2 letters home from Iraq ( a soldier and a reporter)
pkj | 01.10.2004 00:55 | Anti-militarism | Sheffield | World
Two letters home from Iraq published this past week. One from a serving US army sergeant, the other from a Wall Street Journal reporter.
His Master's Boot
Why We Cannot Win
by Al Lorentz
Before I begin, let me state that I am a soldier currently deployed in Iraq, I am not an armchair quarterback. Nor am I some politically idealistic and naïve young soldier, I am an old and seasoned Non-Commissioned Officer with nearly 20 years under my belt.
Additionally, I am not just a soldier with a muds-eye view of the war, I am in Civil Affairs and as such, it is my job to be aware of all the events occurring in this country and specifically in my region.
I have come to the conclusion that we cannot win here for a number of reasons. Ideology and idealism will never trump history and reality.
When we were preparing to deploy, I told my young soldiers to beware of the "political solution." Just when you think you have the situation on the ground in hand, someone will come along with a political directive that throws you off the tracks.
I believe that we could have won this un-Constitutional invasion of Iraq and possibly pulled off the even more un-Constitutional occupation and subjugation of this sovereign nation. It might have even been possible to foist democracy on these people who seem to have no desire, understanding or respect for such an institution. True the possibility of pulling all this off was a long shot and would have required several hundred billion dollars and even more casualties than we’ve seen to date but again it would have been possible, not realistic or necessary but possible.
Here are the specific reasons why we cannot win in Iraq.
First, we refuse to deal in reality. We are in a guerilla war, but because of politics, we are not allowed to declare it a guerilla war and must label the increasingly effective guerilla forces arrayed against us as "terrorists, criminals and dead-enders."
This implies that there is a zero sum game at work, i.e. we can simply kill X number of the enemy and then the fight is over, mission accomplished, everybody wins. Unfortunately, this is not the case. We have few tools at our disposal and those are proving to be wholly ineffective at fighting the guerillas.
The idea behind fighting a guerilla army is not to destroy its every man (an impossibility since he hides himself by day amongst the populace). Rather the idea in guerilla warfare is to erode or destroy his base of support.
So long as there is support for the guerilla, for every one you kill two more rise up to take his place. More importantly, when your tools for killing him are precision guided munitions, raids and other acts that create casualties among the innocent populace, you raise the support for the guerillas and undermine the support for yourself. (A 500-pound precision bomb has a casualty-producing radius of 400 meters minimum; do the math.)
Second, our assessment of what motivates the average Iraqi was skewed, again by politically motivated "experts." We came here with some fantasy idea that the natives were all ignorant, mud-hut dwelling camel riders who would line the streets and pelt us with rose petals, lay palm fronds in the street and be eternally grateful. While at one time there may have actually been support and respect from the locals, months of occupation by our regular military forces have turned the formerly friendly into the recently hostile.
Attempts to correct the thinking in this regard are in vain; it is not politically correct to point out the fact that the locals are not only disliking us more and more, they are growing increasingly upset and often overtly hostile. Instead of addressing the reasons why the locals are becoming angry and discontented, we allow politicians in Washington DC to give us pat and convenient reasons that are devoid of any semblance of reality.
We are told that the locals are not upset because we have a hostile, aggressive and angry Army occupying their nation. We are told that they are not upset at the police state we have created, or at the manner of picking their representatives for them. Rather we are told, they are upset because of a handful of terrorists, criminals and dead enders in their midst have made them upset, that and of course the ever convenient straw man of "left wing media bias."
Third, the guerillas are filling their losses faster than we can create them. This is almost always the case in guerilla warfare, especially when your tactics for battling the guerillas are aimed at killing guerillas instead of eroding their support. For every guerilla we kill with a "smart bomb" we kill many more innocent civilians and create rage and anger in the Iraqi community. This rage and anger translates into more recruits for the terrorists and less support for us.
We have fallen victim to the body count mentality all over again. We have shown a willingness to inflict civilian casualties as a necessity of war without realizing that these same casualties create waves of hatred against us. These angry Iraqi citizens translate not only into more recruits for the guerilla army but also into more support of the guerilla army.
Fourth, their lines of supply and communication are much shorter than ours and much less vulnerable. We must import everything we need into this place; this costs money and is dangerous. Whether we fly the supplies in or bring them by truck, they are vulnerable to attack, most especially those brought by truck. This not only increases the likelihood of the supplies being interrupted. Every bean, every bullet and every bandage becomes infinitely more expensive.
Conversely, the guerillas live on top of their supplies and are showing every indication of developing a very sophisticated network for obtaining them. Further, they have the advantage of the close support of family and friends and traditional religious networks.
Fifth, we consistently underestimate the enemy and his capabilities. Many military commanders have prepared to fight exactly the wrong war here.
Our tactics have not adjusted to the battlefield and we are falling behind.
Meanwhile the enemy updates his tactics and has shown a remarkable resiliency and adaptability.
Because the current administration is more concerned with its image than it is with reality, it prefers symbolism to substance: soldiers are dying here and being maimed and crippled for life. It is tragic, indeed criminal that our elected public servants would so willingly sacrifice our nation's prestige and honor as well as the blood and treasure to pursue an agenda that is ahistoric and un-Constitutional.
It is all the more ironic that this un-Constitutional mission is being performed by citizen soldiers such as myself who swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, the same oath that the commander in chief himself has sworn.
September 20, 2004
Al Lorentz [send him mail] is former state chairman of the Constitution Party of Texas and is a reservist currently serving with the US Army in Iraq.
_________________________________________________________________
What does a journalist honestly think of the situation in Iraq?
Friday September 24 2004
From: Farnaz Fassihi, Wall Street Journal
Subject: From Baghdad
Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference.
Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people’s homes and never walk in the streets. I can’t go grocery shopping any more, can’t eat in restaurants, can’t strike a conversation with strangers, can’t look for stories, can’t drive in any thing but a full armored car, can’t go to scenes of breaking news stories, can’t be stuck in traffic, can’t speak English outside, can’t take a road trip, can’t say I’m an American, can’t linger at checkpoints, can’t be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can’t and can’t….
There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second.
It’s hard to pinpoint when the ‘turning point’ exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq’s population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush’s rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a ‘potential’ threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to ‘imminent and active threat,’ a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.
Iraqis like to call this mess ‘the situation.’ When asked ‘how are thing?’ they reply: ‘the situation is very bad.”
What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn’t control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country’s roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerrilla war.
In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health— which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers-- has now stopped disclosing them.
Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.
A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq.
For journalists the significant turning point came with the wave of abduction and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around Baghdad because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a journalist female friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women had been abducted from their homes in broad daylight. Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this week and the Brit, were abducted from their homes in a residential neighbourhood. They were supplying the entire block with round the clock electricity from their generator to win friends. The abductors grabbed one of them at 6 a.m. when he came out to switch on the generator; his beheaded body was thrown back near the neighbourhoods.
The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down. If any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated every day. The various elements within it—Baathists, criminals, nationalists and Al Qaeda—are cooperating and coordinating.
I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the military and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were sombrely told our fate would largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping chain once it was determined we were missing. Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to the Baathist to the criminals. My friend Georges, the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is still alive.
America’s last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi police and National Guard units we are spending billions of dollars to train. The cops are being murdered by the dozens every day—over 700 to date-- and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly.
As for reconstruction: firstly it’s so unsafe for foreigners to operate that almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, of the $18 billion Congress appropriated for Iraq reconstruction only about $1 billion or so has been spent and a chuck has now been reallocated for improving security, a sign of just how bad things are going here.
Oil dreams? Insurgents disrupt oil flow routinely as a result of sabotage and oil prices have hit record high of $49 a barrel.
Who did this war exactly benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq?
Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity. Guess what? They say they’d take security over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler.
I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad.
Then I went to see an Iraqi scholar this week to talk to him about elections here. He has been trying to educate the public on the importance of voting. He said, “President Bush wanted to turn Iraq into a democracy that would be an example for the Middle East. Forget about democracy, forget about being a model for the region, we have to salvage Iraq before all is lost.”
One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it’s hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral.
The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can’t be put back into a bottle.
The Iraqi government is talking about having elections in three months while half of the country remains a ‘no go zone’—out of the hands of the government and the Americans and out of reach of journalists. In the other half, the disenchanted population is too terrified to show up at polling stations. The Sunnis have already said they’d boycott elections, leaving the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and Shiites that will not be deemed as legitimate and will most certainly lead to civil war.
I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would participate in the Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to some degree elect a leadership. His response summed it all: “Go and vote and risk being blown into pieces or followed by the insurgents and murdered for cooperating with the Americans? For what? To practice democracy? Are you joking?”
-Farnaz Fassihi, Wall Street Journal "Farnaz Fassihi" on Fri, 24 Sep 2004 04:09:29 -0400
by Al Lorentz
Before I begin, let me state that I am a soldier currently deployed in Iraq, I am not an armchair quarterback. Nor am I some politically idealistic and naïve young soldier, I am an old and seasoned Non-Commissioned Officer with nearly 20 years under my belt.
Additionally, I am not just a soldier with a muds-eye view of the war, I am in Civil Affairs and as such, it is my job to be aware of all the events occurring in this country and specifically in my region.
I have come to the conclusion that we cannot win here for a number of reasons. Ideology and idealism will never trump history and reality.
When we were preparing to deploy, I told my young soldiers to beware of the "political solution." Just when you think you have the situation on the ground in hand, someone will come along with a political directive that throws you off the tracks.
I believe that we could have won this un-Constitutional invasion of Iraq and possibly pulled off the even more un-Constitutional occupation and subjugation of this sovereign nation. It might have even been possible to foist democracy on these people who seem to have no desire, understanding or respect for such an institution. True the possibility of pulling all this off was a long shot and would have required several hundred billion dollars and even more casualties than we’ve seen to date but again it would have been possible, not realistic or necessary but possible.
Here are the specific reasons why we cannot win in Iraq.
First, we refuse to deal in reality. We are in a guerilla war, but because of politics, we are not allowed to declare it a guerilla war and must label the increasingly effective guerilla forces arrayed against us as "terrorists, criminals and dead-enders."
This implies that there is a zero sum game at work, i.e. we can simply kill X number of the enemy and then the fight is over, mission accomplished, everybody wins. Unfortunately, this is not the case. We have few tools at our disposal and those are proving to be wholly ineffective at fighting the guerillas.
The idea behind fighting a guerilla army is not to destroy its every man (an impossibility since he hides himself by day amongst the populace). Rather the idea in guerilla warfare is to erode or destroy his base of support.
So long as there is support for the guerilla, for every one you kill two more rise up to take his place. More importantly, when your tools for killing him are precision guided munitions, raids and other acts that create casualties among the innocent populace, you raise the support for the guerillas and undermine the support for yourself. (A 500-pound precision bomb has a casualty-producing radius of 400 meters minimum; do the math.)
Second, our assessment of what motivates the average Iraqi was skewed, again by politically motivated "experts." We came here with some fantasy idea that the natives were all ignorant, mud-hut dwelling camel riders who would line the streets and pelt us with rose petals, lay palm fronds in the street and be eternally grateful. While at one time there may have actually been support and respect from the locals, months of occupation by our regular military forces have turned the formerly friendly into the recently hostile.
Attempts to correct the thinking in this regard are in vain; it is not politically correct to point out the fact that the locals are not only disliking us more and more, they are growing increasingly upset and often overtly hostile. Instead of addressing the reasons why the locals are becoming angry and discontented, we allow politicians in Washington DC to give us pat and convenient reasons that are devoid of any semblance of reality.
We are told that the locals are not upset because we have a hostile, aggressive and angry Army occupying their nation. We are told that they are not upset at the police state we have created, or at the manner of picking their representatives for them. Rather we are told, they are upset because of a handful of terrorists, criminals and dead enders in their midst have made them upset, that and of course the ever convenient straw man of "left wing media bias."
Third, the guerillas are filling their losses faster than we can create them. This is almost always the case in guerilla warfare, especially when your tactics for battling the guerillas are aimed at killing guerillas instead of eroding their support. For every guerilla we kill with a "smart bomb" we kill many more innocent civilians and create rage and anger in the Iraqi community. This rage and anger translates into more recruits for the terrorists and less support for us.
We have fallen victim to the body count mentality all over again. We have shown a willingness to inflict civilian casualties as a necessity of war without realizing that these same casualties create waves of hatred against us. These angry Iraqi citizens translate not only into more recruits for the guerilla army but also into more support of the guerilla army.
Fourth, their lines of supply and communication are much shorter than ours and much less vulnerable. We must import everything we need into this place; this costs money and is dangerous. Whether we fly the supplies in or bring them by truck, they are vulnerable to attack, most especially those brought by truck. This not only increases the likelihood of the supplies being interrupted. Every bean, every bullet and every bandage becomes infinitely more expensive.
Conversely, the guerillas live on top of their supplies and are showing every indication of developing a very sophisticated network for obtaining them. Further, they have the advantage of the close support of family and friends and traditional religious networks.
Fifth, we consistently underestimate the enemy and his capabilities. Many military commanders have prepared to fight exactly the wrong war here.
Our tactics have not adjusted to the battlefield and we are falling behind.
Meanwhile the enemy updates his tactics and has shown a remarkable resiliency and adaptability.
Because the current administration is more concerned with its image than it is with reality, it prefers symbolism to substance: soldiers are dying here and being maimed and crippled for life. It is tragic, indeed criminal that our elected public servants would so willingly sacrifice our nation's prestige and honor as well as the blood and treasure to pursue an agenda that is ahistoric and un-Constitutional.
It is all the more ironic that this un-Constitutional mission is being performed by citizen soldiers such as myself who swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, the same oath that the commander in chief himself has sworn.
September 20, 2004
Al Lorentz [send him mail] is former state chairman of the Constitution Party of Texas and is a reservist currently serving with the US Army in Iraq.
_________________________________________________________________
What does a journalist honestly think of the situation in Iraq?
Friday September 24 2004
From: Farnaz Fassihi, Wall Street Journal
Subject: From Baghdad
Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference.
Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people’s homes and never walk in the streets. I can’t go grocery shopping any more, can’t eat in restaurants, can’t strike a conversation with strangers, can’t look for stories, can’t drive in any thing but a full armored car, can’t go to scenes of breaking news stories, can’t be stuck in traffic, can’t speak English outside, can’t take a road trip, can’t say I’m an American, can’t linger at checkpoints, can’t be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can’t and can’t….
There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second.
It’s hard to pinpoint when the ‘turning point’ exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq’s population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush’s rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a ‘potential’ threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to ‘imminent and active threat,’ a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.
Iraqis like to call this mess ‘the situation.’ When asked ‘how are thing?’ they reply: ‘the situation is very bad.”
What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn’t control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country’s roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerrilla war.
In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health— which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers-- has now stopped disclosing them.
Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.
A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq.
For journalists the significant turning point came with the wave of abduction and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around Baghdad because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a journalist female friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women had been abducted from their homes in broad daylight. Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this week and the Brit, were abducted from their homes in a residential neighbourhood. They were supplying the entire block with round the clock electricity from their generator to win friends. The abductors grabbed one of them at 6 a.m. when he came out to switch on the generator; his beheaded body was thrown back near the neighbourhoods.
The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down. If any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated every day. The various elements within it—Baathists, criminals, nationalists and Al Qaeda—are cooperating and coordinating.
I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the military and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were sombrely told our fate would largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping chain once it was determined we were missing. Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to the Baathist to the criminals. My friend Georges, the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is still alive.
America’s last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi police and National Guard units we are spending billions of dollars to train. The cops are being murdered by the dozens every day—over 700 to date-- and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly.
As for reconstruction: firstly it’s so unsafe for foreigners to operate that almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, of the $18 billion Congress appropriated for Iraq reconstruction only about $1 billion or so has been spent and a chuck has now been reallocated for improving security, a sign of just how bad things are going here.
Oil dreams? Insurgents disrupt oil flow routinely as a result of sabotage and oil prices have hit record high of $49 a barrel.
Who did this war exactly benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq?
Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity. Guess what? They say they’d take security over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler.
I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad.
Then I went to see an Iraqi scholar this week to talk to him about elections here. He has been trying to educate the public on the importance of voting. He said, “President Bush wanted to turn Iraq into a democracy that would be an example for the Middle East. Forget about democracy, forget about being a model for the region, we have to salvage Iraq before all is lost.”
One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it’s hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral.
The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can’t be put back into a bottle.
The Iraqi government is talking about having elections in three months while half of the country remains a ‘no go zone’—out of the hands of the government and the Americans and out of reach of journalists. In the other half, the disenchanted population is too terrified to show up at polling stations. The Sunnis have already said they’d boycott elections, leaving the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and Shiites that will not be deemed as legitimate and will most certainly lead to civil war.
I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would participate in the Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to some degree elect a leadership. His response summed it all: “Go and vote and risk being blown into pieces or followed by the insurgents and murdered for cooperating with the Americans? For what? To practice democracy? Are you joking?”
-Farnaz Fassihi, Wall Street Journal "Farnaz Fassihi" on Fri, 24 Sep 2004 04:09:29 -0400
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Letter home from my nephew in Iraq
10.10.2004 11:13
I can go on and on about this letter from my nephew, but he says it all..........much better than I have ever seen or heard in the main stream media.
Really am hoping you can post, read, share or something?
His e-mail address is at end of letter and feel free to write him.
One Proud Uncle
Robert Rhoads
Santaquin UT
Uncle Robert,
I have a friend in Hawaii who has asked me to write about some of my experiences over here. She is trying to push a few people off the fence for the upcoming elections and wanted my personal insights into what I have seen. Here is a story I wrote for her that I thought you might like to read.
Here's a story for you about a man named Abbas Al-Janabi. Just another hard to pronounce arabic name? There's a lot more to him than that. Abbas was a good father, a good business man and a friend. Abbas was your average everyday Iraqi citizen. He started working with the U.S. Army in 2003 by procuring and selling goods to different units. He could get you anything you needed or wanted; from print cartridges, office furniture and supplies, satellite TV, cell phones to labor. He charged fair prices and never asked to make a profit on the labor he provided. He asked that we pay the workers directly so they could make more money. I met Abbas a couple of days after I arrived in Iraq. He was introduced to me by my counterpart in the unit we replaced and given a very good reference.
Abbas recognized early on that things were changing drastically in his country and he didn't want to get left behind. He decided to become an entrepreneur. Most importantly, he also recognized the value of fair business practices. He was very personable and humble. After he learned that I was married, he asked me the name of my wife. He never forgot her name and would ask me if Amy was well every time I saw him. He had a family too. His wife's name is Imam and he had a son and two daughters. A few weeks ago, he told me about how he was fixing up his house. Most of the homes in Baghdad are surrounded by garbage, dust and rubble. He told me how he had cleaned it all up and had installed a swimming pool in his back yard. He was very proud of his swimming pool. One could say he was living the American Dream, only he was an Iraqi, living in Baghdad.
That dream came to end at 2:00 a.m. on August 1, 2004. Some people didn't like that Abbas was prosperous. Some people didn't like the fact that because he was working hard, he was able to provide for his family and even have a few luxuries. These people decided that Abbas and his family didn't deserve to live. They crashed into his home and shot and killed everyone in the house. Not only was Abbas murdered, but so was his 11 year-old son, his brother and his brother's two young children. Then they looted his home. Luckily, Imam and their two daughters were staying with family that night, or they would have been murdered too. I have asked Abbas if he ever recieved threats. His response was always to shrug his shoulders and say something to the affect that is part of the world he lives in and that threats like that are rarely carried out. He never went anywhere without his MP5 submachine gun. I wish he would have had the opportunity to use it.
What these people did was pure evil. It was completely inhuman. The worst part about it is they will never be held accountable for what they did. One of our workers was Abbas' next door neighbor. According to him, these people did not murder Abbas because he was doing business with Americans. They murdered him only because of what he had. We Americans certainly have our own version of class envy, but this is ridiculous!
Abbas is gone now and those of us who knew him, miss him. I lost a friend. All but one of his workers quit their high paying jobs that I gave them because they were afraid that they would be next. The high paying jobs that I gave them earned them $10 per day to fill sandbags, pick up garbage, move cement bags and do carpentry work. This is about twice as much as they can make working anywhere else. Many of them used to work for Saddam building his palaces. Saddam paid them $2 per day.
The one workerwho stayed on, Fuad, has decided to take his life into his own hands. Fuad is an unassuming little fellow. He stands a slender 5'4" high or so, doesn't speak a lick of English and favors wearing chino pants, a golf shirt and a fishing hat. He has recruited a new work force and become the "boss". This earned him a raise to $20 per day (more than most doctors make). He has also decided to take over Abbas' role as a vendor. Fuad knows what he's getting into. He is no stranger to violence. He has a plastic leg because an insurgent mortar round took his real leg. He also has some grotesque scars on his arm, chest and abdomen from his encounter with that mortar round. Fuad has picked up the dream and is running with it. Fuad wants to move up to the middle class. I wish him the best and hope that he succeeds. When the violence in Iraq is finally stopped, it will be people like Abbas and Fuad who will take their country to success. American servicemembers may be the heros in most Americans minds, and they should be, but guys like Abbas and Fuad should be the heros of the Iraqi people. They have the same drive to build something that made America as great as it is. They can do it here, we just need to give them the chance.
A lot of people have asked, why we are here. The short answer is that we are here to protect American interests. What then, are the bases of American interests? To me the simple answer to this question is to replace tyrany with freedom and liberty. I watched a speech by President Bush yesterday as he addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars. His position is that free societies are peaceful societies and I agree with him. He said that we are trying to help Iraq and Afghanistan develop into free societies and he hopes that it will spread to other parts of the region. I agree with and support his efforts 100%. It is a worthwhile effort.
People never hear about the individuals involved in this process. They hear from the "retired generals club" (arm-chair quarterbacks), the critics, nay-sayers and everything negative. We hear terms like "quagmire" and "shock and awe". We hear the statistics about how many servicemembers have been killed since it all started, but we never hear about what those people did. How many people's lives did they impact? How many times did they help out a family? How many times did they make a child smile? How many lives did they save, Americans or otherwise?
Where is the reporting on all the great things we have done over here? I see Iraqis denouncing the Americans on TV everyday just like you do. I have an advantage over you though. I have driven the streets of Baghdad and I've been out in the countryside. You know what I see? I see people waving and cheering us everywhere we go. I see children on the side of the road fascinated by all the big trucks they see rolling by. I see the smile on their faces when you throw an old man a cold bottle of water as you drive by. I see the delight in kids' eyes when you toss them candy, or sometimes more importantly, a meal. They don't hate us and they certainly aren't afraid of us. You have to almost beat the kids off with a stick whenever you stop on a street. When they do this, their parents aren't far away, watching to make sure junior doesn't get in trouble, but always with a wave and a smile for us "evil" Americans. Where is the reporting on that? What about all the people who now have water, sewer and electric service for the first time in more than 13 years? You'll never see a story on CNN about that. What about when we find families squatting in stables or garbage dumps, then help them to find a place to live? Ever see a story on CNN about that? You won't hear about it, but it happens. I know it happens because I have done it. Just last week I helped relocate six families who were squatting in some of Saddam's old horse stables into homes.
I've seen first hand that this place is in a shambles, but it's not from this war. Sure you see the odd bombed out building here and there that was most likely bombed by the Coalition, but the rest is a result of neglect on the part of an evil dictator who let his people slip into or close to poverty while he hoarded money and built palaces. I heard it said on a documentary that Iraq is a first world country that was put under the rule of a third world dictator for 30 years. It's true. This country has the resources to be one of the most prosperous in the world, yet it has all been wasted. We hope to change that.
I wanted to share Abbas' story because he was a part of all of this. He was a real person with a real life that was cut short by evil. It is the same brand of evil that killed so many Americans on September 11, 2001. There are literally thousands of stories in Iraq similar to those of Abbas Al-Janabi. These are stories of good people, who only want to live free and have the opportunity for success. They are not religious fanatics. They have their faith, the same as most Americans do, but they don't try to force it on anyone and only want to live in peace. Unfortunately, like Abbas' fate, many of these stories end in tragedy. Stuff like this happens over here every day. Do you ever see stories like this on the news? Is there ever an outrage or a call for justice? Abbas was not filthy rich, he was middle class. Imagine if this happened in America. The media coverage would be overwhelming. There would be countless hours of coverage on the manhunt for the killers and then the trial would be a complete circus dominating the news for months. The reality here is that there will be no manhunt for Abbas' killers. It's not important enough to waste resources on because of all of the other nut cases who are causing more trouble than simply murdering a few innocent people in their beds in the middle of the night.
Forget about whether or not there are weapons of mass destruction, it really doesn't matter anymore and I don't think it really ever mattered. I had to come here to come to that realization. Think instead about what these people deserve and how our country will be better off in the long run when we succeed in giving it to them. They deserve the right to choose their own destiny instead of being oppressed by a minority of whackos and thugs. These are the same whackos who, if given the opportunity, would just as readily murder you and your family as they did Abbas and his family. Think about this: If we don't stop them here, they might just get that opportunity some day.
Love, Rusty
HSC 411th EN BAN, UCD Camp Victory North APO, AE 09344
robert
e-mail:
rbrtrhoads@netscape.net
Thugs and whackos
10.10.2004 12:24
As for the comment about how they might "get that opportunity some day" to murder your family in the US, all I can say is if they do ever manage it, it will be your own fault for invading and attacking them in the first place. There was no terrorist link. There were no WMDs. There was no threat, until you invaded.
So fuck you and your wholesome, down-home, American Dream, "tyranny and liberty" propaganda wank. You supported Saddam until he stopped obeying your orders. You still support brutal tyrants all over the world. You're the enemy of liberty. Fuck off and push your lies somewhere else.
Ian