BEHIND THE HEADLINES:Committed to Corps mission

EDITOR’S NOTE: Behind the Headlines is a regular feature that focuses on the people involved in the stories making news. It allows them to speak in depth on the issues that have the community talking.

Maj. Gen. Michael R. Lehnert, the former head of Camp Pendleton, said even though his father was a career Marine, he was never pushed into the military by his family. But is it really a surprise that he’s a high-ranking Marine officer today, considering he was born at Camp Lejeune, a Marine base in North Carolina?

Lehnert, 55, is tonight’s keynote speaker at Newport Beach’s third annual Mess Night, a Marine tradition that the city has turned into a black-tie affair to honor Camp Pendleton Marines and raise money for their families. The city in 2003 adopted the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines — known as the 1/1 — from Camp Pendleton and has since feted the group and given its families thousands of dollars in assistance.

Lehnert had a varied 33-year military career, but tonight at the sold-out event he will talk about the sacrifices of the military from World War II through today and the future of the people now serving in the 1/1. He recently answered a few questions by phone about his own experiences in the military.

Question: You serve as commanding general of Marine Corps Installations West. Can you describe your current job and responsibilities?

Answer: I’m in charge of seven bases. Six of those bases are in California, and one of those bases is in Yuma, Ariz. It’s sort of like I own the store and somebody else owns the merchandise…. All of the facilities and property management, all of the environmental issues including environmental law, the running of all the businesses on the base — if you’ve been on a Marine base or any military base you’ll see that there’s McDonald’s and Dominos pizza and video stores — all that’s my responsibility. Basically I run the city.

Q: You built facilities to house detainees at Guantanamo Bay in 2002. Would people recognize them as anything like American prisons, or does detaining terrorism suspects require a completely different kind of facility?

A: The first thing you have to understand is … there are some very compelling reasons why we needed to move the detainees to Guantanamo that went beyond safety and security. Afghanistan had almost zero infrastructure for detaining prisoners.

When I got the mission to build the first initial cells, the mission was to form the force, deploy the force and build the first 100 cells, all within 96 hours, and we did it in 87 hours…. What we built were essentially holding areas with individual cells for each detainee.

Probably the most compelling reasons that we brought them there was the second flight that came in had 22 wounded Al Qaeda fighters that needed immediate medical attention…. Probably [that’s] a case that has not been made by this administration — because there were some very compelling humanitarian reasons they needed to get out of Afghanistan because Afghanistan was in the middle of a war, moving into a harsh winter and had no infrastructure.

Q: What’s the condition of the U.S. military today? Is it weak and in need of more people, equipment and money; or is it leaner than other times in U.S. history but still capable because of technology?

A: For the Marine Corps, people are our most important [resource]. In that regard we have never had a better or a stronger Marine Corps, at least those people, than we have.

The majority of our Marines are combat veterans, they’re very mature, the kind of people I wish we could introduce to every single citizen in America.

Having said that, we have some Marines who are on their fourth and fifth combat tour, and the reason they have done so many combat tours is because of the size of the military and because of what they’re being asked to do.

What I am looking at long-term is can we sustain what I call this operational tempo for another four or five years without an infusion of people — that’s the debate that’s going on today…. It is up to our leadership to decide how long this fight is going to go on and what type of force to put in to the fight. Our job as [military] leaders is to ensure the Marines that are entrusted to us … are as combat-ready as we can make them.

As long as we’re being told to do our job, the Marine Corps is going to do its mission…. In 33 years I’ve served seven presidents. Some of them I voted for, some of them I didn’t, and I don’t think anybody would know — my wife included — from my actions which ones I supported and which ones I didn’t.

I don’t think this nation wants a political military.