Bing West

Francis J. "Bing" West (Boston, Massachusetts, May 2, 1940) is an American author and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Reagan Administration. His 2004 book The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the First Marine Division, written with United States Marine Corps General Ray L. Smith, received the 2004 William E. Colby Award, as well as the 2004 General Wallace M. Greene, Jr. Award given by the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation for "distinguished non-fiction dealing with U.S. Marines or Marine Corps life."

West writes about the military, warfighting, and counterinsurgency. In the Vietnam War, he fought in major operations and conducted over a hundred combat patrols in 1966-68. For the United States Marine Corps, he wrote the training manual Small Unit Action in Vietnam, describing how to fight in close combat. As an analyst at the RAND Corporation, he wrote a half dozen detailed monographs about fighting against an insurgency. Later, as Assistant Secretary of Defense, he dealt with the insurgencies in El Salvador. From 2003 through 2008, he made 16 extended trips to Iraq, going on patrols and writing three books and numerous articles about the war. Since then, he has made six trips to Afghanistan.

Life and career
West is from the Massachusetts communities of Dorchester, Boston, Milton and Scituate. He is a graduate of Georgetown University (BA) and Princeton University (MA), where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow.

West was an infantry officer in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. He served with a Combined Action Platoon that fought for 485 days in a remote village. He was also a member of the Marine Force Reconnaissance team that initiated "Operation Stingray": small unit attacks behind enemy lines. He authored a study at the RAND Corporation entitled "The Strike Teams: Tactical Performance and Strategic Potential". This paper was the featured event at the 1970 Department of Defense Counterinsurgency Research and Development Symposium. The RAND Military Systems Simulations Group implemented a classified model of West's concept. This doctrinal innovation was directly opposed by Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), which favored the Army's concept of Air-Mobility "Fire and Thunder Operations". By way of rebuttal, West wrote The Village, chronicling the daily lives of 15 Marines who protected Vietnamese villagers by living among them in their hamlets. The book became a classic of practical counterinsurgency and has been on the Marine Corps Commandant’s Required Reading List for 36 years.

West served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Ronald Reagan administration, and chaired the United States Security Commissions with El Salvador, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, South Korea, and Japan. He is currently president of the GAMA Corporation, which designs wargames and combat decision-making simulations.

Among other awards, West is the recipient of the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal, the Department of the Navy Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, and Tunisia's Medaille de Liberté. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Middle East Institute, the Military Order of the Carabao, and the Infantry Order of St. Crispin, he appears frequently on C-SPAN and The News Hour on PBS.

Writing
West is the author of seven books. His collaboration with retired Marine Major General Ray "E-Tool" Smith, The March Up, was awarded the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation's General Wallace M. Greene, Jr. Award for non-fiction, as well as the William E. Colby Award for military history. West also authored a foreword for Boredom by Day, Death by Night: An Iraq War Journal by Marine Sergeant Seth Conner. The Veterans of Foreign Wars presented West with its National Media Award in 2005, after he wrote the book No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah. His book The Strongest Tribe, is a history of the Iraq War that was a New York Times Best Seller and was ranked by Foreign Affairs magazine as #7 among the top foreign policy books of 2009.

In The Strongest Tribe and in a subsequent article in Military Review about counterinsurgency lessons, West argued that the current doctrine of nation-building and winning hearts and minds by economic development was based on Western liberal theory rather than the realities of battle. West has grave reservations about extolling the effects of "non-kinetic COIN" (counterinsurgency). He believes that the warriors, not the people, defeat warriors, and that America's mistake in both Iraq and Afghanistan was to concede all authority to appoint and to remove for cause military and police officers. He believes insurgencies proceed from the bottom up, and must be dealt with at the local level. To that extent, each American battalion operates as a separate franchise. Variations among units are extraordinary because the high command has lacked a set of practical guiding principles.

His articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The National Review, and The Washington Post.

Personal life
West lives with his wife, Elizabeth, in Newport, Rhode Island. He has a daughter Kaki West, who is a Los Angeles-based model-turned-actress and a son, Patrick West who is an events professional in New York City.

Books

 * Small Unit Action in Vietnam, Summer 1966. ISBN 0-405-00018-9.
 * The Village. ISBN 0-7434-5757-9.
 * The Pepperdogs: a Novel. ISBN 0-7434-5643-2.
 * The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the US Marines. ISBN 0-553-38269-1.
 * No True Glory: a Front-line Account of the Battle of Fallujah. ISBN 0-553-80402-2.
 * The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq (Random House, 2008) ISBN 1-4000-6701-4
 * The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan ISBN 1-4000-6873-8.