Erik Swabb

Erik Swabb is a former U.S. Marine infantry officer and veteran of the war in Iraq who appeared July 12, 2007, on the Diane Rehm Show as a member of the pro-war Republican front group Vets for Freedom.

In 2004-2005, former 1st Lt. Swabb served in Iraq as "a member of the Marine Corps' 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion's Apache Company, which is based out of Camp Lejeune in North Carolina."

Swabb is a member of the class of '09 at Harvard Law School. He is a staff member of the Harvard Journal on Legislation.

---

On the war in Iraq

Swabb is quoted in the April 22, 2007, edition of Harvard Law School News as saying "Ninety-five percent of what happened over there, I'm willing to talk about. ... When you work with Iraqis who are possibly trying to kill you, lots of things you do are in the gray area. I didn't know where they fell on the moral spectrum. But I think I'm able to get a lot out of this education because I'm dealing with ideals, or legal principles, and then I'm thinking about what the reality is."

In a March 20, 2007, op-ed, Swabb wrote "As the war in Iraq enters its fifth year with no end in sight, the public's desire to leave Iraq is understandable. But it is also unfortunate. The troop 'surge' and the accompanying new security plan for Baghdad stand a real chance of reducing violence to a level that will allow the Iraqi government to emerge as a legitimate authority worth supporting. For the first time, the military is applying a winning strategy in the capital."

"Instead of this approach, top commanders in Iraq previously focused on the assumption that the presence of US troops fueled the insurgency. The goal was thus to replace US troops with Iraqi forces. As US troops left, security would improve. While this approach had a certain logic to it, facts on the ground never bore it out because Iraqi forces proved incapable or unwilling to protect both Sunnis and Shi'ites. Previous security plans for Baghdad consisted almost wholly of Iraqi forces and were complete failures," Swabb wrote.

In a June 29, 2006, statement before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats, and Capabilities, Max Boot, Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations said:

"There is widespread concern, including within the armed forces, that a predilection for 'kinetic' solutions has made the situation in parts of Iraq worse, not better. In this regard, I was stuck by an op-ed published recently in the Baltimore Sun ('Military Must Share the Blame,' June 20, 2006) by a Marine officer named Erik Swabb who served in Fallujah in 2004-2005. He writes that prior to deployment, 'We did not understand certain dynamics at play, such as the notion that excessive force protection alienates the populace, reduces intelligence and, therefore, makes one less secure. We knew how to raid a house but not how to build local relationships and learn where insurgents were hiding. We did not know these crucial aspects of counterinsurgency because we had never received training about them.'

"Keep in mind that Swabb went to Iraq more than year into the guerrilla war, and that he served in the Marine Corps, which has traditionally placed more emphasis on 'small war' skills than have the other services. And yet, by his own testimony, he did not understand the most basic tenets of counterinsurgency warfare—especially the fundamental paradox that too much aggression can be counterproductive, and that a 'softer' approach can actually produce better results."

Resources and articles

External articles

• Sherry Parmet, "N.C.-based lieutenant home from Iraq stops in Oceanside," North County Times, April 13, 2005.
• Erik Swabb, "Train soldiers to win hearts and minds," Christian Science Monitor, September 20, 2006.
• "Testimonial: Erik Swabb, Columbia College 02, former Marine infantry lieutenant," Hamilton Society of Columbia University Blogspot, October 7, 2006.
• Cliff Schecter, "Oh my jeebus," Cliff Schechter Blogspot, July 12, 2007.