A cordon and search isn’t that different from a cordon and knock, because “knock” is a little bit of a euphemism in the military: You don’t get up there and go knock-knock-knock, “Hello? It’s the Marines…” because everyone will scramble and go for their guns. These operations are about busting in doors and taking immediate control of the situation. For our soldiers, it’s all about surprise, speed and safety.

Sometimes these types of operations are conducted at night. Historically, at least in recent times, we have been the masters of night operations, partially because of our technical accomplishments. We like to move when the sun goes down because the temperature thing is a big deal as the season progresses and you’re carrying a heavy load. A typical combat Marine is weighed down with about 65 pounds of gear, that’s with all his armor, ammunition, hand grenades, and night vision. You can imagine how a simple movement from house to house in a tactically efficient way is exhausting work.

It’s important when you’re doing a cordon and knock that you have the ability to move quickly because word will spread through the town that you’re on the way. If you’re not fast enough, people, equipment and enemy supplies that you might have captured will escape you. So you’ll move in using immediate over-watch procedures, where one unit will infiltrate while another maintains a position behind the corner of a house somewhere.

You’re hoping every time that you open the door there’s a family living there. Still, you have to maintain a tactical posture which expects the worst. Any kind of rapid movements or people looking around the room in a panicky way are tell-tale signs that something’s up. But you never know. They’re sometimes the result of being put in a pretty scary situation, and that’s why conducting these raids is one of the hardest jobs.

There’s not a police force in a lot of these towns, so from the perspective of the residents, whoever is the strongest gets to do whatever they want. That’s how the terrorists get away with stashing weapons in schools and things like that. And there might have been an impression after Fallujah that once a big operation occurred, we didn’t have the attention span or the will to get back in there. Now, after big operations we do leave, but we’re right back in there with a detailed search. We’re changing up the tempo on the insurgents to keep them off-balance. They might think that after a big attack they’re safe for a while, but that’s not the case.

As long as terrorists continue to take refuge in these towns, they’re coming to our place, and we’re very effective against that. People on both sides of the political fence are making a lot of waves about the Syrian border problem. Some people say this is why we need more troops or a draft to keep the insurgent flow from happening. But with operations like New Market, you’re actually capturing insurgents or terrorists instead of just sort of facing off against them across the border where they’re allowed to mass troops. The idea is to let them come across and capture them instead of employing a lot of money and men to build fences and walls in some sort of East Germany-West Germany fashion.

It sounds counterintuitive, but letting them in the country is actually the easiest way to control the terrorists, an idea that’s nothing revolutionary. During the Korean conflict, a unit of Marines in the Chosin Reservoir was surrounded by seven Chinese divisions, and the seven Chinese divisions were wiped out. The same thing happened later against the Viet Cong, when the United States had the wherewithal to allow combat formations to develop up in the hills. Once formed, they were much easier targets for us. The doctrine is to allow the enemy to attack us so they’ll reveal their position, then we’ll bring our arms to bear on them.

It’s best exemplified by the words of Lieutenant General Chesty Puller at the Chosin Reservoir. He said, “Gentlemen, we’re surrounded. We’ve got them right where we want them.”