Jim Michaels came to the OPC two weeks before the release of his latest book, A Chance in Hell: The Men Who Triumphed Over Iraq’s Deadliest City and Turned the Tide of War. Those who attended the book night received a free copy of his book from the publisher, St. Martin’s Press.
Michaels covers military issues for USA Today and has made about 20 reporting trips to Iraq and Afghanistan as well as supervised the paper’s six embedded reporters. As a former Marine Corps infantry officer, he brings unique insight into the mechanics and soldiers involved in war. During the talk about his book, Michaels set the scene taking listeners back to 2006 Iraq when civil war was raging. Colonel Sean MacFarland arrived in Ramadi and was told to do only one thing: keep a lid on Ramadi.
Michaels said that MacFarland is not the Hollywood ideal of a military commander. “He looks more like a high school biology teacher than Patton,” Michaels said. MacFarland had a legacy of not seeming the commanding type, even at West Point where he “didn’t fit in and didn’t impress superiors.”
Given his background, then, it’s easy to see where MacFarland’s resistance to just “keeping a lid” on Ramadi was not his style. “He wanted to defeat the enemy.”
He ordered men into Al Qaeda strongholds and sent in tanks and armored vehicles. “Not a hearts and minds approach at all,” Michaels said. The death toll went to 1,500 and by summer, it was a stalemate. This paved the way for MacFarland to “roll the dice,” as Michaels put it, to forge a partnership with Sheik Abdul Sattar Bezia al-Rishawi and his growing band of fighters. Working with American troops, they drove Al Qaeda from Ramadi. The system worked because MacFarland “stretched the rules. “They took confiscated weapons and gave them to tribes,” Michaels said.
In September 2007, President George W. Bush came to Iraq and went to Anwar and Fallujah and met with government officials and Sattar. During the meeting, Sattar told Bush that he appreciated the sacrifices of U.S. troops. “When we’re done in Anwar, we’ll fight with you in Afganistan,” Sattar said. But this was not to be. Soon after Sattar was killed in a roadside bomb and threw “the Awakening” in peril. Sattar’s brother Ahmed said, “Although they killed Sattar, there are one million Sattars in Anwar.”
“And there were,” Michaels said. “The movement had spread.”