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General Conway is the 34th Commandant of the United States Marine Corps, General James T. Conway. General Conway has served as Commandant since November 13th of 2006, and is one of only two Commandants to serve his entire tenure during wartime... General Conway just returned from a trip to the Central Command region. Specifically, he and his group visited Romania, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Landstuhl, Germany. General Conway spent the majority of his trip visiting Marines and sailors in Helmand province in Afghanistan. And General Conway will retire this fall after more than 40 years of service. And he'll, again, give you a briefing on his recent travels, and then take your questions.
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Q Thank you, General. Three questions into one. One, how does this WikiLeaks impact on your mission in Afghanistan? And two, as far as floods in Pakistan is concerned, is it impacting the mission in Afghanistan? And finally, as far as withdrawal and the mission change in Iraq, how does your soldiers or your Marines or your -- I mean people in Afghanistan are thinking that you can learn some method, some -- can you learn some lessons from Iraq into your mission in Afghanistan?
GEN. CONWAY: Sir, I missed the first question. Would you restate it?
Q WikiLeaks.
GEN. CONWAY: Okay.
Q Yes, sir.
GEN. CONWAY: Okay. WikiLeaks was not helpful, to the degree that I think our partners are concerned that we could have such a serious breach. At the same time -- and I haven't -- I haven't examined all the documents. I haven't tasked anybody to do that. At the same time, except, perhaps, for compromising some of our sources, I don't think that it's being felt tactically on the battlefield. My troops chose not to raise it with me in a single question-and-answer session, so I don't think that the impact is severe, except as it relates to our capacity to maintain secrets.
The MEUs that are supporting Pakistan are the theater reserve for the theater commander. That he has chosen and elected to commit both the MEU that's there now and the future MEU, at least for a time, to Pakistan crisis requirements I think strips him of some of that capability to respond elsewhere in theater. But for purposes of Marines in Helmand, there is no impact. We aren't relying upon any of the MEU capacity in Helmand province to be able to continue our functions there.
In terms of Iraq, you know, we're out of Iraq, for all intents and purposes, have been now for the better part of a year, started the process really about a year before that. But we asked ourselves, to the essence of your question, what lessons are transferable -- that we learned over four or five years in Iraq -- to Afghanistan as we built up our presence there.
And we found there was about 70 percent application, probably, I mean, but you've got a different culture, different environment, different language, different tribal construct, different leadership, of course, that we've got to deal with. And so we focused on the delta.
We focused on that 30 percent and tried to, you know, inject that into our training to make our leadership more prepared and that manner of thing. And that's working for us.
None of it gets far from our old Small Wars Manual. You know, Marines back in the '20s in Central and South America learned many of these lessons in terms of this transition process that we talked about earlier. So a manual that's soon to be 100 years old has really been our beacon for the way ahead in terms of how we approach.
Q And so finally, troops are watching all the news, ups and downs, what is --
GEN. CONWAY: They're incredible informed, they really are.
Q -- what is happening around the globe.
GEN. CONWAY: Yeah.
Q How do you keep their morale? Because things change in their minds also, whatever they watch, whatever they hear, whatever they see.
GEN. CONWAY: Yeah. Well, again, I emphasize to them, the number-one concern on the part of American troops anywhere they go is the country behind us. That was the case in 2003. That's the case today in 2010.
And I'll tell you, I am so proud of our American public, that regardless how they see what happened in Iraq or what's happening in Afghanistan, they support the troops. And that's the message that they get from me; that's the message that they see when they come home on dwell. And in that regard, I'm just incredibly proud of our country.
Over here. Yes, sir. |
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Name(s:) |
James Conway |
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Title: |
Commandant |
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Agency(ies): |
United States Marine Corps, Department of Defense |
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Concerning: |
Afghan War Diary |
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Url: |
Url Link
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Archive: |
Archive Link
http://archive.is/efxhg |
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