Letter 141: When enough tears in the heart makes Hell a welcome respite, at last.

“Soldiers may accept the need to be the first to die in a war, but there is often an unseemly scramble to avoid becoming the last.” 

--Max Hastings, 2007

“And so this is Christmas, for weak and for strong; for rich and the poor ones -- the world is so wrong! And so happy Christmas, for black and for white; for yellow and red ones. Let's stop all the fight!” 

--John Lennon & Yoko Ono, 1971

Watching the “Frontline” documentary on Iraq, aired 23rd March 2017, has likely left any old Iraq hand with a sense of disgust and despair. The sectarian situation in Iraq is as bad now as it was back in 2004 and 2005 when I worked with the Ministry of Interior, the national police force, as it became infested with Shi´ite militias, mainly the Badr Brigade. The Badr-fronting Minister of Interior was a smooth-talking, Armani suit wearing gangster who looted the treasury with his brother and let the M.o.I. become, as others later noted, a Ministry of Death. Indeed, if genocide were really in the air, few seemed to care...

Yet most of the American civilians I worked with were more concerned about 'maintaining open channels' than the increasing disregard for the rule-of-law; they basically let it happen. Several very good and very smart people tried to warn me; sadly, I was too insecure -- because I was not in the inner circle -- to act on what they were saying. That vanity almost feels like a crime, looking back after all that has occurred in my belovèd Iraq and the prolonged torment of her lovely people: Sunni and Shi´ite; Kurd and Arab. What a Hell of a way for me to grow up in my late forties (i.e., realizing it is not all about me, whether I am 'in' or 'out', 'smart' or not)!

The invasion of 2003 -- and it is terribly painful for me to admit this for I feel disloyal to a good man, President George W. Bush in aticulating this regret -- looks like it was a mistake in the retrospective view of the ghastly consequences. In that context, by surging troop levels by 30,000 soldiers, I thank God that President Bush faced down the denial spewed by the 'Gang of Four' leading the Texas Cheney Massacre (Texas for Halliburton, not President Bush -- Messrs Cheney, Wolfowitz, Libby and Rumsfeld).

Thank God Himself that General Petraeus forged an alliance with the Sunni tribes. President Bush's courage -- and that of many younger brothers and sisters in uniform out in the field -- prevented a sectarian genocide in 2007. Now the whole thing is right back to the brink of a genocide again, thanks to failed U.S. military and civilian leadership that let a would-be Shi´ite Saddam undermine his lost election of 2010.

There were 50-75,000 troops in Iraq in 2010 and Prime Minister al-Malaki was not ready to complete his power grab; he was still cozying up to us for cover as he consolidated his pedestal for tyranny. Threatening to pull the troops may have empowered (now) Co-Vice President Ayad Allawi, the winner of the election, and others to assume the reins of government. Things might have unfolded differently, though, by 2010, the society may already have been too far gone.

The U.S. military staff officers, too often caught up in their careers and trying to avoid mis-steps, missed the writing on the wall when Prime Minister al-Malaki kept finding reasons not to follow through on his side of the deal to squeeze al-Qaeda: integrating the 'Sons of Iraq' -- young Sunni fighters who took Anbar and Ninawa back for their country -- into the national police and armed forces. And, to put the writing on the wall in bold italics, Prime Minister al-Malaki finessed the British out in 2009. Nevertheless, American military planners still assumed we could dictate the number of troops we would leave behind; targeting a force of 35-50,000.

The unreality was incredible; after raising my concerns in my Prince Charmless manner that led me to dust off my résumé in a hurry, with a 'little nudge', I developed a simple plan to integrate the S.o.I.s into the police that would accommodate Prime Minister al-Malaki's 'concern' that bad-guys amongst the Sunnis (i.e., all of them, per his little green book) should not be armed by the state. Prime Minister al-Malaki bamboozled us easily by noting that many of these same Sunnis had fought against our troops and were likely responsible for some of the American slain. 

My sense is that the British lead officer liked it -- thought it was worth a try -- but the U.S. Army leadership (i.e., many of whom I dub the 'staff infection') killed it. Perhaps the plan was far-fetched and my ego and prickly personality got in the way; would not be the first time. Yet I still suspect the idea could have worked because it placed local Iraqis in charge of who would police them and who would support the fielded policemen. ln any case, it was destined to be a no-go because the presence of a formal plan would force the implicit admission that all was not milk-and-honey in post-surge Iraq.

Almost on schedule, when our military partnership agreement came up for renewal, as a U.K. agreement (I believe) had come up in 2009 for a few hundred military trainers to remain in-country, Prime Minister al-Malaki out-maneuvered us...right out the door. One thing I had learned and come to rely upon was that the British Army and Marines were our conscience in Iraq.

And the rest, lamentably, was history. I have often written that, had Senator McCain (my preference) won in 2008, the no-troops in Iraq end-state would also have occurred. There is, however, one possibility: a President McCain may have raised Hell in 2009 to keep the British in and again in 2010 for the democratic machinery to limp forward. In fairness to the Army, the criticisms I have do not involve the soldiers nor many of the lower-ranking officers in the field.

Please be assured they served us oh-so-nobly; and they won the war in 2008 by any measure, only to see the mediocre U.S. military leadership that followed forfeit that investment. Like old Saint Pete, time to exit silently and weep bitterly. The toxicity of a top-heavy staff command (e.g., the average rank in the Pentagon being a Major, perhaps toward a Lieutenant Colonel) creates an environment of extreme risk-aversion. One mis-step and an officer's twenty year career ascent is toast.

Honestly, I could easily see me drinking the same hemlock shake as these careerists so often do. They are less cowardly than predictable. Few are the men as brave as General Petraeus who have the military acumen (i.e., astute humility) to learn from mistakes and the willingness to take the calculated risks. Such virtues, so often sought and so rarely seen, remain necessary for a victory in such an overwhelmingly uncertain atmosphere as that of stabilization wrapped in a quagmire inside an occupation.

On the civilian side, I can only rue that Ryan Crocker did not stay on as Ambassador through 2011 or that Robert Ford did not succeed him in 2009 in Baghdad. Never mistake the difference just one man or woman can make. One final wrinkle here is the personalities of Presidents Bush and Obama. Again, I have been hesitant to state this idea because I do not want this comment to come across as blaming President Obama as Senators McCain and Graham so often do, wrongly. That would be completely unfair to a good, impeccably decent man.

Additionally, there are so many assumptions on my part about people whom I do not know. So, here is my impression. For President Bush, the invasion of Iraq was a moral decision predicated also on a conviction that every (wo)man is born with liberty in his or her breast. Please note, I favoured President Bush's invasion in 2003 and still believe his notion of the inborn predisposition toward freedom as a part of (J.J. Rousseau's view of) human nature. President Bush was and remains a great man in my book; you criticize his policies, you criticize my political preference -- period.

For President Obama, however, the Iraq occupation was an unnecessary failure to be solved after the positive step forward brought by the surge. Additionally, President Bush had been mentoring Prime Minister al-Malaki and had established a high level of moral suasion. Were Prime Minister al-Malaki's power grab based solely on fear, President Bush as mentor-in-chief might have talked the insecure leader of Iraq into an extended American presence and toward honouring commitments to his Sunni countrymen.

President Obama was more aloof, a trait of a brilliant and contemplative man. He did not enjoy the ready rapport with Prime Minister al-Malaki that a more gregarious President Bush had; nor did he really have time to build one. These are suppositions and likely at least one is incorrect; if all were correct, my aggregation of these intuitions into this sequence might itself be off-the-mark. One can not know; but this speculative scenario accords with my (questionably functional) hunches of Iraq at the time.

For those families who lost loved ones or saw them return maimed into a permanent and living grief as well as to those new 'Greatest Generation' active duty personnel and National Guardsman in the field, their efforts may seem to have been wasted. Well, no, they have not fought for naught; the seeds they planted with their sweat and blood and devotion amply attest to America's exceptional impulse toward liberty.

That sacrifice -- those seeds of forgotten greatness -- will bloom into a safer Iraq of growing tranquillity and glowing prosperity within the next generation or two (i.e., 20-40 years), if Viêt Nam is any guide. Let us hope we find a better way of comparting our exceptionalism to the world. Too many have died and too many still suffer today for the old way (i.e., my stupid way) to continue. Recent history demands that we change; common humanity requires it.