Response to Mr. Karl Rove's Newsweek editorial

Dear Mr. Rove,

Supporters of your new Newsweek column have levied a serious charge against readers who stand in the way of truth by "attacking the messenger as opposed to the message." Let me say this: I'm fine with that. The Bush administration has made a habit of attacking individuals who represent positions contrary to their own, to the great detriment of the United States. One Valerie Wilson comes to mind rather quickly. Jaques Chirac and the entire nation of France surface out of the mire of this seven-year blame game too. I bet many representatives and voters on both sides of the aisle wish they'd listened to the French "message" in 2003: avoid war at all costs. Instead, most of the nation swallowed your lies, Mr. Rove, and chose to malign France and the French president while chomping happily on "freedom fries." Now look at us.

I served in your war, Mr. Rove, as a Combat Engineer with the United States Army. I went to Iraq believing that we had made a grave mistake, that we had not planned our mission thoroughly enough, and that our post-9-11 decision to spurn our global allies and "go it alone" cost our international credibility dearly. I care about things like international credibility, Mr. Rove, because I understand that our allies are as much a part of our security as the location and activities of Osama bin Laden (who, I might add, was certainly not in Iraq). You know all of these things as well as I do, so I will not refresh your memory.

I will, however, tell you that I went to Iraq with my head held high, because I believed that though we had erred in invading Iraq, we could still manage to bring a better future to the Iraqi people. I very quickly realized the extent of my naïveté. How many airstrips loaded with brand new American SUVs did I have to see (SUVs and pick-up trucks destined for absurdly well-paid Kellogg, Brown & Root contractors, men who collect salaries four-times as large as mine to manage Kurdish and Turkish workers doing jobs soldiers used to do) from the turret of my beat-up old Humvee, or from the bed of the Vietnam-era dump-trucks with which you sent us into combat, before I realized, Mr. Rove, that the war in Iraq had nothing to do with "Terror" or "freedom" or "democracy," and everything to do with profit and political gain?

Oh how you have screwed us, Mr. Rove. But I will not single you out. I know that (almost) the entire nation was behind you, even if only because your management of Mr. Bush's propaganda machine flowed so smoothly. I also know that you were doing a job, and that a man like you could not possibly care about the United States or its future. Sometimes combat soldiers say that war is just a job. Usually it's an attempt to distance themselves from the psychologically and physically brutal consequences of their task. But sometimes it's an honest statement; there are more than a few soldiers in Iraq for whom victory hold no grip over the imagination, and for whom loss is a foregone conclusion. Many among those "professional soldiers of the volunteer army" do not really care one way or the other. Most, however, care quite deeply, unlike you.

Let me ask you a few questions. I know you won't answer them, but I would like to pose them to you anyway (I've been dying for the opportunity since the election campaign in 2004, when you brilliantly organized the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against the combat veteran candidate. I've been trying to forgive the American people ever since for claiming to "support the troops" while simultaneously supporting a presidential candidate and cabinet among whom there are no combat veterans whatsoever, all the while bashing the one man who actually volunteered for combat service. I was the lone Kerry-supporting college-boy in my unit, and I watched the election coverage on Armed Forces TV. You can imagine how much fun that was for me. You can also imagine how impressed I was with your ability to make Bush into a war hero ex nihilo. I have to hand it to you.)

Okay, here goes:

1. Why didn't you and your President listen to General Shinseki when he told you that you would need at least 300,000 troops and at least five years?

2. Why did Paul Wolfowitz and Paul Bremer disband the Iraqi military and bureaucracy, a decision which sent hundreds of thousands of men with military training out into the streets with no money, food, or work, ready fodder for the jihadists who weren't here to receive them immediately, but were there teaching them to build IEDs by the time I arrived in March 2004?

3. Why did your President abandon Afghanistan?

4. Why did you and your President so callously disregard our international allies?

5. Why did you and your President make this war? I want the real answer here. But I know that you and all in your chain of command are too cowardly to tell me. Men are dying for your former boss's strategic failures.

6. When will you own up to it?

We cannot win in Iraq. Even if we "stabilize the region," which is incredibly unlikely, we have killed so many scores of civilians that any claims we make to providing a "better future" for the Iraqis are simply absurd: for over eighty-thousand Iraqis, the future no longer exists. Oh, and eighty-thousand is over one-half the number of Kurds murdered by Saddam. Have we succeeded in bringing justice?

Let's look at some more numbers:

9/11 was the worst "unprovoked" terrorist attack in world history. It is very difficult to imagine another terror attack causing more loss of human life or more destruction of American property. It is also hard to imagine a terror attack striking at more symbolic targets: the Pentagon, the WTC. So far over 4,000 soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. If we have somehow avenged the deaths of the roughly 3,000 people killed in the 9/11 attacks, our vengeance has been worse than Pyrrhic. And how long will it take us to recover the vast sums of money we have thrown into the flames to finance this poorly managed, poorly devised debacle?

This war has destroyed several of my friends. Some have died. Some are recovering from wounds. Still others bear scars that will forever remain unseen, but are no less traumatic. These sacrifices are the job of soldiers to bear. For these sacrifices I seek no retribution and no justice. I do seek answers, because what this war has cost us most of all is an unrecoverable amount of international credibility and a precious share of our national moral fortitude.

Those who truly love this country will remember you, Mr. Rove. But they will not remember you as a patriot. They will remember you as the man who laughed while his country burned, and they will remember you as a man who lied. Just a man who lied, nothing more.

America is a land of opportunity, potential, and forgiveness, Mr. Rove. And I believe that even you, Mr. Rove, have potential to become a real patriot. You can start by using the wonderful opportunity Newsweek has given you to seek the forgiveness of our nation, something you can do by telling the truth.

Now that's not asking too much, is it? Certainly no more than your President has asked of me and every other soldier.

Serve us proudly.

Sappers Lead,
Elliott

A plea from 'Dispatches'

This line comes from Dispatches, Vietnam War correspondent Michael Herr's 1978 memoir:

"[The grunts] would ask you with an emotion whose intensity would shock you to please tell it, because they really did have the feeling that it wasn’t being told for them, that they were going through all this and that somehow no one back in the World knew about it."

If that's not a statement of purpose, I don't know what is.

One last look . . .

In July 2005, I walked into my first class at University of Virginia, The Darkside of Hollywood: Film Noir.  Looking around the room at a dozen or so young students, I was nervous.  I felt impossibly far from where I'd just spent the last year of my life and from where most of my thoughts still dwelled.  Four months earlier, I waited on the tarmac for the bird that would carry me home.  The lumbering C-130 finally dropped onto the runway.  I scanned the hazy perimeter, took stock of the thousands of meters of wire I'd pounded in the suffocating summer heat.  Inhaling a last lungful of burning, dusty air, forcing a smile, I turned my back on the Iraqi plains. It was over.  With the drone of the props lulling me to sleep, I wondered about where we would all go, what we would do, what would become of us "back in the world."  I daydreamed the dream that kept me going on every mission, of sitting in an air-conditioned classroom, charged only with the task of learning and building fortifications of knowledge.  Looking at the soldiers strapped in across from me, I realized for the first time I was no longer dreaming.  I was finally on my way back. 

The War Tapes hit Charlottesville.

The War Tapes is a damned ambitious project, as far as documentaries go. The producers handed out cameras to three soldiers -- two sergeants and a specialist -- from a company of New Hampshire Army National Guard infantrymen, then charged them with the duty of recording their tour for posterity. And that's just what they did. The War Tapes brings the day to day fight in Iraq to stateside Chairborne Rangers who want a taste of what war is really about: Shit, boredom, and then more shit.

The "deeply patriotic" Specialist Moriarty rejoins the Guard after a ten year break in service in order to deploy to Iraq. Moriarty, 34, describes his deep sense of loss after 9/11, followed by intense rage and a desire to get even. "I've been called an irresponsible father and and bad husband for going to Iraq," Moriarty confesses, but he feels compelled to take an active role in what he believed to be a war in the name of justice and justified retribution. Moriarty's wife confesses halfway through the film that her husband was a "stay at home dad" (read: unemployed) for about a year before rejoining the Guard. Chronic depression and anger management issues prevented Moriarty from finding employment after downsizing cost him his job as a forklift operator. Joining the Guard helps Moriarty climb out of his depression-- in the months before his deployment, his wife reports, he was calmer than ever, sure of himself and motivated by the idea that he was involved with something bigger than himself. A father of two -- including a young son -- Moriarty remarks upon departure, "Hopefully I'll be someone's hero."

Sergeant Pink and Sergeant Bazzi -- both in their mid-twenties -- possess an intimate understanding of the war's dark nuances and absurd ironies, an awareness lacked by the emotionally unstable Moriarty. The two sergeants are razor sharp: Pink holds a double-major bachelor's degree, Bazzi speaks Arabic. Both men are masters of grunt-style leadership learned nowhere but on the job. In moments of reflection, they are able to partially distance themselves from trauma and overbearing ideology -- what Bazzi derides as "groupthink" -- so that their journals reveal lucid thought attempting to grasp horrifying and surreal images of war. Bazzi's and Pink's contributions to The War Tapes prove Paul Fussell's claim hasn't ceded ground in the 21st century: "the dominant mode of war writing is irony."

From his diary, Pink recites, "Today was the first time I shook a man's hand that wasn't there." If we were to put a break in between "hand" and "that," we'd have a poem on our hands. Ironic poetic reflection characterizes Pink's footage and journal writing; holding the camera in front of his face, using the infrared mode that turns his face a sickly green, Pink tells us, "I had a recurring epiphany: this is happening, and will have a lasting impact for the rest of my life." Later, he describes an argument between soldiers about whether charred human flesh smells more like hamburger or roast beef. And it was a serious argument, Pink insists. Deadly serious. To concede defeat would be to discount the reliability of one's very senses. Smelling is believing.

Pink takes us on a tour of the FOBs "equipment graveyard," where burned-out hulks of M-1 Abrams tanks, Strykers, Humvees, Brads, Marine AMTRACs, and helicopters stretch as far as the eye can see. Each vehicle, Pink reflects, is some son or mother or father or brother or wife who will never see their family again. Looking at the funereal rows of matériel -- more like a mass grave than a junkyard, certainly as full of ghosts -- I can't help thinking about the total waste of it all, wasted life, wasted money, wasted resources, wasted privilege. Each Stryker vehicle costs upwards of 3 million USD. One row of totaled equipment bears an unfathomable pricetag. Uninsurable, totaled goods. And the bodies. Where are they? The DoD releases the names and unit information of service members killed in Iraq, but they keep a pretty tight lip on the wounded. Three of my buddies are in a burn unit in Texas right now recovering from shrapnel and burn wounds sustained when an EFP hit their convoy during an IED search in Baghdad. Their names aren't in any papers. I've looked. Perhaps that's for the best, I don't know. From what my buddies tell me, the American public probably couldn't handle the sight of the mangled, scarred soldiers and marines who populate the San Antonio burn campus, even if they are vibrant and eager to be reassembled into everyday life. As catastrophic as the damage is to U.S. bodies, equipment, and morale, the military keeps rolling.

So do the Kellogg, Brown, & Root convoys escorted by Pink, Bazzi, and Moriarty. Pink fumes as he scans a long line of beat-up, shot-up, defenseless trucks carrying goods to U.S. FOBs. He's worried about their drivers. Moriarty worries, "the priority of KBR making money outweighs our safety," but Pink extends his concern to the "TCN" drivers (Third Country Nationals), who are paid pennies and are more desirable targets than U.S. soldiers because of the logistical importance of their loads. "[TCN drivers] are not worth enough to have any protection," Pink says with no small measure of disgust. Early in the tour an administrative soldier told him not to waste medical equipment on injured TCNs or Iraqis. In his diary, Pink writes, "if he tried to stop me from administering aid . . . I would have slit his throat right there."

Pink supported Bush prior to deployment. The 2004 elections occurred during the soldiers' tour, and while Bazzi claims to be one of maybe 5 guys out of the whole company who didn't vote for Bush, Pink gives no indication that he's changed his stance. Still, he expresses anger at Bush's May 2003 showbiz declaration "major combat operations have ended."

Bazzi loves the Army, but hates the war. He says he joined the active duty Army after high school in order to travel. And travel he did, serving one tour in Bosnia and one in Kosovo. His mother begged him not to join the National Guard, but he did it anyway. Bazzi's mother and father brought Bazzi and the rest of the family to the United States to escape the 1980s resurgence of Civil War in Lebanon. He was 10 years old when the family fled, hence the Arabic proficiency. His parents split up shortly after arriving in the U.S. Bazzi's mother describes a terror scene before the escape when militia fighters fired at the house while Lebanese soldiers returned fire from a family window. Bazzi was a combat veteran well before joining the Army, it seems. We find out after the unit redeploys that he was not yet a U.S. citizen during the tour. The camera follows him to his induction ceremony. Sticking out like a sore thumb in his desert camouflage, among several hundred immigrants, Bazzi doesn't smile when a man on stage pronounces "everyone who has taken the oath" a U.S. citizen. The other new citizens cheer and hug one another. Bazzi just clenches his jaw, glances at the certificate, then walks out.

Perhaps thinking about U.S. intervention in the Lebanese Civil War[s], Bazzi says, "I think any country should be allowed to have its own civil war without anyone stepping in." Of course, if the "coalition of the willing" had not interfered in Iraq, there would be no overt civil war to speak of. But Bazzi's sentiment rings clear nonetheless. His attitude is live and let live, fuck with me and you better have back up. Bazzi is a jokester, so he takes abuse from his platoon mates without a grudge. At one point there is a conspiracy to kill Bazzi. "Today we kill Bazzi," an older sergeant says, "he's a spy." What do the Iraqis ask Bazzi more than anything else? "How did you get a visa to go to the United States?" Bazzi seems aware of his luck, and its happenstance nature, more than any of the other soldiers. "I don't really know," he tells the Iraqis, "my parents got it for me." Eventually Bazzi refuses to translate for the squad. Constantly bearing the bad news to Iraqis -- usually in the form of rigid SOPs -- wears him down. He describes an instance when a superior asked him to tell an Iraqi man that he couldn't cross the street to take his sick child to the hospital because "that side of the street" was off limits to Iraqis from the other side of the street on that particular day. Bazzi listened to the old man's agonizing pleas and finally refused his superior's demand. "I'm not telling him that," he said, then something like "if the general wants to come down here and tell these people why they can't cross the street then he can do it." "We're supposed to be helping these people," Bazzi mutters.

The film contains a good measure of soldier pranks, including an epic battle between a giant emperor scorpion and an equally massive camel spider. Godzilla v. Mothra may very well have been inspired by desert insect fighting circuits. I fought insects and geckos on multiple occasions, but I couldn't get them to take their contenders very seriously. Some of the pranks have a slightly darker undertone. Pink watches an old sergeant working away at a block of wood with a handsaw. "Whatcha doin'?" he asks. "Making a pistol." "Why?" "Because they won't give me one." Then he reads from his journal, something to the effect of, "Point an M-16 at an Iraqi and they won't move an inch. Wave a pistol and they'll take off running. It's what Saddam and his men used to carry." Bazzi gets the biggest laugh of the film while recording a convoy in support of a septic truck. As a deluge of "shit water" streams from the truck, flooding a roadside ditch, Bazzi says, "Whoever said bein' a soldier was all blood and glory forgot about the shit."

Back home, Bazzi ends the film with a sad reflection on the ideological vacuum of 21st century American war: it ends up little more than a way for a bunch of different people to get paid. "I got a paycheck from the war," Bazzi says, "KBR's makin' money . . . Humvee company's makin' money . . . you're makin' money [to the filmmaker]." Facts that don't bring SGT Bazzi, SPC Moriarty, or SGT Pink any satisfaction. Moriarty says, "they could pay me 500,000 and I wouldn't go back." Bazzi says, "every soldier wants to go to combat," like football players want to play football-- cheers as the Middle East-bound plane takes off from Ft. McGuire, NJ demonstrate this fact plainly enough. But, Bazzi adds later, the "bad thing about the Army is you can't pick your war."

Mementos and Gratitude.

A young former Marine artilleryman came to a meeting of the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society last Friday night to promote a screening of the The War Tapes, a documentary about the year-long deployment of three New Hampshire guardsmen. Coincidentally, I planned to present a poem about Iraq to the Society that evening. I looked around the room as the man spoke, wondering if the members of the Society were listening patiently, interestedly, or if they were just appearing to do so in the interest of decorum. I wondered if perhaps they were thinking, “who the hell is this guy and what is he doing at our meeting.” The young man told a brief story about the IED blasts that left him partially deaf and a victim of PTSD. “What happens to me,” he said, “is that I have trouble falling asleep.” He stood awkwardly at the back of the hall after presenting his speech, handing out flyers and nervously accepting the “thanks” of several Society members. “It always makes me feel weird when people say thank you,” I told him. He smiled, “yeah man, I mean, it’s just a job.” I wanted to tell him no, it’s much more than a job. But I stuck to my original sympathy: I don’t like to be thanked either. Acknowledged, yes. Thanked, no.

I walked toward the screening room tonight running late and feeling slightly apprehensive. I had a pocketful of flyers advertising the blog and the documentary-in-process. What would these people think of my dedication if I showed up late? Not to worry: only three people showed up for the screening. There were about thirty chairs lined up before a projection screen. The Marine – Matt’s his name – was showing pictures from his deployment to a lone attendee. Well, I thought, at least this guy’s here. When Matt left the room to set up the DVD player the other gentleman extended a hand across the aisle to me. I don’t remember his name. Somehow the name Jefferson entered our chat. “Jefferson was a good man,” the guy said. “Yeah, I guess so. I’m glad he founded my university anyway.” The guy replied, “Jefferson was an early enemy of central banking, and that’s what got us into Iraq and every other war for that matter.” “I don’t know what got us there,” I responded – choosing to hold off further commentary until I had a good picture of where this guy was coming from – “but I’m sure I have no idea what we should do now.” The guy had answers for me. “You know what I think?” “No, I don’t,” I replied. “It’s the illuminati. Ever since 1913. The Rothschilds and the Rockefellers. Central bankers, the Federal Reserve. They got their hands in everything, like 9/11, it was a total inside job.” Then he asked me, “do you believe that?” I said, “not exactly, no,” wondering if he was watching me write down everything he said.

“We’ll just give it a few more minutes, a few of my people had labs to turn in and stuff.” I could tell Matt was disappointed that only two people showed up. I thought of all the people Friday night taking his flyers with such gratitude. “I don’t even know how to say thank you for what you’ve done for us man. I’m just so grateful to all of you guys.” To their credit, four o’clock on Monday isn’t the most opportune time to get out of the office or the library. “My heart just goes out to all of you guys.” I’ve heard that one before. Sometimes older women say, “you’re all my sons.” One woman whose son died in a car accident told me, “you’re all my sons, and everytime one of you gets hurt or dies I feel like my own son is dying all over again.” I felt like she meant it. I could tell by the way her eyes drifted far away from anything in the room. Oddly enough, she was selling me a hand-blown glass lamp made by a PTSD counselor. I think that’s what got us on the topic of Iraq.

After the film, Matt asked, “any thoughts?” The conspiracy theorist and I both shrugged. Matt’s flyer had advertised, “Do You Have an Opinion on the Iraq War? Voice it! Watch the screening . . . Discussions following.” I looked forward to voicing my opinion all weekend, but didn’t feel much like discussing Pentagon—al-Qaeda symbiosis with my new friend. Thankfully, the guy split as soon as he could. I helped Matt stack the chairs. “Whatja think?” he asked. “Well, it may as well have been a documentary about my unit,” I said, “we trained at Ft. Dix, we were there at exactly the same time, everything was the same.” I sort of hoped he’d ask me more about my tour. After all, I’d already listened to his story on Friday night. But he had no further questions for me. I plugged my documentary again and asked him if he knew anyone who might be interested in participating. “It’s mostly about homecoming,” I told him. But he was reserved. “I’m not interested in stuff like that,” he said, looking away from me, “you can do a lot of good doing stuff like that, but you can get people in a lot of trouble with UCMJ.” Matt and I separated without shaking hands. I got the feeling I was making him uncomfortable.

I noticed Matt’s desert combat boots as he walked away. Riding my bike home in the blustery cold, I thought about Sergeant Pink, a soldier from The War Tapes. His wife cannot understand why he continues to wear his dog tags in civilian life. I thought about how much Matt must love those old boots. I wore my Iraq boots at drill for two years after I returned, sentimentally passing up several new issues. But I couldn’t imagine myself wearing boots with blue jeans. Sometimes I sport my desert camo “boonie hat” –Woods scrawled across the back in English and Arabic – but most of the time I’m too embarrassed. Later, as my roommate and I chatted in our kitchen, he said, “I really like that belt.” I looked down, taking note of the faded green Army utility belt holding up my jeans. “Thanks,” I said. I like it too. A lot. And I guess I like the green Army socks I wear almost everyday too. A lot. I have my trinkets too, I realized. We all need some connection. Something that ties us to that place, something physical, something more than just memory and pain. Don’t ask me why.

Sergeant Pink doesn't like to be thanked either. He says the best thing someone can say is, "good to have you back." Specialist Moriarty - another soldier from The War Tapes - says of homecoming, "the biggest frustration . . . is that they don't care." The most patriotic of the three soldiers under the spotlight, Moriarty re-enlisted in the National Guard after a decade-long break in service with the express intent of going to Iraq. A self-proclaimed "deeply patriotic man" and unflinching Bush supporter prior to deployment, Moriarty returns deeply alienated by what he experienced as a war in which the "priority of KBR making money (Kellogg Brown & Root, primary Halliburton subcontractor) outweighs our safety." "They could offer me $500,000 and I wouldn't go back," Moriarty says, "I feel like it's someone else's turn." Back at work, where his boss had promised a year earlier "when you come back it'll be just like you never left," Moriarty finds his boss's promise a bit too true. Co-workers ask to hear war stories but don't listen. They ask to see his pictures but don't look. Moriarty's frustration comes across as the most tragic emotional moment in The War Tapes. "You will look at my goddamn pictures," Moriarity fumes, "you asked me to show them to you, I'm not flashing them around, and now you will do me the respect of looking at them."

Good to have you back, they say. Thank you. My heart goes out to you. Words cannot express my gratitude to you and your buddies for what you did over there. Now be quiet, please.

New Beginnings.

So I just launched this blog today, 1 December 2007. I've imported notes from facebook.com to start things off. At the moment I'm tying up the loose ends of a very strange semester, my 2nd to last. In the spring I'll finish writing a thesis about 20th Century American war literature and I'll also finish producing a short documentary film about the deployment & homecoming experiences of 21st Century American veterans. Things have been quite busy recently.

I've also been busy figuring out how to get over to Iraq as a journalist. First I should probably graduate from college, but what the hell, I'm almost 30 years old, what difference does it make. Wish me luck. If you happen to belong to a combat unit and you think your unit might like to have an embedded reporter, let me know. I'll be there lickety split (well, give me a couple of months, at least until April).


I attended Juan Cole's presentation on the Iraqi and Afghan constitutions at the University of Virginia yesterday. I was overjoyed to discover that the situation is even more complicated than I thought, even more rotten at the core. I was interested to hear that Moqtada al-Sadr is anti-US, anti-Iran, and anti-Iraq. He doesn't like central government, no matter who heads it. I'm havinng trouble deciding whether that's good news or bad news.

Alright. I've spent too much time already today setting this account up, so I'll have to return another day for the first real post. Until then, peace in the middle east.

Nov. 11: Do you know what today is?

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, the great powers agreed to an armistice on the Western Front, thus ending the First World War in Europe. "Doughboys," as the American soldiers were called, were latecomers to the trenches, arriving en masse with the American Expeditionary Force in the late spring of 1917, and engaging in their first major combat operations alongside French "poilus" and the British "Tommies" in the spring of the following year at Cantigny, were German machine guns, gas, and artillery exacted almost 100,000 casualties. The Americans would go on to fight throughout the summer and fall, losing over 50,000 soldiers to enemy hostile fire and another 50,000 to disease. Infected wounds, t.b. contracted as a result of weakened immune systems among gas victims, and the Spanish flu took the biggest toll.

The American Expeditionary Force did not "win" the First World War, however, the American troop buildup helped break German moral. To what end? We don't know for sure. We can only speculate as to how European history might have been different if the great powers had exhausted themselves fully and arrived at their own peace without America tipping the scales in favor of the Allies. Some say the Nazis never would have come to power, some say the bolsheviks would have been supressed. What we do know is that American soldiers paid an incredibly heavy cost in the European trenches, and that their "victory" convinced Americans of the unstoppable force of American ideals. I know, that's a leap: military victory --> strength of ideals? That's how the war recrossed the Atlantic in 1918, and that's how its memory would return in 1941, 1950, 1964, 1991, 2001, and 2003. America made a myth of war because America did not know what modern war really was.

The soldiers who fought on the Western Front knew the war for what it was, a place where "killing and dying, dying and killing . . . have lost touch with any fact of life save the fact of death's absolute dominion . . . the death depicted [in their writing] is never gallant sacrifice. It is not grand, valorous, brave death. It is bowel-ripping, head-shattering, body-rending death. It is the kind of death that makes men scream for their mothers, soil their trousers, dissolve themselves into whimpering wrecks. Moreover, it is death on the whole vast scale of modern mechanization."

Remember the men who served, suffered, and died on the Western Front. But remember them as humans victimized by the cold machinery of modernity, not as heroes in the cause of freedom, for the soldier caught in the machinery of war is the least free human of all.

Iraq, non-violence, and responsibility.

The following letter responds to a blog from Spring 2007, my comments begin after the long dotted line:

I tried to add this as a comment to your post, but it was too long.

I realize my knowledge and understanding of the military, combat situations, and Iraq are limited. Therefore, this is not so much a firm statement of my opinion as it is a series of thoughts and questions that I hope will lessen my ignorance of our country’s current events. I am living and working in New Zealand where I’ve been impressed by the teenagers’ intelligent, specific and well-informed questions about Bush, US current events, foreign policy and presidential candidates that, in my experience, few people their age in the States would be able to pose. One could say that this is a consequence of the United States’ position in the forefront of world events. However, their knowledge, and even their evening news, extends to the major problems of countries all over the world in a way that CNN does not touch. Their awareness of the world around them, particularly at a young age, is quite notable. It is a shame that more Americans cannot take an active interest in the world we are so dramatically affecting. That being said, I have a few questions in response to reading your posts:

You site the SOPs and the Rules of Engagement for the Iraq theater to support your point that pulling the trigger is a rare event. At the same time you reference various literature to give an idea of life in combat. How do you reconcile the lack of shooting by American soldiers in Iraq with the horrible, bloody scenes in A Farewell to Arms and more so in All’s Quiet on the Western Front? Particularly in the latter, the trauma and inability to rejoin “normal” civilian life is attributed in large part to the endless and widespread bloodshed. Even in A Farewell to Arms, a major theme is desperation driven by the feeling that “everyone always dies.” I certainly don’t mean to diminish the PTSD of veterans from Iraq, or to imply that the experience isn’t utterly horrifying. I am just asking how, specifically, would you explain American military life in Iraq in terms of the literature you mention? I also confess that I have yet to read the other two books you mention; the local NZ library has yet to order them. This could be too literal an interpretation of your references, but I’d like to get a better idea of American soldier life in Iraq from a first hand source.

You indicate that first you thought we should clean up the mess we made in Iraq, and now you feel we should get out. What brought about your change of heart with regard to our status in Iraq?

From your experience, what are the ratios of those who wanted to serve and those who joined the military in response to the pressures of poverty? You say people join because of a “desire on the part of young Americans from the underprivileged demographic to do something positive and to contribute to global society.” Do you attribute their actions more to their demographic, or to their desire to do something positive? Are you implying interplay between poverty and desire to serve, or do you think that the military is just the best way out of a bad situation?

A friend who just graduated from the Naval Academy is now based in Japan, where she has been stationed for almost a year. She promotes the Navy as more than just a branch of the military, but also as a place to meet incredible people, and as a community service and international relations organization. One example she gives is her fiancée (also in the Navy) handing out backpacks and books to underprivileged children as part of his duties. What’s more, she argues that the military can be significantly more effective than most Not For Profits because of the government’s massive financial resources. She is also someone who I respect for her independence of thought, and therefore was impressed that she has found herself more content to comply with orders unquestioningly as she has seen more of the Navy and how it works. Through experience, she has gained respect for the system and the intelligence of the institution. Obviously her experiences in the Navy are completely different from yours, particularly given that she has never been in a combat situation and she went through the academy. That understood, what is your opinion of this perspective? Are the desire for adventure, personal growth, interesting company and work, and travel legitimate reasons for going to OCS?

Thanks for your well thought out essays and a forum for discussion. Hope you are well.

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Okay. So I am going to try to respond to your questions point by point. Again, apologies for the time delay fuse.

First, I share with you a frustration in the national level of global and domestic awareness, not just among youth but also among Americans in general. I was walking down the street last night and I overheard a male college student say to his girlfriend “I just don’t like reading. It makes my brain hurt.” She replied “I know it. But couldn’t you just try, like Harry Potter or something?” He responded in the negative, quite fervently. This young man is a student at one of the nation’s finest public institutions, but he hates reading. What does that tell you? The availability of quality information on domestic and global issues at the newsstand or in the living room is deplorable. Sure, there are plenty of excellent journals, ‘zines, and blogs around, and there will always be C-Span and PBS, but let’s face it: information in the USA = an entertainment industry. If it’s not jumping out at you and making a really loud noise you just don’t pay attention (of course I refer to the proverbial “you”). Paying attention to the information that matters “hurts the brain,” causes depression, inspires a guilty conscience, and might even require the effort of effortless research. But: I try not to ask too much. Foremost I hope that people will begin to care more about the issues that face our nation and our communities. I guess that’s asking a lot, but only when personal investment in these issues reaches a palpable pitch will productive discourse begin.

One thing you might think about re: the level to which young people in NZ are very “globally” informed: there’s not that much going on in NZ. The United States provides a significant amount of news to just about every country that is not the United States. And we’re easy to criticize.

Now on to your questions:

1) How do I reconcile the lack of shooting by American soldiers in Iraq with the horrible, bloody scenes in [literature of WWI/WWII] re: PTSD, the shock of readjustment, etc.?

It’s true that combat soldiers in WWI and WWII saw, esp. in trench warfare and large conventional battles like Omaha Beach, Guadalcanal, and the Battle of the Bulge, more friendly casualties and inflicted more direct violence on the enemy. The sheer scale of these conflicts has much to do with this fact, as does the nature of conventional warfare, in which two opposing forces hurl bodies at one another until one side runs out of bodies or bullets. Obviously that’s not what we’re up to in Iraq and that’s not what we were up to, for the most part, in VN. Still, killing occurs on both sides in Iraq. The soldier’s life is constantly jeopardized, above all by the prevalence of roadside bombs and other Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). When soldiers are forced by the constraints of a combat situation to kill an insurgent, the Rules of Engagement generally protect that soldier from recrimination. However, ROE does nothing to protect the soldier from flashbacks, nightmares, or lifelong guilt, the result of what Iraq veteran author John Crawford calls “the ultimate moral sacrifice.” Of course there are those soldiers who – at least as far as we know – kill without remorse. There are those who seem to bounce back from deployment as if they just returned from a year in the Bahamas. Beware the act of the brave man. There is always more to the story. I think All Quiet on the Western Front does an excellent job of conveying a soldier’s deep frustration with the senselessness of violence, and of violent nationalism. I think the main character’s deepest sadness comes not when he loses his best friend in “No Man’s Land,” but when he returns to his native town on leave and sees his old teacher drilling propagandistic rhetoric into the impressionable minds of his young students. Can you find a similarity here? Imagine what it’s like to serve a combat tour and then return, only to see someone like Bill O’Reilly or George Bush himself corrupting the minds of Americans with hateful, erroneous, sentimentalist rhetoric that entirely misses the truth of the situation. For many veterans – myself included – this experience is a source of constant frustration. Other returning veterans have a different experience: they return even further cemented in a worldview that posits violence and domination as the solution to all international problems. Such a worldview is hard to shake. I know guys who’ve returned to Iraq two or three times because they can no longer function in civil society. They actually prefer the war zone, where life’s responsibilities are incredibly immediate, where bonds between coworkers and friends have dire importance (at least they seem to), and where the social responsibilities of the “world” are non-existent. Add into the mix thousands of ruined marriages, foreclosed homes, failed careers, life-altering wounds, etc., complicating the readjustment process for all soldiers and their families. It’s not always pleasant to return home. It’s often bittersweet.


2) You indicate that first you thought that we should clean up the mess we made in Iraq, and now you feel we should get out. What brought about your change of heart with regard to our status in Iraq?

This question is a lot easier than the last, the last being one that I could probably (and probably will) use as the basis for a book someday. I landed in Iraq in March 2004, pretty close to the one-year anniversary of the invasion. When I arrived, the future of Iraq was very uncertain, but no one thought it would get as bad as it has. We still thought that we could “win” somehow, or that Iraq would embrace the opportunity to inculcate a new political system with the help of American security and bureaucratic assistance. I never agreed with the invasion of Iraq. I thought it was a terrible foreign policy decision. Still, once there I began to hope that “something good” could come out of the US involvement. New money had been minted, the elections were coming, the constitution was under construction, and the word on the street was “Allahu akhbar, Saddam is gone.” No one – and I mean NO ONE – foresaw the extent to which the Sunni insurgency would gather strength and make war against the burgeoning Iraqi state. Political theorists were not surprised by the development of the Sunni insurgency, and even less surprised by the Shi’a power grab (they’ve been politically repressed in every Arab state since 632), but no one envisioned the horrific violence Muslims were willing to inflict on one another. Perhaps such a failure to predict the extremity of sectarian conflict was naïve. In April 2004 the Fallujah offensive successfully secured large tracts of hotly contested Baghdad suburbs and satellite cities in which Sunni insurgents were pooling their resources and mounting a power base. The combined effort of the Army and Marine Corps did not result in the killing or capturing of every Sunni insurgent, nor did the putsch destroy networks of insurgents. Rather, the insurgents fled to the North, South, and West. Suddenly cities like Mosul, Tal-Afar, Basra, Ramadi, Najaf, and the villages of al-Anbar province ignited with insurgent activity. The insurgents had arrived on fresh soil, and for the first time nearly the entire country – excepting the Kurdish regions to the North and the barren regions of the eastern borderlands – was a hotbed of anti-US insurgent activity. If we had hoped to begin the sort of Civil Affairs work necessary to fight a productive counter-insurgency, to rebuild the regional governmental infrastructure, and to begin rebuilding the economy at the local level, we quickly realized we were too late. As of summer 2004, the majority of military resources were invested in conducting counter-insurgency operations and patrols. We couldn’t afford not to. Now, three years later, our tenuous control over Iraq has slipped even more. Baghdad is completely out of coalition control. The southern insurgency is gathering strength because the British – awaiting full redeployment – are hunkered down in their Forward Operating Bases (FOBs), on orders to avoid violent interaction at all costs. The British voting public will not tolerate any more.

The surge offered a brief respite of violence in certain areas of Iraq. The same thing happens in very dangerous American city neighborhoods when police departments temporarily increase police presence drastically. Yes: putting “a cop on every corner” cuts down crime. Unfortunately, cops cannot solve the underlying structural problems that undermine all efforts to help Iraq become a stable democracy. Cops cannot build democratic institutions. They can protect them, but they cannot make people use them. They cannot inspire democratic political culture, nor can they fully protect the citizens who wish to exercise their right to political participation. Cops cannot control the decisions of political and military elites. Cops cannot control ideology.

“Cops,” by which I mean US troops, can provide a constant reminder of deep underlying structural problems and an easy target for taking out frustration caused by the glaring inconsistencies, injustices, and violence that are at least partially linked to the American presence in Iraq (fires which were, if not caused, at least kindled, by the American invasion and failures of American policy in Iraq since well before March 2003).

There is a civil war going on in Iraq that is as complex as civil wars get. Reductionists like to imagine the problem as rather simple, if well entrenched: Sunni v. Shi’a. “A battle that has raged since the death of the prophet and will rage until judgment day,” they say. Well, the reductionists are wrong. Shi’a of southern Iraq do not identify culturally with the Shi’a of Baghdad. Sunni Kurds certainly do not identify with Sunni Arabs. Militias rivaled other militias, even when religious and political affiliations are superficially shared. There are Assyrian Christians. There are Yazidis. There are also several million people who just wish it would all stop so they could go back to life as normal. Unfortunately the latter group must choose sides on a day to day basis, and even switch sides from time to time, to avoid the personal consequence of becoming an enemy of one or another violent group. It’s important to remember that the Iraqi state itself is a violent group, that police and Iraqi National Guard (ING) troops are not under the control of the government or the Coalition, but in fact quite autonomous in many cases. Sometimes the Army fights the police. Sometimes the police fight the militias. Sometimes policemen use their power and their uniform to serve the interest of insurgent groups. It’s a mess. The rule of law has no quarter in Iraq. Worst of all, from a foreign policy perspective, is the fact that the US troops are considered one of the many “sects” involved in this civil war. We are not to be trusted. We are killing. And we are killed. And we are helping others kill. All of this makes sense. We have not restored electricity. We have not cleaned the streets or removed the trash. We have not rebuilt hospitals. We have not built schools. You may as well take it as a general statement of purpose when you see scrawled on a soldier’s helmet “Fuck Hearts and Minds.” Even if the soldier doesn’t mean it, it’s the end result of all of our failed policies in Iraq. We have fucked the hearts and minds of a nation. Two nations actually, ours and theirs. Perhaps many more.

So: the idea that we are still an efficacious force in Iraq is laughable. We are holding back the floodwaters, and we may as well release the deluge while we can still get away from it. I do not propose immediate withdrawal, but I do propose a timeline with “hard targets.” I hope – note, I do not say believe – that a timeline and the consequent first steps toward American redeployment will force Iraqi political elites to the drawing board and the conference room. And I hope they will try to incorporate the violent groups who are derailing the government into their plans. Stranger things have happened. We gain nothing by staying with no commitment to return. This could drag out for a very long time if we do not terminate our involvement, and the weakness of the American presence in Iraq – crippled by a lack of funds (or a severe mismanagement of funds – thanks Halliburton/KBR/Paul Wolfowitz) and a logistically broken military – only maintains an idling civil war. I say let it burn out and fade away. Especially since we’re going to have to let it happen someday. We can’t keep selling our war debt to China (they already own about 30% of our 9 trillion USD debt). Suffice to say that the Democratic Congress will not long continue to throw blank checks or Surge Troopers down the desert drain that is Iraq today.

3) I am not going to answer this question because I think you’d be better served by looking up the Harper’s article to which I refer. The basic idea is exactly what your friend from the Naval Academy says, so I’ll just skip straight to that.

What is your opinion of this perspective? Are the desire for adventure, personal growth, interesting company and work, and travel legitimate reasons for going to OCS?

My opinion of “this perspective” is not terribly complicated. I pretty much agree: the military offers an excellent opportunity to surround oneself with ambitious, courageous, and high tempo people. Barring voyages to Iraq and Afghanistan, there are some good travel opportunities as well. You could live in Germany, Japan, Italy, Alaska, Guam, Cuba, Spain, Ireland, etc. Or you could live on Ft. McGwire, NJ, which isn’t so bad I guess. It’s not far from NYC. There are certainly better ways to travel, if travelling’s what you’re after (and given that you’re in NZ right now, I think you’ve secured a pretty good trip already). Just remember that the Officer Corps and the Enlisted ranks are different animals altogether. Officers are all college graduates. Almost none of the Enlisted are college graduates, though many are college students (less now that the cost of combat significantly outweighs the cost of college loans). What the military offers to Enlisted personnel is incredibly significant: work experience in the oldest and most successful meritocracy in the United States. Harry Truman integrated the Armed Forces in 1948, and since then the percentage of minorities serving in each branch is roughly equivalent or even surpasses the percentage of “white” service members. People come to the military for a lot of different reasons and from a lot of different places, and when they get there – as we say in the Army – they “all wear green” (or blue, if you’re a squid). For me, the Army offered a place to get to know a demographic of the American society that I probably never would’ve encountered had I gone “the college route” successfully on the first try, like most young people from “where I’m from.” In the Army I worked alongside self-proclaimed hillbillies and self-proclaimed gangstas, suburban kids whose fathers had breathed hellfire down their throats since they were small, who could not even conceive of the idea that the President might “lie,” farm boys who wore cowboy boots and boleros and cowboy hats when they went on pass, “conservative” soldiers who voted for John Kerry, “liberal” soldiers who liked treating Iraqis like dogs, and a whole lot of young men who were just kind of floating along. All of them are heroes to me, because we did what we did together. I hate some of them, but I respect them. I worked with a lot of honest, good people, whose generosity could have – and in some cases did – cost them life, limb, or sanity. And I worked with a lot of bad people. I worked with people who genuinely hated the Iraqi people. Sometimes I saw the most aggressive American soldiers, the most despicable, hateful, and downright mean among them, toss stuffed animals and candy out to a crowd of children surrounding the convoy. Sometimes I saw the hardest ones cry. I tried to understand as much of it as I could, or at least to save it for later. But I also turned mean for a time. I turned on the men in my unit who called me a “liberal, tree hugging pussy,” even while I stood next to them with a rifle in my hands. As far as I could tell, it was guys like them who got us there.

But then again it wasn’t guys like them who got us there, because they’d taken a selfless step that none of the Bush administration ever took: they swore to defend and protect the United States of America from all enemies domestic and foreign. And they paid for that promise without, in most cases, asking for anything in return, anything other than “three hots and a cot” that is.

So: if your friend thinks that the Armed Forces of the United States are better “community service” and “international relations” organizations than most NGOs, I think she is conveniently misled and might benefit from removing her rose-colored lenses. The Armed Forces have one ultimate mission: the maintenance and use of violent force in the interest of American national security. Throwing out a few schoolbooks here and there is not about community service. It’s about counter-insurgency. That’s all fine and good to me, and it paints a pretty picture, but remember that sometimes the insurgents we fight with weapons and with “hearts and minds” campaigns are working to violently overthrow regimes that are the structural cause of a given nation’s development retardation. We stand in the way, holding a backpack and a textbook and claiming moral high ground. I’ll give you an example you may be familiar with: the US Army and Navy were two of the first responders to both the Tsunami of 2004 and the earthquake in Kashmir of 2005. They did not rush to the aid of the dying thousands in order to fulfill a commitment to “community service,” they went because they were already in the area. Gathering intelligence. “Winning hearts and minds” is the key tactic of counter-insurgency. One day’s backpack is another day’s rifle. I don’t have a problem with that, in principle. I strongly believe that America should maintain a powerful national security posture. I happen to think that hearts and minds campaigns are critical to our national security. But I know that there is a thin red line between hearts and minds and blood and guts. I tend to hope that our national leaders will respect that line and keep private agendas out of international affairs. Historically, they have not always done so. Think of Latin America. Or, if you want, think of Iraq under Saddam Hussein before 1991. Where does your USNA friend think Saddam got the materiel and financial support to win the Iran/Iraq War of the 1980s? US. U.S. Us. He used some of that money to kill a quarter-million of his own people. We were deaf to the protests in 1989, and yet 18 years later we still claim to be “avenging an evil dictator.”

I love the military. I think the US Military is one of the greatest institutions the world has ever seen. I think that for a number of reasons, mostly because of the people I know who have served in the military and the people with whom I served. But I never forget that when I signed on the dotted line on 26 July 2001, I agreed to act as a killing agent – should the need arise – for the United States of America for 8 years. If you are not a combat soldier, if you are a sailor, for example, or a linguist, or a clerk, or a pathologist, or a veterinarian, you are still part of the machine that kills, and you are still responsible. That said, the military needs good people now. Perhaps now more than ever. I frequently consider returning to active duty. Every bone in my body wishes that I were back in Iraq, but frequently a little more than half of my heart wants to stay at home. I do not wish to return to Iraq to do the business of the military, but to be with my friends and my fellow soldiers as they undertake the Herculean task of enduring this lost war. If that’s the kind of commitment to service you’re looking for, head to the recruiter as soon as you can. If not, stay on the sidelines and think very carefully about your relationship to the military as a civilian. Think about what you say, but please say something. After all, the greatest fact about the US Military is that it is an extension of the American body politic. You’re responsible for the military’s actions even as a civilian. Exercising the right to vote, speaking publicly in support or dissent of specific foreign policy, paying close attention to various forms of media, criticizing, thinking, and hoping, are all important parts of affecting a positive change in our national direction.

Albert Camus wrote in Le Combat, a resistance newspaper, that pacifism is not an option for citizens of a country engaged in war. But the opposite of pacifism, according to Camus, is not violent ideology, but resistance. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Ghandi thought the same thing. The latter two called their efforts “non-violent,” and indeed they were, but they accomplished an effect better than the effect that violence could have produced: they won hearts and minds with peace and faith in civic virtue. Albert Camus argued that every citizen of a country engaged in war must find a way to bring an end to the war and must make an effort to pursue whatever means s/he discovers. The pacifist lies down and lets the authoritarian run amuck. The non-violent resister writes, carries documents, engages people in challenging conversation, and – above all – never stops seeking out injustices to correct. Every American has a responsibility to think long and hard about where our nation is headed, not just with regard to Iraq and Afghanistan, but also with regard to our comprehensive national purpose. In recent years, our national purpose has been institutionally corrupted by careless and violent foreign policy. I have chosen to resist, following my period of service with still more service in a new, non-violent form. I urge every American to do the same.

Strange but not Impossible Bedfellows: Islam and Liberal Democracy

Bernard Lewis doubts that liberal democracy “is compatible with Islam itself." Lewis argues that Islam, the cultural foundation of the Middle East, has precluded – among both elites and masses – the democratic political culture necessary for the establishment of democracy. Lewis’ argument suffers from two flaws: first, Islam is neither the sole axis of cultural identification for Middle Eastern polities nor the primary motivator of repressive behavior among political elites; second, there is no evidence that political culture is causally related to the establishment of democracy. Political culture may relate to the survival of democracy, but initial strides toward democracy do not depend on the proliferation of democratic political culture. The power to choose democracy rests in the hands of political elites who tend toward democracy only when faced with “strategic considerations” and “altered perceptions of risk,” i.e. when “costs of attempting to suppress their political opponents exceed the costs of tolerating them (and engaging them in constitutionally regulated competition)." If authoritarian elites continually opt for suppression over liberalization, and if they possess the power to maintain suppressive policies, no amount of democratic political culture among the masses or the repressed elites of the political opposition will result in regime change. It is true that the Islamic Middle East does not have a history of democracy, but Lewis misrepresents Islam’s role in shaping that history. The histories of authoritarianism and economic development present the gravest obstacles to democracy in the Middle East. Both are histories to which Islam is only tangentially related and in which the comprehensive causal power of cultural forces pales in comparison to that of economic and political structures.

Authoritarianism results from the gradual accumulation of power by a small group of elites and precludes oppositional effectiveness. Still, oppositions exist alongside authoritarianism. In recent Middle Eastern history, the strongest oppositions to authoritarian regimes have rallied around democracy and Islamic fundamentalism. The existence of democratic opposition to authoritarianism – particularly where democratic activists face violent repression – contradicts Lewis’ proposition that Islam and democracy are mutually exclusive. We must ask, at what level are Islam and democracy irreconcilable? If there are large demographics that support democracy and are Islamic, then surely democracy and Islam can coexist. If there are political elites who support democracy and are Islamic, as there are in Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran, then democracy exists as a viable regime choice in the event that “strategic considerations” and “altered perceptions of risk” in the Middle East force authoritarians to reconcile with oppositional entities. Therefore, Islam does not prevent democracy from successful institutional implementation. Rather, democracy fails to gain strength because of the persistence and power of certain political elites committed to self-preservation via suppression. Sometimes those political elites justify suppression along cultural lines. Sometimes, but not always, those cultural lines are Islamic.

Theorists of political culture place great emphasis on the reciprocal relationship between strong democratic institutions and the democratic political culture of the citizens served by them. As regime effectiveness increases, so to does investment in democratic political culture, resulting in increased support of and participation in democratic institutions. However, a positive reciprocal relationship between democratic political culture and regime legitimacy in an established democracy does not imply the a priori existence of democratic political culture. On the contrary; as Larry Diamond writes, “none of the … elements of political cultural seems necessary for the establishment of democracy." Even if the impact of Islam on democratic political culture were wholly negative – which it is not – such an impact would not preclude democracy from existing as a choice for Muslim political elites, nor would the centrality of Islam to a certain political culture necessarily eliminate influences like education, popular culture, and national affiliation from contributing to the survival of a democratic regime once established.

Muslims throughout the Middle East, across all social strata, draw on a complex network of cultural and political affiliations that complicate and often supersede Islam as axes of identification and allegiance. All Muslims under authoritarian rule depend on political elites to “lead the way in large-scale value change,” which is to say choose democracy. Presently, certain Middle Eastern authoritarians are blocking “the way,” but their motivations are not necessarily Islamic. Structural constraints and political motivations, and not cultural obligations, drive regime choices of elites. It remains to be seen whether or not Middle Eastern elites will be driven to choose democracy.

Virginia Tech: Distance, Mourning, and Contact.

I should be writing one or two of the hundred million pages I have to somehow produce between now and May 11, but my mind keeps returning to Virginia Tech. My mom's voice, describing the news feed, plays over and over again. I see myself scanning the quad, my phone to my ear, watching students walking back and forth across the grass and brickpaths in front of Alderman Library. I see my own face contorted, squinting with the effort of imagination, jaw agape. I tried to imagine the unimagineable, and, unfortunately, my mind has too many images on reserve; the picture I imagined could have been real. It was real. Virginia Tech is so close. There is no reason it didn't happen here, I keep thinking, and it's true. I cannot know what it is like for a classroom to turn into a horror scene, for the sound of gunfire to echo off of walls intended only to house the sounds of ideas making themselves manifest, of young people planning the weekend, planning their lives. And yet, it happened, and it may as well have happened here. This has happened before. This will happen again.

For the rest of the day I overheard bits and pieces of student conversations, young people on cell phones and gathered in circles, trying to piece together the broken reality they shared moments before. I saw a few people hugging, not to say hello, but because they couldn't say anything at all, because there was nothing to say, there were no words yet. In those first moments, words were only tools to form numbers, locations, and brief, objective descriptions of when, where, how. There were no words to answer the worst question: why? Nor are there words to address that question now; still, we have words, and we should use them in their most important capacity: to bridge the gaps between us, to navigate the dark places in our souls, and to find each other in the darkness.

The lump in my throat remains; it's the pressure of my fear, my sadness, and my frustration, building behind the wall that separates my world from myself, me from you, us from them. Cho felt the same pressure, but he didn't believe he had any way of releasing it. I won't speculate on Cho's psychological state, his development, or his moral fortitude. I will only say that some small part of me knows that the tragedy includes the young man by whose hands it was wrought. I do not know how Cho fell, or was pushed, into such abysmal despair, but I do know that I too have had glimpses of despair. Despair is a waking nightmare that hurts. Despair produces profound alienation. Just when we need a shoulder to cry on, alienation drives a wedge between the self and the world. There is only one way to return from alienation, and it is by the guiding hand of another. We are lucky when there is a hand to grasp, and even luckier if that hand searches us out in the darkness. Sometimes we stumble across a generous spirit, someone we never expected to follow into the light. Sometimes we get left behind, and sometimes we choose to stay behind. I think it's important to keep my eyes open, because I never know when they might be like a lighthouse for a lost soul, for someone battered by an unexpected slight, a missed opportunity, a rejection, a failure, or a bad dream. Sometimes I think smiles are psychotropic. Most times I'm sure of it.

Some people have asked me, "what would you have done if you were in one of the classrooms," or, "do you think if there were vets in the room he would have gotten as far as he did?" I have asked myself the same questions. As for the first, I think we all ask ourselves "what would you do," but we might not ask ourselves, "what will you do?" I don't know what I would have done. I probably would have refused to believe the scattered pops weren't construction noises, like many of the survivors reported; how could I logically tell myself otherwise? And then it would have been too late. I suppose it's possible that I would have heard him reloading and would have seized the chance to act, but to say I would've done anything is to apply reason to a situation that defies the very limits of reason.

What I will do is mourn. I will continue to invest my thought and emotional energy in the Virginia Tech tragedy. I will revisit the moment when my mother called, the moment when I first saw Cho's face, when I saw his multimedia manifesto, when I read his plays, when I gave my TA from the fall a hug outside of the library, when I first spoke with my girlfriend, when I watched the crowd swell around me at the amphitheater the following day, when I looked at the faces of my fellow students and saw them contorted with confusion, slack with bewilderment, swollen with grief, and looking for reassurance. But I will also be free with my smiles, I will share my attention, I will make time for friends, and I will continue to hope that we will somehow find a way to become closer to one another. In the moments following the tragedy, I saw friends hugging, and I saw tentative smiles searching for sad souls to warm up. I saw hands reaching out to grasp the fallen, the straying, and the lonely. I saw real compassion. I saw compassion in action, not on a table by the lawn.

I do not mean to deride the activism and selflessness of student philanthropists, but I do mean to suggest that there is a difference between compassion that comes from that lump in your throat and compassion that comes from a "cause"; causes are usually distant -- though not always -- but it takes something that "hits close to home" to make your throat swell, to drive you out in search of another human being, anyone, just for the affirmation of eye contact, or for the salvific interchange:

"Are you okay?"
"I'm okay."

Or, if you're lucky enough to trust someone:

"Are you okay?"
"No."
"Me neither."

We have to remember that there is more to bring us together here than there is to keep us apart. "Here" is the University of Virginia, but it is also Charlottesville, the United States, the World. We are so many different things, but we are all here, now, together, in this little plot of Earth, on this great big Earth. I find myself hoping that the Virginia Tech tragedy will awaken the mechanisms of suffering and compassion in my fellow students and Americans to the distant, but very present, suffering of Iraqis, Afghans, and Americans in the Middle East. I'm hoping there is room in the hearts of my fellow students to acknowledge and mourn the perpetual tragedy unfolding every day as a result of American foreign policy. I'm hoping that those who support the war policies will still find a place in their hearts to grieve for the lost lives, the ruined minds, and the devestated communities of Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm also hoping that those whose lives will all too soon return to pre-Virginia Tech levels of self-absorption will remember Virginia Tech from time to time, remember the shock, the grief, and the disillusionment, and maybe allow their hearts to take them to other sites of tragedy. If you can identify with Virginia Tech students, you can identify with American soldiers, and, with a small investment of heart, you can identify with the an Iraqi mother whose daughter's bus was destroyed on the way to school, or an Iraqi child whose father fell in the crossfire on his way to work, or young man whose anger at the injustice of the world gets the best of him. Call him a terrorist or call him a mujahideen, but let your heart reach out to him, to his mother and father, and to his siblings. Bear him no hatred; you could have just as easily been him, his mother, his father, or his sibling. My birth in the United States was the accident of history; I am fully aware that I am an American in Charlottesville and not an Iraqi in Baghdad only by the whims of chance; I do not hold anything against the Iraqi, and I hope s/he holds nothing against me. I hope that someday we can be friends for longer.

There is no reason to withhold the tools of connection, or to save compassion for a time of tragedy. There is every reason to overcome the distance between us. The human heart holds infinite reserves of love. Make contact.

Don't be scared, it's only existential meltdown.

If our planet pales in comparison to the sun, which pales in
comparison to Arctures, which pales in comparison to Antales, all of
which combined are a trifling sum of space next to the
incomprehensible vastness of the multi-universe, a realization which
makes humans seem "insignificant," and which may "scare" us, is it not
also important to consider that humans are infinitely vast in
substance, size, and complexity when compared to single cell
organisms, that single cell organisms are entire universes when
compared to the miniscule organic instruments which enable their
symphony of life, that those tiny organic instruments are themselves
composed of innumerable molecular structures of incredibly complex
composition, which are in turn made up of individual atoms, around
which hover clouds of electrons which are smaller in comparison to the
neutron/proton nucleus than earth is to sun, and that the components
of the atom are divisible into quarks and neurons and other subatomic
particles, beyond which exists a smallness which we can only attempt
to comprehend as infinitely small (an impossibility)? As the Buddha
once pondered: "If you shoot an arrow at a tree, and divide the
distance between the arrow and the tree at intervals, shouldn't it
always be true that there exists some distance between the arrow and
the tree, and shouldn't it be impossible that the arrow ever hits the
tree, because it should always have at least one more miniscule
half-distance to travel (indeed, the arrow never does hit the tree,
because the arrow only impacts a field of matter forever seperated
from the arrow itself by an immeasurably tiny force field; in fact,
what is perceived as impact is actually the victory of the tree's
energy against that of the arrow, the arrow begins to go backward)?
Is it frightening that we can stare into space and make short work of
it with measurements and mathematics, approximating it into light
years, formations of matter, etc., but we have relatively little idea
what exists at the bottom of our oceans? No, we have not found life
on Mars -- not quite, anyway -- but neither have we discovered more
than a staggeringly small fraction of life on Earth, of the mysteries
that exist right underneath our fingernails. Compared to these
perplexing relationships of scale right in our conscious and physical
backyards, I find space -- far from the "final frontier," (which is,
of course, the mind) -- pretty manageable. Conceptually at least,
i.e. I can imagine sailing around the world, but I cannot imagine
sailing across the universe; the body would break down into its
variously arranged energy components at the light speed necessary to
sustain inter-universal travel; as we approached light speed, we would
be reduced to long strands of ROY G BIV, each strand travelling a
little slower than the other. Is it weird to think that red light
travels more slowly than violet, because it vibrates at a slower
frequency, and that energy travelling at different speeds is what
allows us to differentiate anything from any other thing, is what
allows for us to see, hear, touch, etc.? Yes. Is it weird to think
that our very understanding of the spectrum of light as one with
discernable ROY G BIV strands is itself an example of our desperate
need to arrange concepts of the infinite around structures of the
finite (how do you know when you have defnitively left Reddish Orange
and lapsed into Orangish Red)? Yes. Finite and infinite. Possible
and Impossible. Black and White. Hmmnnnnn. It is our understanding
of the finite, indeed our very existence as seemingly discrete beings,
separated from the ground on which we stand, the air which we breath,
the people with whom we interact, the space which surrounds us, which
makes possible any and all conceptualization of the infinite; and yet,
even with everything made possible by the finite capability of
understanding, any understanding of the inifinitude of the universe is
utterly impossible. Isn't it obvious that 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 etc.
are fictions? And yet that basic sequence helps us get at the core of
understanding, of the universe's most simple (seemingly) truths and
its greatest mysteries. Indeed, that sequence is what enables our
very existence, and yet one is a totally abstract number; nothing is
ever one or more than one, except in the abstract, which doesn't
actually exist, or does it? Prove it. Disprove it. You can't. Try,
that's all you can do. I suppose you can also pray. Just don't ask
too many questions. Is it strange that the very reason which has led
us to discover the realities behind what used to appear as "providence
(God's divine plan)" now leads many to beg God for a ladder out of the
deep abyss of existential oblivion? "It's too much for me," they say
"I can't handle it, I feel too insignificant. Help me." As far as I
can tell, that's been God's most powerful "saving grace" from the
beginning, as if the beginning ever happened, as if anything ever occurs in isolation from anything else.

What I find liberating and quite terrifying at the same time is the
very notion that human beings have had the time and intellect to try
to figure out all of these things, that building on the basic
Euclidean principle that "a line is the shortest distance between two
points (just one example among billions)" we have successfully enabled
ourselves to structure a concept, to map out, to make sense of, an
entire universe; I can't believe we've gotten this far, but I have no
choice but to believe. I could try, as Descartes half-heartedly did,
to deny the existence of the universe, but -- as Descartes, sitting in
his study, mentions -- hunger would quickly remind me of the nature of
my fantasy. Where we will go from here will be far less vast,
spatially, than space, but necessarily more complex by a factor of infinity. We are surrounded by the infinite. Does it scare you to think that you are simultaneously in contact with every single piece of matter on Earth by a great chain of being, i.e. the air is not vacuum, but mass, I am touching all of you right now, as well as whatever freakish fish or
alien lies at the bottom of the Pacific, at the foot of mountains
several times the height of Everest. But, as Einstein showed us: it's
all relative.

Response to an "anti-troop" blog.

Dear Scott in Connecticut,

I joined the National Guard in July 2001. I signed the minimum contract: 6 years, plus 2 years in the Inactive Ready Reserves. Many of the soldiers who served with me in Iraq during 2004-2005 joined in the aftermath of 9/11. They believed (quite nobly) that they were responding to the call of duty during a time of national insecurity. Most of them are scheduled to get out of the Guard in Sept. Most of them would not re-enlist, were it not for the fact that we were all recently stop-lossed. I don't know who you associate with in the military, but I assure you that I have seldom encountered anyone who joined to "kill in [your] name"; rather, those with whom I serve are committed to fulfilling their contracts and following the orders thereby implied. I am one of them. The occassional soldier who expresses a desire to hurt others is usually young and inexperienced, not to mention quickly silenced and chastised/ostracized by those soldiers who have had the unfortunate experience of living in a combat environment. Were you to take a more vested interest and, say, read some of the SOPs and the Rules of Engagement for the Iraq theater, you might realize that pulling the trigger is a very rare occurrence, and when soldiers must make the decision to fire their weapons they make sure to identify their targets very well, and they make sure to avoid collateral damage. The U.S. military has never in history taken such a firm approach to restraining unneccessary casualties; many soldiers fear even to fire when fired upon because they have seen the legal consequences. Can you imagine getting charged with murder after defending yourself in a combat zone? I can. I have seen it happen, and I can tell you, it weighs heavily on every soldier's decision making process.

Speaking of soldiers, combat, and Iraq; do you know that 60% of combat troops in Iraq and Aghanistan (read:trigger pullers) are National Guardsmen? These are not soldiers who serve four years and then get out; we are in for the long haul regardless of the changes in the political climate. And as for those men and women who join the active duty for four years, do you honestly believe that soldiers serve one tour in Iraq and the rest are by choice? Quite the contrary: soldiers, active and reserve components, have served multiple tours because of the fact that the military is stretched painfully thin, recruitment is low, and so many soldiers ARE getting out after their term of service expires. Your estimation is perfectly WRONG: soldiers and marines serve so many tours precisely because people are NOT joining with the intent of "killing" or any other intent for that matter. Stop-loss only affects several thousand soldiers? Really? If by several thousand you mean tens of thousands, which over the course of several deployments cycles is the makeup of several divisions! For someone I assume to be very anti-war and probably angered by Bush's ignorance and arrogance while uninformed, I must say I am disappointed by your willingness to wage verbal combat against the armed forces when you are clearly operating with "flawed intelligence," both informational and intellectual.

I am a senior at a top 25 University: I'm no fool, and I write and research obsessively in an attempt to bring about a creative and productive end to the unfortunate mess that we have created in Iraq; however, I am also a part-time soldier. Sure, I could go to Canada. I could say that I hear voices. I could complain about the nightmares I frequently experience in hopes to get a PTSD discharge. But then I'd be dishonest; I'd be betraying my fellow soldiers who depend on my experience and leadership to bring them home safely from future deployments which we have no choice but to endure; I'd be breaking the promise I made to my nation to toe the line when the orders come. You clearly have no concept of how the military works, what impels people to join the military (it's one of the only escapes from poverty, the most integrated institution in the United States, a truly meritocratic space, and a road to U.S. citizenship, not to mention a means of "serving the country," a call which thousands of young men and women still answer despite the political consequences); I wonder if your ignorance and lack of insight carries over into your own role in society, your work, or your personal relationships? I suggest you read a recent article in Harper's (Jan. 2007) which explains the "answer to the call of duty" in terms of a desire on the part of young Americans from the underprivileged demographic to do something positive and to contribute to global society. Most young Americans do not have the opportunity to take an internship with a non-profit or NGO, the education to serve in the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps, or the financial wherewithal to dedicate themselves to "selfless service" (one of the Army Values), while their parents foot the bill; for these people, military service is just that: selfless service. Most of the people I served with believed that our mission was to help the Iraqis bring their government to salience, not to wage war against the Iraqi people themselves. You have likely watched too many war movies, and with a lack of actual combat experience you likely mistake the cover of Full Metal Jacket -- displaying a helmet with "Born to Kill" scrawled across it -- for a statement of intent, when in fact it is a statement of tragic irony. If you are truly interested in the sentiments of soldiers, take a look at the Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome statistics of soldiers and marines returning from Iraq and Afghanistan; the statistics and testimonies clearly illustrate the service members' horrors and pyschological pain. You do them a great dishonor and a great disservice by silencing them even further.

Do you not understand the power of nationalist propaganda, partially based in real world events which are difficult for even the most critical and well-informed minds to decipher? Do you not understand that many soldiers and marines join and risk their lives because they truly believe that they are helping to make the United States safer while assisting the Iraqis (and, by extension, the world) to rid themselves of terror and establish a legitimate government? I do not believe that the United States will achieve either of these objectives, nor am I even sure that these are objectives of U.S. foreign/Iraq policy; however, I am a well-educated older soldier from a liberal family background in which I had access to cultural and intellectual resources at the highest level from birth, i.e. I did not join the military as a way out of a bad life, as a stepping stone to the future, or to serve my country honorably (these are all byproducts), I joined because I failed out of college the first time and had to find a way to grow up! And now I'm stuck, but I'm proud to serve next to the soldiers in my platoon, and I'm dedicated to their wellbeing in a way which I doubt that you will ever understand. The least I can ask you to do is try. While you're at it, try to get a grip on reality. I suggest picking up some literature written by vets: The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien; All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Remarque; A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway; Doing Battle, by Paul Fussell. All of these should help you glean some perspective on what goes on behind the eyes which sight the target, the finger which pulls the trigger, the heart that misses its mother, the brain that cannot fathom the horrifying situation, and the human who must deal with the physical and psychological consequences for the rest of his or her life.

Snug as a Gun: a response to William Arkin

(In response to William Arkin's blog on washingtonpost.com)

Mr. Arkin,

I will proffer no ad hominem tirade against either you or your blogs, as I see such forms of criticism as wholly unproductive and distracting; however, as an Iraq veteran facing a second tour of duty, I must caution you -- from the perspective of one who has disagreed with the war from 1444 and been vocal in both my disapproval and my call for a creative resolution -- against wielding your pen irresponsibly. The temptation to slay our ideological and idiotical enemies is all too easy to succumb to, especially when impassioned, humane, and foreward-thinking ideas are continually met with sloganeering and empty pseudo-nationalism, but such slaying wins no converts.

I might remind you of a quote from Belfast born Seamus Heaney, poet laureate of Ireland, from his poem "Digging":

"Between my finger and my thumb/
the squat pen rests, snug as a gun."

What is it exactly you aimed to do with your pen/gun in your recent blog in which you deftly defeated the decontextualized utterances of several distraught and alienated soldiers?

And, to whom exactly are YOU shipping "obscene amenities"? Someone has been misinforming you as to the quality of the accomodations in the average FOB, but this is not the point. The point is this: even if we were sleeping in clean linens with mints on pillows, we would still be putting our lives on the line day in and day out, we would still be missing our families so badly that our bodies never quite feel whole, we would still be listening to the sounds of exploding mortar shells as we try to reason ourselves to sleep, wondering at the randomness of aimed attacks and their unintended/intended consequences, wondering why we have to drive through the streets of a perplexing foreign country and point weapons at people whom we have never seen nor spoken to, including children. Are you surprised that many troops are not able to put two-and-two together and realize that oftimes it's protest that supports the troops? And if you are not surprised, then why not write a blog explaining to those jaded troops that your protest is born out of your impassioned support for their unfortunate predicament? You are surely not naive; however I find it unfortunate that your powerful gift of writing had to manifest itself in a cynical misunderstanding of several alienated soldiers.

That said: I, for one, accept what I find to be an apologetic response. I am not an immovable sloganeer; I believe that the "flip flop" is an inevitable part of human experience; when in the dialectical nature of interpersonal communication it comes to our attention that we have erred in our thinking or in our attempts to express our thinking, we must take a new tack. I see in this blog that you have done exactly that, and I look forward to reading your future contributions, no matter what subject you choose to treat.

Response to a Concerned Iraqi-American Friend

Dear Mr. Almudallal,

Thank you for voicing your concerns and for your cogent, well-reasoned
suggestions for carrying forward the mission in Iraq. I agree with
your insights on the problematic notion of a three region partition of
Iraq. A partitioned Kurdistan is more of a pipe dream than an actual
option, and in my estimation there are no foreign affairs experts who
actually believe that Kurdish political autonomy will ever happen (the
Kurdish free autonomous zone instituted after the Gulf War [1991] was
problematic enough for Kurdistan's neighbors). Turkey and Iran are far
too concerned with the ideological, geographical, economic, and
political containment of the Kurds for anything even resembling a
Kurdish state to come into existence. With regards to the south of
Iraq, I think you are correct to fear the alliances between Basra and
Iran and between Karbala and Saudia; both "provincial" alliances would
have serious ramifications for the Iraqi oil industry. With regards to
the Iraqi oil industry, I am dismayed and confused as to why only 30%
of Iraqi oil revenue has made it into the books since reconstruction
began. The failure of the Iraqi state and the United States to account
for Iraqi oil, the primary source of funding for reconstruction in
Iraq, is indicative of the embarassingly misguided priorities of the
United States as well as the corruption and incompetence of those
currently holding the reins of power in the Iraqi administration. You
are perfectly right to assert that a partition, which would put oil in
the hands of the Kurds and the southerners, would economically
disenfranchise the very region of Iraq which now suffers from the most
violence in the growing civil war. If Iraq is to survive as a state,
the oil revenue MUST serve as the financial backbone of
reconstruction; if paritition occurs, there is no need to talk about
the survival of Iraq as such; rather, we may begin to talk about the
annihilation of the Kurds, the ravage of central Iraq, and the fusing
of Basra, Karbala, and al-Anbar province with Iran, Saudia, and Syria
respectively.

So, the question remains: what can we (the United States) do to help
end the violence? While I am intrigued by your suggestion that U.S.
troops redeploy to the borders, I do not think this is a viable option
due to the political/moral circumstances of the Iraq occupation. If
the U.S. troops are to remain in Iraq at all, it is unreasonable to
expect the people of the U.S. or the international community to accept
our presence if we are not doing all we can to counterattack the
violent factions of the central cities (patrol, cordon, search in
Baghdad, Fallujah, an-Najaf, an-Nasiriyah, Balad, Ramadi, Samarra).
Redeployment to the borders would send a strong message to Iran and
Syria, but it would drive home the message to the international
community that the United States is interested only in its foreign
policy initiatives, homeland security, and saving face. While I think
troop presence on the border could prevent any invasion efforts on
behalf of the Iranians, who might invade were the U.S. to pull out
altogether, I find the odds of outright Iranian military action
against Iraq very unlikely. As you clearly illustrate, Iran has no
need to take any military action against Iraq; Ahmedinijad's clerical
advisors are already close supporters/friends of al-Malaki's clerical
advisors. The alliance between Iraq under al-Malaki and Iran under
Ahmedinijad (or, we might assume, their shiite successors) will not
require bloodshed if the United States helps Iraq's shiite leaders
tighten their grip on Iraqi governance. With this in mind, we need not
take heart at al-Sistani's and Moqtada al-Sadr's recent approval of
the troop increase in Baghdad: if U.S. presence equals support of the
Iraqi National Guard and safer central cities, and if a stronger ING
and safer cities equal a fortification of shiite governance, then the
support of these clever clerics should not surprise us. Of course they
want more troops in Baghdad! All the sooner will they be able to
emerge victorious in the civil war, forge links with Iran, and begin
the suppression of hostile sunni factions, and all under the guise of
"stability" and "peace."

Responding to your insistence on the abandonment of the Green Zone in
favor of a less glaring occupation/protection of Baghdad and Iraq's
governmental leaders, I must speak from the position of practical
necessity. If the U.S. is to remain in Baghdad in an official capacity
then the Green Zone is a necessary defense against relatively long
range and easy to obtain mortars and rockets, the indirect fire of
choice of the insurgency. Even as it stands, the inner buildings of
the Green Zone are not immune to these types of attacks. Were an
embassy to stand alone in Iraq, the perimeter would not allow for
sufficient security. Your suggestion that the elected Iraqi officials
face the dangers of the streets and "learn what it's like to live like
normal Iraqis" fails to account for the ease with which even U.S.
convoys are attacked by hostile forces. Al-Malaki would not last a
day. Maybe this is good news to you, but it is bad news for the future
stability of Iraq. Killing begets killing, and no killing begets more
killing than the killing of
ideologically/nationalistically/religiously invested political
leaders. On the issue of a recall you make more sense. You might
consider abandoning the call for representative democracy altogether,
which you lean towards when advocating federalism. Perhaps the best
system of governance for Iraq would be a variant of socialist
federalism, where the diverse regions of Iraq remain relatively
autonomous from one another and have a great deal of local
self-governance, but where very high taxes and a platform of
distribution of state wealth dominates the overarching national
government, i.e. each region gets a large and equal share of the oil
revenue to invest in local governance, programs, healthcare,
education, etc. Since a significant portion of Iraqis ARE
uncomfortable with the idea of their nation crumbling, we might expect
more support for the idea of Iraq as a state/identity/actor in the
region if there were any promise of a determinable economic and
political future.

The fact remains that Iraq MUST have a security force of some sort to
ward off the threat of regional exploitation and to suppress
"terrorist"/militant activity from a factionally disinterested stance.
At present, I do not believe that the Iraqi National Guard represents
the interests of the broader Iraqi population. I do not trust the
infrastructure of the ING, which has been very tribal from the
beginning, nor do I expect Iraqis to trust the ING which has been
repeatedly accused of serving the interests of local militia leaders,
operating as a separate and self-interested entity, and carrying out
missions against its own people. I wonder: if the U.S. pulls out and
the ING falls into disorder, will the Iraqi state which crops up after
the civil war will be able to establish a factionally disinterested
army dedicated to the state a/o the tribe? Probably not.




Where do we stand?

1) Partition will lead to the dissolution of Iraq, dividing the
already sectarian society with economic inequality. The dissolution of
Iraq as a state will add strength to enemies of the United States.

2)Redployment to the borders is logistically/morally impossible.
Increased presence in the cities causes more violence than it
prevents, and without the promise of a safer future. The U.S. forces
are viewed by many in Iraq as one among several forces in the civil
war, as are the ING; as long as we are a political and military enemy
to large factions of the Iraqi people, it is unreasonable to expect
that any legislation/infrastructure
which we bring to salience with military support will last the test of
time. "Staying the course" in Iraq means staying forever if the
"course," redefined, is the end to the civil war. While I [obviously]
sympathize with our moral responsibility to "fix what we have broken"
and to restore order where we have sewn discord, I have faced the
reality that our military occupation of Iraq cannot and will not serve
any parties' interests. We would do better to assist in the
reconstruction and growth of the Iraqi economy and to help eradicate
incipient corruption and poor organization; we can do this from
outside of Iraq's borders.

3)Abandonding the Green Zone presents too great of a security risk to
those who remain, and as we must leave Iraq eventually, and the now
protected leaders face the inevitability of violence, we may as well
face the truth that -- in the end -- we can protect them neither now
nor later.

4)The Iraqi people must fight their civil war until the end: they must
"stay the course." American presence in Iraq does nothing to bring
about the end of the civil war, which is the event which MUST happen
before any other political developments (including regional stability)
are possible in anything resembling a lasting manner, i.e. we can make
Baghdad SEEM safe, but it will not be; we can make Iran temporarily
nervous, but not forever, and at the cost of jeopardizing U.S. moral
initiative.

5)In order for the U.S. to enact any successful change in policy,
commanding authorities in the Middle East would need a build up of
many more thousands of troops than 21,500 or 17,500, (100,000?
200,000?) and we would need to make a commitment to stay in Iraq for
many years to come. Without such a firm posture in the region, which
would enable a full- fledged focus on reconstruction and organization
of the Iraqi government, any singular efforts are doomed to failure.
The country is just too violent and unstable. Since we all know that a
troop increase of consequence will not be tolerated by the American
tax-payers or the increasingly vocal protesters, we need to quit
promising what we can't deliver to the Iraqi people and let them
"deliver themselves" from the evil of this situation (one which we
clearly created, but one which Iraqi and foreign fighters are
perpetuating). Money which would fund troops can go into
reconstruction with the support of U.N. accountability mechanisms (one
option among many).

6) If we leave, I find it unlikely that the violence will worsen. The
U.S. presence in Iraq stokes the fires of militant propagandists who
cite our presence as evidence of our evil intentions in the regions.
Once secular citizens of Baghdad are now harboring or, at least,
tolerating jihadists because the "prophecies" of the jihadists are
supported by the empirical evidence of the U.S. occupation. When the
U.S. forces are no longer there to make true the fighters' hostile
charges (many/most mujahidin are foreigners), it is unreasonable to
assume that street-to-street and house-to-house support of these
extremely destructive fighters will remain at its current level.
Foreign fighters require food, shelter, and moral support; so long as
we remain in Iraq, we cannot blame the Iraqi people -- who have seen
no U.S. promises fulfilled without concomitant destruction and
pork-barrelling which would make U.S. pundits shiver -- for
disbelieving us and believing those whose language, culture, history,
and futures are linked with theirs. Without the U.S. presence as a
target for ideological and physical violence (Iraq IS ABSOLUTELY the
#1 training site for international jihadists because of U.S. presence.
If you are a dragon-slayer, you will find no work in the village. You
must go to the dragon's lair.), the street-to-street violence will
become increasingly more difficult and irrational in the eyes of the
Iraqi people. Alternatively, and far more cynically, if the U.S.
leaves then the amount of hostile factions in the civil war decreases
by a factor of one (a BIG one), which will enable a "more focused
civil war," where national issues of identity and governance are not
confused with or derailed by a war against an occupying force; the
civil war will end more quickly, and possibly with less bloodshed.
What's more, the undistracted civil war might produce a resolution
which has a chance of suriviving, based on a real balance of power
which is not merely imposed and protected by the foreign occupier.
That balance of power may extend across borders so that Iraq actually
ends up as a buffer zone between anti-U.S. and "anti-democratic"
nations.

Isn't that what we wanted all along?

It's time for the boys and girls to come home. My heart is thoroughly
broken, but I'm with you.

Best,
SPC Elliott Dunnington Woods
C 237th Sapper Company
West Point, VA