How To Get Out of Iraq

How to Get out of Iraq

From the Guys on the Ground, an Answer

The New York Times, former cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq and a failing newspaper still gamely committed to supporting a failed occupation, ran a piece on its editorial page today that was written by seven non-coms who just got back from a 15 month tour of duty in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division. The piece, entitled “The War As We Saw It” is authored by Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray and Jeremy A. Murphy. Most of them are sergeants or staff sergeants.

Given that all seven are still on active duty, and presumably aren’t interested in being court-martialed for what they wrote, they had to step carefully, and not offend the administration. This made them a perfect match for the New York Times, which also likes to step carefully and not offend the administration.

As a result, they limit themselves in the well-written piece to discussing the tactical and logistical problems they encounter, especially in dealing with a population that clearly does not want American troops to be there at all. While protesting that their morale was good and they felt duty-bound to see this “war” through to the end, they also acknowledged the utter impracticability of the notion that the US was ever going to win the support of even a measurable minority of the population. They describe the political debate in Washington, and by extension, through the US, as “surreal.”

It is surreal, especially since the president and his cohorts lied us into Iraq, are lying about why the US is still there, and are lying when they say that the US will leave once the silly “benchmarks” are achieved. I note that Putsch yesterday seems to drop the whole idea of benchmarks in his radio address, although the man is such an idiot that it’s impossible to guess whether that was a signal of some sort or he simply forgot his lines. The country isn’t buying it: over two thirds seems to believe that General Petraeus, commander of the US troops in Iraq, will not be truthful with the country when he gives his report on Iraq next month. The administration didn’t help on that one, first by saying they would give the report for him, and then by asking that the report be given secretly.

These seven grunts, none of whom have any formal diplomatic or political training, came up with the most viable answer I’ve heard yet.

First, they have the honesty to use the “O” word. America is not conducting a war in Iraq; it is conducting an occupation. Said occupation is in violation of international law, including a dozen or more treaties to which the US is a signatory.

In light of that, the Iraq government need only secure recognition from the UN, and then go to the UN and demand that the UN honor its obligations and force the Americans to leave. On this issue, the Americans have no allies outside of Kuwait and the servile fascist regime in Australia that is Mussolini to Putsch’s Hitler. A 14-1 vote in the Security Council is likely, and if the US can get rid of the Putsch junta, such a vote might be 15-0, if it needed to be taken at all.

Putsch will not leave Iraq, no matter what. He lied to the American people to start the invasion, he lied to continue it, and he’s lied to us every step of the way since. His “benchmarks” are a lie, designed only to buy more time toward a goal known only to him and the vicious and greedy men he is a stooge for.

Putsch will keep on lying to the American people until his last moment in office. He wants to stay in Iraq, and he doesn’t much care how many people are killed or maimed in the process. We’ve got over 4,800 Americans killed (including mercenary soldiers and support personnel) and at least 27,000 injured, with at least 13,000 injured so grievously they can never return to duty.

Putsch, for reasons known only to himself, figures that’s worth it, and doesn’t mind lying to the country to support it for as long as he can get away with it.

If you think his interests and those of the country conjoin in any way, think about the complicity of his administration in the rape of California and other western states by the energy companies such as Enron and Radiant. Think about the incredible incompetence and corruption that has left much of New Orleans in ruins. He couldn’t even avenge 9/11, openly dismissing the country’s demand that he bring Osama bin Laden to justice by saying he didn’t know where bin Laden was and didn’t much care. That, in turn, has led to this sad humiliation: there is no memorial to the dead at ground zero in New York yet because the admin would find it politically embarrassing.

Does this sound like a man who is willing to waste American lives on something that might benefit America? Or is this just the wastrel scion of a traitorous family of fascists willing to do whatever it takes to bring the world economy to heel?

The seven soldiers are right in what must be done to get America out without a lot more carnage on all sides. The Iraqis can solve their problems, and are much more likely to, with the Americans gone, and most of them know that well enough that they will be willing to hold fire while the Americans depart.

One of the soldiers who wrote the piece was shot in the head before it was completed. The remainder wrote “...[T]he balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head.” They concluded tersely, “He is expected to survive.”

Hopefully, he’ll do better than the poor bastard I read about in this morning’s Sacramento Bee. There, they described the torment of the family and friends of Samuel Nichols, another sergeant who was injured by an IED on July 24th. He was one of the “lucky” ones insofar as he survived. However, he suffered what the paper called “severe brain stem injuries.”

“He is expected to survive.” Indeed, at the age of 23, he could survive for 70 years. But the odds are vanishingly small that he’ll ever wake up, ever recognize a face, ever see anything, ever have a thought. He will, in all likelihood, lie in a state of semi-existence, far beyond the borders of consciousness or even dream, tormenting his family, the pace of the hitch-click of his respirator measuring time as his loved ones all grow old and die. But there will always be a faint chance he will recover at least a little bit, and as long as that chance is there, they cannot simply pull the plug.

And if his family turns to the president of the United States and asks why this man, and they, had to make such a terrible sacrifice, Putsch won’t even turn a hair.

He will simply gaze deeply into their eyes, and lie to them.

The soldiers have the right answer to how to get out of our self-created hell in Iraq. But, being good soldiers, they cannot say what must come before that can be done: Putsch and his evil administration must go.

The War As We Saw It

By Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray and Jeremy A. Murphy
The New York Times

Sunday 19 August 2007

Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. 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. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the "battle space" remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers' expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.

However, while 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.

In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a "time-sensitive target acquisition mission" on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse - namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.

The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.

Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington's insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made - de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government - places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict - as we do now - will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. "Lucky" Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, "We need security, not free food."

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are - an army of occupation - and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.

Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.