherwise, the insurgents return and punish whoever cooperated with us.

Pantano saw firsthand in Falluja the consequences of just clearing, without holding and building: "We left behind civilians who'd come over to our side; who'd believed in us. Who would ever trust us? Until we'd won this war, anyone who'd sided with us would be marked as a traitor." And after his Marines pulled out of a town prematurely, Pantano writes, "It was painfully obvious that a family that lived nearby, who had trusted us, who had pointed out bad guys fleeing the city, would be executed."

He also describes what seemed like a zero-sum dilemma between fighting insurgents and securing supply lines: "By mid-April 2004, the insurgents had already blown big holes out of the highway bridges, almost cutting the supply route into Baghdad and Falluja. The sudden and aggressive tactics were so effective that they prompted an irate senior Marine commander to remind his battalions: 'If we could take G-d--n Mount Suribachi, we sure as hell better hold a f--g highway!'" And then quips: "Sure we could. It just meant everything else would stop."