I asked for and received permission from a friend of mine (who asked that I not use his name or service branch) to post this letter he wrote recently describing his experience of serving in Iraq.
I believed it was important enough to share with this community.
He may read the comments, but I believe he will not reply as he is concerned about backlash (not from commenters but from others within the military or political world).
He has served honorably and I have the utmost respect for his integrity.
Here is his story....
Nineteen days of combat school didn’t teach me a damn thing I didn’t already know or need to know for my tour in Iraq. Dealing with the people and government of Iraq takes a journey through the looking glass and total realization takes the whole tour. Kind of like the saying, "the second before you die, you suddenly realize everything there is about life". During the 11th month of tour, you really get it and you recall painfully how unaware you were every month prior. The best officers I worked with had stayed beyond a year and were truly heroic and effective. A real preparation course would provide a week of Iraq Econ 101. It would help everyone from the combat fighter to the staff officer at headquarters. But no, everything vital is learned thru a monthly drop by drop process.
Iraqis are a decent people who just want work, send the kids to school and eat dinner at night. Above all they believe in fairness and justice, and upon that belief everything in Iraq turns. I never met an Iraqi I didn’t like, even the mass murders who sat across from me at the reconciliation meetings and post meeting dinner, they were good hosts. They believe strongly in doing things the way they’ve always been done, because it was perceived as fair, even under Saddam. The more we tailored our programs to support the former status quo, the more buy in we achieved from the government and the people. Putting an American spin on any program spelled its doom – guaranteed to fail.
Iraq is a Stalinist nation, not socialist which many will tell you when you arrive.
Across the board they believe:
- in a government job for everyone
- that oil revenue will support state programs for the good of all peoples
- in health service provided by the state
- in free electricity, water and education including college to all citizens if qualified
- that privatization of any service provided by the state is considered theft
Work within those constraints and your program will be embraced by the Iraqis, but will fail in the big picture of global competition, unless supported by oil revenue – massive oil revenue. When Americans were paying $5 a gallon they were saving Iraq with each tank full. Now times are tough. The US vision of a new Iraq made in the mirror of ourselves will never be realized and once those in charge of the US mission shifted focus we gained traction.
A stunning amount of citizens work for the Ministries, in buildings without reliable power or computers. They push paper to each other coming up with grand ideas for the future that are un-fundable fantasies, like the Bagdad subway system designed in 1975 by the Ministry of Transportation. This $6 billon dollar project doesn’t even have the power generation required to support it, but the idea sounds great and the government council approves the plan from 1975. It will never be built. Meanwhile all these government workers collect the pay that will in time break the bank. Giving out jobs is a sure method of halting an insurgency, which is practical, but unsustainable in the near distant term. Not one more person can be hired and layoffs may become a reality.
For better or worse they believe in a state education system in which 10% of the top students will become doctors whether they want to or not and the next 10% become engineers. Everyone else gets a vocational education and will achieve no better. There are no private collages and no one outside the top 20% will ever enter a college. Few of the doctors and engineers actually work as such because they never wanted to work in that field. I hired many Iraq trained engineers for my development programs and was amazed at their ineptitude in conceptual thinking. If I can out conceptualize an engineer – then he is no engineer. A state school education in the US is light years ahead of a state school education in Iraq. An engineer in Iraq is a walking joke with a title. We poured hundreds of millions into this system and attempted to bend it to a western model, to no avail. My program had a hand in funding technical colleges with computer equipment. My part was successful because I brought the ability to view porn on the internet. Shameful as that sounds it was the unnamed hook for students to learn about networking computers. I may not be the best and brightest, but I know traction when I see it. Every other effort will take years, but the computer generation is growing by leaps and bounds. I did my small part.
US forces thru an amazing program have doubled the amount of power generated in Iraq. Since Iraqis don’t pay for electricity they use more than double, so blackouts continue. Under Saddam they could own one air conditioner, now they can own five, and they do. When a contracted company put in meters to begin charging for power, the meters were all cut out and by-passed. When workers returned to reconnect the meters they were met with gunfire. Were they insurgents? No, just people who like the free system supported by the state. A few hours of free energy is better than paying for energy all day in their eyes. The only way to sustainable power is by charging and forcing them to turn off a few air conditioners.
To Iraq’s credit every citizen enjoys the benefit of their national resource of oil, which funds the many services they have. Unlike the US who uses our national resource to make a few rich folks richer, they use it for the common national good. Sure there is legendary corruption, but they can’t steal it all and in time services will improve. They said my tour in Iraq would change me and I look at our national policies a bit more leftist.
In the long run it may be best to not understand how Iraq works before arrival. I’ve seen staff officers become fully aware and stop working months before their rotation date. These were usually active duty officers who didn’t have a taste of real world work. To my headquarters credit, they demanded every slot to be filled by reserve officers with real work experience. That’s me, a real captain of industry.
The real work in Iraq started in 2007 with General Petraeus, everything that came before it was a fool’s paradise. The idea that we must "listen to the Generals in the Field" is a wonderful idea unless the General in the field is in way over his head. That was the case until 2007. Many sources strangely badmouthed the "so called" mainstream media for calling it right the whole time. General Petraeus built the governance and security apparatus that now forms a nation. He is the shit.
"Iraqi good enough." Within that phrase comes victory. Good enough to get us out of Iraq and leave it for them to deal with. They maybe inept, but they are not stupid; they will handle it in their own Iraqi way from top to bottom. They will be successful I have no doubt. In the end after 4,000 lives and a trillion dollars all we will have achieved is changing the man on top, a little too steep of a price if you ask me. However, I believe in that victory, it is at hand, and thank God for that.