Decline and Fall

...is a bitch.

I haven't been officially diagnosed (that will have to wait until I get back stateside, in August) but the signs are all there: obsessive thoughts about horrific scenes I witnessed in Iraq, anxiety at the mere mention of anything having to do with that war, extreme guilt at having willingly participated in such a colossally wicked venture, sleepless nights, mood swings, constant fidgeting, and the strong proclivity to self-medicate by any means necessary. I have good days and bad days, but they've been mostly bad, and certainly worse than they were when I blogged about them before.

The worst for me is the guilt and the anger. Guilt for what I was a part of and anger that such a war could happen, or that people could still believe there is anything remotely positive about our military presence in Mesopotamia. As Thoreau put it so ably at Unqualified Offerings:

It outrages me more than I can describe that there are still apologists for this. It outrages me more than I can describe that there are people who can look at this and say "Yep, we sure made the right choice there!" And it outrages me more than I can describe that the people who look at this and see no evil are actually taken seriously. They are invited to speak and write in serious venues. They are warmly thanked for offering their amoral apologies. They are allowed to remain in power rather than impeached, convicted, removed, and stripped of privilege. They are able to walk down the street undisturbed when they should be cursed and pelted with trash. They should be sprawled on a sidewalk next the McPherson Square Metro Station, hoping to cadge enough quarters to enjoy the rare treat of laundering the vomit out of the only shirt they own, praying all the while that decent people do not recognize them beneath the matted beard and tangled hair.

In a real republic Bush would have been drummed out of office by now and the last thing any major candidate for the Presidency would say is that we might be in Iraq for another 100 years. Just thinking about it makes me so... anxious. Every time I hear a war apologist speak I am overcome with grief and it's a good hour before my mind's back on track. This is my war casualty: a complete inability to escape from that place for longer than a couple of hours.

Seeking mindless distraction, I went to see Ironman the other day, and boy was that a mistake. The predictably evil defense contractor (played by Jeff Bridges, who always looks like Jeff Lebowski to me, which is a bit disconcerting) reminded me so much of my old boss in the war-profiteering biz--warm and friendly on the outside, cold and heartless on the inside--that I spent half the movie trying to will away my flashbacks, then spent the next several hours after the movie drinking alone in my apartment. Such an innocuous reference from such a banal movie shouldn't produce such a powerful reaction, but such is life after war, for me at least. Suffice it to say I won't be watching Rendition or In the Valley of Elah any time soon.

So there it is: I'm pretty messed up in the head right now, and there's not a lot I can do but try to work through it. It's not like there are VA programs for DoD Contractors with PTSD. That's why the federal government loves contractors so much: there's no long-term commitment. A servicemember has all those whiny legislators demanding benefits (and overriding Bush's veto... we hope) for the troops, but us temps, we're on our own. Now that I'm not working for the company that paid me to go to Iraq, I'm nobody's problem but my own. Hell, I don't even have medical insurance any more. I swear to FSM I'm moving to Canada or Denmark some day.

Discovering that your soul has a price isn't a pleasant experience, but I'm the guy who signed on the dotted line, so it's my cross to bear. I wish I had read the fine print.

Cross-posted at OOIBC.

Labels: Iraq, OOIBC, personal, politics, PTSD

I'm glad to see that the media has finally done its job and uncovered the completely unsurprising links between the retired generals who serve as supposedly-independent Military Analysts on TV news and the Pentagon and Military Contractors whose talking points they invariably echo. It's one thing to know that there's no way these guys were picked because of their complete independence from the Pentagon and its big business contractors. It's another to have evidence that it goes so much further than that. It's a must-read.

A minor point I think deserves to be rebutted is this one from Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman:

It was, Mr. Whitman added, "a bit incredible" to think retired military officers could be "wound up" and turned into "puppets of the Defense Department."

If you believe this, you don't know the military very well. These guys all retired at the rank of Colonel or higher, and if there's anything a soldier could tell you about the guys at the top of the pyramid, it's that they seem to have no idea what goes on at the bottom of it. The Colonels and Generals I've seen in Iraq rarely leave their offices, except to take other Generals and Colonels on tours in their helicopters. They are briefed more than once a day on operations, but those briefings are often a bit... sanitized to protect their subordinates. They simply don't have the feel that the guys outside the wire have for what's going on. Given the lack of recently retired Buck Sergeant hired to be a Military Analyst on MSNBC, this makes for a somewhat skewed view of the battlefield.

But more tragically, there's a system in place that almost ensures that by the time you reach the rank of General, you've spent so much time with your nose up the ass of the people who made it before you that it's the only way you know how to operate. You see, there aren't all that many openings for Generals in the military, so they can be choosy in who they pick to wear those stars. One of the main criteria for making it that far is having a spotless or near-spotless OER (Officer's Evaluation Report). To get a good OER, you basically have to be competent in your position and not piss off your commander.

And what might piss off a commander? Well, considering that he's got an OER of his own to look after, anything that might wreck his next promotion is pretty high on that list. All this basically means that the last thing you want to do as a junior officer looking up at the stars is think outside the box, take risks, put yourself on the line, or any of those other things that businesses were hiring consultants to tell them to do 10 years ago. The people who make General tend to be above average in intelligence, but risk-averse, thanks to a system that encourages lockstep thinking and looks askance at anything that bucks tradition.

So no, Mr. Whitman, it's not "a bit incredible" that retired Generals are puppets of the system. That's how they got there in the first place. And thanks to the extremely lucrative after-market in the defense contracting and lobbying business, these retired Generals know they've got to dance with the one that brung 'em. The quote from retired Colonel John C. Garrett in an email to the Pentagon shows just how closely tied these guys are to the system that created them. Preparing to go on FOX News to talk about the (then-upcoming) surge, he stated:

"Please let me know if you have any specific points you want covered or that you would prefer to downplay."

Almost as painful as the system that reduces America's military leaders into glad-handing yes-men is the pathetic cravenness of a figure such as Garrett, whose pitiful servility to the Administration and the Pentagon is so clearly expressed in this quote. He's not a man, he's a robot, sent out to do the bidding of his masters. Instead of leading, he's following, like a Private in Basic Training. Instead of getting the opinion of a Pattonesque leader, a man of action, a thick-skinned, no-nonsense man's man that the viewers imagine they'll get when the magic words "Retired General" flash across the screen, they get this mincing courtier saying nothing that we hadn't already heard from Ari Fleischer or Sean Hannity. We want Chesty Puller, but we get Willy Loman.

Cross-posted at OOIBC.

Labels: Framing, Iraq, military, OOIBC

Regarding the motivations of the insurgents I interrogated in Iraq, a week ago I wrote:

The vast majority of them weren't radical Muslims, bin Laden acolytes or Saddam hardliners; they were motivated by nationalism. They opposed the U.S. occupation of what they saw as their sovereign land (silly them!) so they lashed out in the most meaningful way they could: at the "collaborators" in their midst aiding and abetting the occupying, colonial power. It's basic insurgency doctrine, folks. In my experience, "religious fanaticism" is the veneer that some in Iraq, and even more in the West, use to cover what is essentially the struggle to get out from under the thumb of a strongman.

Later last week, The Washington Monthly published an article by Andrew Tilghman, former Stars & Stripes reporter, that came to a similar conclusion, and on Tuesday Gallup released a poll analysis that supports my anecdotal experience. (Thanks to Framing Science for the link) The pollsters discovered that political grievances, rather than religious ones, are the prime motivating factors behind Violent Islamic Extremism:

After analyzing survey data representing more than 90% of the global Muslim population, Gallup found that despite widespread anti-American sentiment, only a small minority saw the 9/11 attacks as morally justified. Even more significant, there was no correlation between level of religiosity and extremism among respondents. Among the 7% of the population that fits in the politically radicalized category -- those who saw the 9/11 attacks as completely justifiable and have an unfavorable view of the United States -- 94% said religion is an important part of their daily lives, compared with 90% among those in the moderate majority. And no significant difference exists between radicals and moderates in mosque attendance.

Gallup probed respondents further and actually asked both those who condoned and condemned extremist acts why they said what they did. The responses fly in the face of conventional wisdom. For example, in Indonesia, the largest Muslim majority country in the world, many of those who condemned terrorism cited humanitarian or religious justifications to support their response. For example, one woman said, "Killing one life is as sinful as killing the whole world," paraphrasing verse 5:32 in the Quran.

On the other hand, not a single respondent in Indonesia who condoned the attacks of 9/11 cited the Quran for justification. Instead, this group's responses were markedly secular and worldly. For example, one Indonesian respondent said, "The U.S. government is too controlling toward other countries, seems like colonizing."

The real difference between those who condone terrorist acts and all others is about politics, not piety. For example, the politically radicalized often cite "occupation and U.S. domination" as their greatest fear for their country and only a small minority of them agree the United States would allow people in the region to fashion their own political future or that it is serious about supporting democracy in the region. Also, among this group's top responses was the view that to better relations with the Muslim world, the West should respect Islam and stop imposing its beliefs and policies. In contrast, moderates most often mentioned economic problems as their greatest fear for their country, and along with respecting Islam, they see economic support and investments as a way for the West to better relations. Moderates are also more likely than the politically radicalized to say the United States is serious about promoting democracy.

Note how counter-intuitive this all seems from the Clash of Civilizations perspective through which the entire GWOT has been filtered for us. No significant difference in mosque attendance between radicals and moderates. The Quran cited only as justification for abhorring violence, not condoning it. American occupation and lack of respect are the reasons the radicals fight us, not the results of their fight against us.

The implications of a study such as this are enormous. The most obvious is that if we are going to claim to be serious about fighting terrorism, we need to focus our efforts on the factors that actually motivate people to become terrorists, not the factors we continue to insist motivate them. Killing or incarcerating a terrorist or insurgent may take one of them out of circulation, but if you create two new ones for every one you destroy, you are going backward, not forward.

I saw this dynamic when I was an interrogator in Iraq. Coalition forces would arrest an insurgent, humiliate him in front of his family, keep him in prison for months, and then release him without charges. In the meantime he learned to hate us (even if he hadn't before) and, more importantly, his family learned to hate us. While he was learning to hate us, he was in a population that was uniquely qualified to fan the flames of his hatred and teach him how he might better act on it. Meanwhile his family and close friends were now easy targets for recruitment. In getting rid of one "terrorist," we created several. Is it any wonder that the estimated number of insurgents in Iraq jumped from 5,000 (total) in 2003 to 70,000 (Sunni) in 2007, while the prison population skyrocketed from 10,000 to 60,000? (See pp. 25-26 of this Brookings Institute report for details.)

When will we realize that our presence in the Middle East and our support of tyrants such as Mubarek and the Saudi Royal Family are not only not helping ease the troubles in the region, they are the primary cause for those troubles? Middle Easterners are not stupid. They can see that America has a long history of supporting brutal dictators (remember the Shah?) and they have learned from that experience that we are not to be trusted. They see us stomping around the world with our big stick and turn to whatever means of resistance they can find to resist what they see as the assault on their culture by the biggest bully on earth. The fact that militant Islam is their only major option should not cause us to confuse their motives

Cross-posted at OOIBC.

Labels: Framing, fundamentalism, GWOT, interrogation, Iraq, Islam, OOIBC, personal, politics, terrorism

Michael Goldfarb is right to chastise some on the left for wanting to have it both ways regarding the Petraeus testimony--either Petraeus is a stooge for the Administration or he isn't. Here's the General's hand-wringing non-response to Sen. Warner's question of whether the Iraq war is making America safer:

"I don't know, actually. I have not sat down and sorted in my own mind."

That reaction seems to me to be a tacitly negative response. If he were truly the lapdog that he's been accused of being, he would have at least muttered something incoherent about success in Iraq being a "vital national interest" or something, but instead he hid behind what is, in all honesty, at least a somewhat legitimate dodge: it's not his job to assess the war's implications for the overall national security of the United States.

I say "somewhat legitimate," because, as a Four-Star General, one would think that he would have pondered this question at least a bit. Even if he hasn't spent his waking hours as MNF-I Commander agonizing over the pros and cons of the Iraq War vis-a-vis the threat to America proper, he certainly ought to have at least entertained some thoughts in that direction during the years he spent at the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center writing the Army's Counter-Insurgency doctrine. After all, he was back in the U.S. working explicitly on the Army's broader missions, which one would think would include things that fell under the heading of "support[ing] and defend[ing] the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic."

So actually, Petraeus should have been able to answer that question more fully at the time. Given the constraints of the political circus that his testimony could only be, I can understand why he would hesitate to dive right in with a bold declaration that the Iraq War is doing bupkis to protect America.

But then he got his bearings, remembered why he was there, and came clean in exactly the incoherent "vital interest" vein that we have come to expect from a political class that excels at saying nothing:

Candidly, I have been so focused on Iraq that drawing all the way out was something that for a moment there was a bit of a surprise.

But I think that we have very, very clear and very serious national interests in Iraq. Trying to achieve those interests — achieving those interests has very serious implications for our safety and for our security. So I think the answer really, to come back to it is yes.

"Very, very clear and very serious" national interests. Good boy. No word yet on what those interests actually are.

I suspect that his initial instinct--to run from that question with all his might because he knows the frank answer will be counter-productive to his Commander-in-Chief's staged love-in for a tragically ill-advised and destructive campaign--was borne out of unease. That hesitation betrayed a lot more about Petraeus' thoughts than anyone with a political axe to grind--left or right--is willing to admit.

I suspect that he is a man who is conflicted about the overall war, his role in it, and his responsibilities as a commander tasked with managing it. That he only came to his senses and played the political ball game when he had been allowed a moment to consider his options at least says that he has struggled with his faith.

Anyone who has ever believed in something and been put in a position where they had to act on those beliefs but entertained thoughts to the contrary should understand this. I know I do, because I came to Iraq the first time in 2004 with nothing but praise for the enterprise, only coming to realize that it was a bad idea and a lost cause after experience and reflection. That was a long process, though. Could General Petraeus be going through a similar existential crisis? I'd like to think so.

But even after changing my mind, I still had (and have) a job to do, as does Petraeus, only in a vastly more significant way. While I'm free to distance myself intellectually from the strategy and the entire war, he isn't. As Goldfarb concludes, "he's not there to defend the war--despite what the left is saying--he's there to defend the strategy." Goldfarb is right about that, but only in the sense that this "report" isn't really a report; it's a public relations campaign for a failed strategy. In a political culture that was less poisoned by naked partisanship, he would have been there to report on a strategy. But we always knew that wouldn't really be the case. Only a partisan hack like Goldfarb, however, would call that a good thing.

Cross-posted at OOIBC.

Labels: Iraq, military, OOIBC, politics

Cross-posted at OOIBC.

As General Petraeus testifies in the dog and pony show on Capitol Hill this week, news comes that two of the seven soldiers who wrote the brilliant New York Times Op-Ed “The War as We Saw It,” Sgt. Omar Mora and Sgt. Yance T. Gray, died when their cargo truck overturned. They were scheduled to come home in November.

These soldiers understood the pointlessness of their mission, and they understood the enormous sacrifice that they were asked to make, and have now made, in service of that pointlessness. Their honest and incisive assessment cut through the usual blather of the Iraq debate with an eloquence and an authority that has rarely been seen in the tired platitudes that pass for American political discourse:

To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched.

Simple, erudite and brutally honest. Three qualities that are in short supply on Capitol Hill this week.

As Petraeus, Crocker and their Administration bosses spin their statistics and pat themselves on the back for the “Anbar miracle,” remember what those seven, now five, soldiers wrote:

[W]hile creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

A real political solution requires that the proxies, be they Sunni tribes bought and paid for by us, the central Iraqi government, or any other group working with us, actually be working toward the goal of a unified Iraq. If they aren’t, they are just using us to strengthen their hand until the opportunity to jump ship arises. This is the Achilles’ heel of any lofty goals the Masters of War ever had of bringing democracy, peace and stability to Iraq. This is what should be honestly discussed on the Hill this week.

America owes it to them to have this discussion.

R.I.P.

**UPDATE** Thank you, Blue Girl, for the no-subscription-required link to The War as We Saw It at Behind the Times, who re-posted it and is leaving it at the top of the page all day in honor of Sergeants Mora and Gray.

Labels: Iraq, OOIBC

If you look to your right, you'll notice that there are a bunch of new links there. That's because I've joined the Out of Iraq Blogger's Caucus, a group of bloggers united by the following positions:

1) Opposed to the Iraq Supplemental Appropriations Bill.
2) Opposed to funding Bush's Iraq Occupation Debacle.
3) Committed to getting the troops home as soon as possible.
4) Determined to end George W. Bush's Iraq and Mid-East Debacle as quickly as possible.
5) Determined to restore some sanity to the world.

You can imagine that this was not a difficult test for me to pass.

So take a moment to check out my fellow bloggers, including previous faves Welcome to Pottersville and Army of Dude. I haven't visited them all yet but I'll get there.

And stop by the main OOIBC site for some Iraq blog goodness, including occasional cross-postings from yours truly, because sometimes they're worth reading more than once.

Labels: Iraq, OOIBC