Call Sign Chaos summary

Mattis was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Marines in early 1972. Unlike Army, Navy and Air Force officers, Marine officers begin their career with seven months of basic infantry training. The idea behind this is simple – every Marine, whatever his rank, is first and foremost a rifleman. 

After completing his training in Quantico, Mattis joined the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine regiment stationed in Okinawa, Japan. This was a turbulent time for the US military. 

By 1990, Mattis had spent 18 years in the military. That made him a “totus porcus” or “full hog” Marine – a military man through and through. Promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, he had recently been given command of the 1st Battalion of the 7th Marine regiment. It wouldn’t be long before he led its men into a new battle. 

On August 2, 1990, the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait, a small oil-rich state claimed by Iraq. Hussein believed that no one would come to Kuwait’s assistance. He was wrong. Three days after the Iraqi invasion, President George H.W. Bush told reporters that the US would not allow this act of aggression to stand. 

The morning of September 11, 2001, started like any other. Mattis had recently been promoted to deputy commander of I Marine Expeditionary Force, or 1 MEF. He was driving to his unit’s base in Camp Pendleton, California. That’s when radio stations started reporting that an airplane had hit the World Trade Center in New York. 

Mattis instantly guessed what had happened. His first thought? They got through. His second thought? This was the handiwork of Al Qaeda – an Islamist terror group that declared war on America in the mid-1990s and orchestrated attacks on US targets across Africa and the Middle East. 

A few days after Thanksgiving in November 2001, Mattis was standing on the deck of a helicopter carrier in the Arabian Sea near the Pakistani coast. He watched as Marines test-fired their weapons into the water and loaded CH-53 helicopters. Centcom – US Central Command – had given the green light. The mission to establish a bridgehead in southern Afghanistan was a go. 

The first troops landed at 9:00 p.m. on November 25. Within an hour, 170 grunts were in position to defend the landing site. By dawn the following day, 400 additional marines equipped with gun trucks had joined them. It was the deepest amphibious assault from the sea in history. The result was Camp Rhino, one of the war’s most important bases. 

By early 2002, Mattis was back in Pendleton, California. A freshly promoted two-star Major General, he now commanded the 1st Marine Division. There was little time to mull over the missed opportunity to pursue bin Laden in Tora Bora. The US was gearing up to take on another old foe – Saddam Hussein. 

While he was honored to lead the 1st Marine Division, a storied unit which had served with distinction in Japan, Korea and Vietnam, Mattis was uneasy about the decision to invade Iraq. Sanctions had crippled the country’s economy, and the US controlled Iraqi airspace. Even if Hussein did possess chemical weapons – the government’s justification for the impending war – Iraq was boxed in. Was it really a threat?

Chaos descended on Iraq as Saddam Hussein’s regime crumbled. Police officers disappeared from the streets, while water and electricity failed. Religious tensions between Iraq’s majority Shiites and minority Sunnis threatened to escalate into a civil war. The US had won the fight. Now, it would have to keep the peace. 

The Iraqi army was the key piece in this puzzle. Why was that? Well, its defeat had left thousands of well-trained and battle-hardened young men at loose ends, with neither jobs nor prospects. Like many US commanders in the field, Mattis believed this was a disaster waiting to happen. If immediate action wasn’t taken, it was only a matter of time before someone turned this ready-made guerilla force against American troops. 

In February 2004, Mattis wrote a letter to the men and women of the 1st Marine Division to tell them that “we are going back into the brawl.” Since his departure the previous fall, things had gone from bad to worse in Iraq. A new group calling itself Al Qaeda in Iraq – AQI – was at the heart of a growing insurgency in Anbar, a Sunni-dominated province west of Baghdad. 

Led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, AQI was based in Anbar’s two largest cities, Ramadi and Fallujah, and was waging a war against American troops and rival religious groups. A month before Mattis arrived in Anbar, one of Zarqawi’s suicide bombers killed 23 Iraqi police recruits in Fallujah. It was his job to put an end to these attacks.

After a two-year break from the front, Mattis returned to Iraq in early 2006 as the commander 1 Marine Expeditionary Force. The mood in Washington was souring, and politicians claimed that the Iraq war had been lost. Mattis was determined to prove them wrong. 

AQI’s rule in Anbar not only threatened American soldiers but the tribes living in the province as well. Over the summer of 2006, Mattis and his fellow commanders cultivated ties with tribal leaders. Both parties wanted AQI gone, but neither was sure they could trust the other. Small gestures of friendship, like presenting sheiks with Marine officer dress swords when they went to the US side, took on huge symbolic importance.