Iraq War: Confessions of a POG
WALEED NESYIF: Simple things are what we were asking for: dignity, water, electricity, and a hope of a job. Not even a job. Just a hope that you’ll get a job. These things, had they happened, Iraqis would not have reacted in the way they did.
EMMA SKY: [Iraqis were thinking] “This is the country that put a man on the moon, imagine what it’s going to do for us.” So there were these very high expectations. Now in the beginning, I think the coalition over-promised and under-delivered. And so when anything went wrong, Iraqis assumed it was a conspiracy. So when the electricity went down, they believed it was because America was stealing it. Not because insurgents had blown up the pipelines, blown up the wires. So there was always this misunderstanding which led to the promulgation of more and more conspiracy theories.
RASHA AL-AQEEDI: I know when the regime was gone, I felt that I could breathe a little bit. That I could say I was finally free. There was a sense of liberation. However, that was kind of contradicted with the sight of army tanks in the streets, of a foreign invasion. But I don't want to deny that moment of joy for any [Iraqis] who did not mind the tanks and felt that the freedom was more important… When we found out that, okay, the U.S. army is not shooting on sight, not killing everyone it sees – I think there was a sense of calm. Because that was our perception of an “invasion.” We always thought about Israel and Palestine … so that was our fear – that this might happen to Iraq. When that didn't happen, and we were able to go back to school … there was cautious optimism that maybe things are not so bad… But it was when the violence started, when people were kidnapped … it felt like chaos immediately.
JOHN BOLTON: What I view as the “Iraq War” took about three or four weeks, with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. And it was a nearly flawless military operation… That, to me, was the Iraq War. Where I depart from the Bush administration policy was in the post-war activity… Trying to build a new democratic state in Iraq. What I said at the time – and I suppose it’s a little bit flip – but what I said at the time was that while I would have kept American military forces in Iraq, because of the threat from Iran and the threat from Syria, I would have given the Iraqis the reigns of government, I would have given them a copy of The Federalist Papers, and I basically would have said, “Good luck.” Because I don’t think it’s America’s responsibility to build governments for other people.
MICHAEL MORRELL: I spend a great deal of time on college campuses, and I can’t tell you how often students question whether America’s role in the world has been for good or not. And, for those students who say no, they point first to the Iraq War and second to the 2008 financial crisis. These two events have led many Americans to question the competency and credibility of their own government.
ALAA ADEL: I hope that what happened to Iraq happens to America.
I had written something for today’s 20th anniversary, but then I decided to scrap it. Maybe I’ll post it later. Not sure. It was the event that defined my generation (or my segment of my generation anyway), but it just gets too frustrating trying to make sense out of that mess. Because Iraq is the kind of war that only makes sense to the people who finally settled on picking one of the “standard narratives” that is floating around out there and then stopped thinking too hard about it. Everyone else just said, “Dude, I dunno,” and moved on.
So instead, I’m re-posting the first of several blogs I wrote back in 2011, which happened to be a piece about my brief time in Iraq. It was odd that a lot of people surprised me by praising these blogs, which were really just me taking stock of the experiences of my youth. This one I called “Survivor’s Guilt,” but you could also call it “Confessions of a POG.” The only thing about these 2011 posts that grew to bother me was that it became clear that in a lot of them I was actually trying to find some “silver lining” to the experiences. Still hoping that all this sad stuff would ultimately have some “moral to the story.” But I really don’t think there is any such thing.
Of course, maybe I have no choice in thinking that way. After all, we are all slaves to our own experiences (and our own personalities), and none of mine had uplifting endings. In fact, they all had really, really messed-up endings (some of which I’m not at liberty to discuss), so it wouldn’t make any sense for me to be the guy that tells you everything will work out in the end. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the bad guys do win. The only thing I can tell you is that you should never stop trying. As the saying goes: “Better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all.”
“SURVIVOR’S GUILT” (May 23, 2011)
I worked the midnight to noon shift in Balad, Iraq. Nice shift to have. Less flights, cooler weather, and I could call my wife regularly on the ATOC phone at a decent hour (American time that is). We’d take turns going to the chow hall when breakfast time rolled around - which was basically our dinner - to pick up food for everyone. They had local Iraqis working the grill there. They fried up eggs for you, two at a time, but I always asked for four eggs because I was a growing boy.
The cooks would usually have plenty of eggs already cooking on the fryer so they could keep the line moving, but this one particular day there wasn’t anyone in line. Because of this, the cook only had four eggs on the fryer by the time I stepped up to him. So as I always did, I asked for four eggs, but by this point a couple of dudes had gotten in line behind me. Which means the guy directly behind me now had to wait for the cook to make some more. That’s when I heard his voice.
“Hey thanks. Way to screw me at the egg line, dude.”
I turned around with a big grin on my face. Because I legitimately thought the guy was just being funny. I locked eyes with this young Army fella giving me a stone-cold stare down. The smile immediately disappeared from my face. I couldn’t believe it. Is this guy seriously pissed at me because I took some extra eggs?
“Fucking Air Force. I swear to God.”
He says it like I’m not even there. Then he walked right by me and ordered his food. I just stood there for a moment. Didn’t say a word. Then I walked away and headed over to get some fruit before heading back to the ATOC building.
Less than a minute later this guy came over to the fruit stand, right next to me. It was literally less than a minute. As tends to happen with me when someone rubs me the wrong way, I get an inclination to say something to rile him up. What passed through my head was, “Oh good, I’m glad you were able to survive the extra thirty seconds you had to wait at the egg line. It’s no wonder you Army guys are so tough.”
But I didn’t say it. And you may be thinking I chickened out, but that wasn’t it. When I turned to look at him the first thing I saw was the Big Red One on his shoulder patch. The Big Red One is the very well-known insignia of the First Infantry Division. Now this is not an uncommon sight on Balad. Most of the guys on that base were from the Fighting First. Balad was basically the place for soldiers to rest up and regroup. It’s also where they go to leave on R&R. It’s where they first arrive. It’s where they depart to go home. Outside of Balad is where they do the real work. The patrols and firefights that the guys like me never had to experience.
Now I’d seen this Big Red One patch on a daily basis, on a hundred different soldiers a day, but this time I took notice. Because it dawned on me now why he’s angry, and it’s not the eggs. This guy looked tired and dirty. You could smell the sweat under his uniform. You could see a thick layer of dust on his DCUs. Mine, on the other hand, were freshly washed. Not like they even needed to be since I sit at a computer 98% of the time.
When I got back to ATOC, I handed the other guys their food and sat down at my desk. Then I told them what happened with this Army guy.
“Did he seriously say that to you?” one of the Sergeants asked.
“Yeah. I didn’t even think he was serious at first,” I said. “I mean who gets that upset over a couple of eggs?”
“Fuck that guy. I get so sick of hearing that whiny bullshit from the Army.”
“You should have just stayed there in line and ordered another dozen eggs.”
“Yeah, then take one bite and throw the rest in the trash right in front of him.”
Everyone laughed. I smirked and nodded in agreement, but the whole time I’m thinking, “No… You know what. He’s right. Fuck us… and fuck me most of all.”
Another time back in Balad, I was riding the bus that travels around the base (it was a pretty huge base), and I was riding with another First Infantry kid. He was a little guy. Short, and very young looking. We were the only ones on the bus at the time. He could tell I’m Air Force by the PT clothes I’m wearing, and he started talking to me. Tells me his father was in the Air Force, but that he had decided to be a grunt instead. He seemed to just randomly want to open up to a stranger, and I relished the opportunity.
I realize now that back then, back when I was my most obsessed with the war, that in many ways I really wanted to be a journalist, not a soldier. I thirsted for knowledge. The amount of information I pored over was utterly ridiculous. And all it taught me in the end was that even if you ingested information 24/7, read every article, every blog, every intel report, talked to every Iraqi, every soldier, every politician - even if you personally fought there - you still didn’t know. You could only guess.
After all, every single person who was ever over there has a completely different experience that is unique to them, and ultimately leads them all to different conclusions. To some the war is vile and depraved. To some it’s heroic and noble. To guys like me, it’s both. It all depends on the when, where, what unit, who you were with, what happened while you were there, and probably most importantly - who you are.
War is a weird thing. It has a trillion tiny pieces so vastly different from one another, yet people try to make it into one concept. It’s the one thing that can never be summed up in a word, yet it literally is. I always said that if you tell me the war is a good thing, or a bad thing, I can pretty much stop listening to you. Because you clearly don’t get it.
Anyway, this kid on the bus tells me a lot of tales. One about when their platoon was surrounded and the insurgents just kept coming at them. They popped like forty to fifty of them, and not a one of theirs got hit. He also tells me about this other unit that apparently has a reputation. Said something about them calling a bomb in on an unruly crowd after they just got sick of dealing with them. He wasn’t there, so who knows exactly what happened. Back then I tended not to believe those stories, but I know now some of them were unfortunately true. Some. We both laugh about it anyway. Half-heartedly because I don’t think either of us really thought it was funny.
I remember taking mental notes of our conversation. Wanting to grill him for more stories. More perspective. I wanted to hear as many perspectives on this thing as I could. Like it was a puzzle I actually believed I could solve. So he keeps talking. He tells me a little about home, about his father’s time in the Air Force, and says maybe he should have followed in his footsteps after all.
“I’m tired of being a grunt.”
He looks down at the ground when he says it. I suddenly felt a wave of guilt. I mean, seriously, how do journalists do this? I’m looking at this kid like he’s a source, not a person, but for all I know he could get blown up tomorrow. He’s just looking for someone to unburden himself on, and I’m not even really hearing him. I’m just studying him. But after that point, I stopped taking notes. I just listened.
I said goodbye to him as I got off at my stop. He stayed on the bus by himself. I realized he was on the bus when I got on, and given the route we’d taken I’m pretty sure he wasn’t going anywhere. I think he was just riding around in circles.
I would also like to add this reply I got from an Airborne Ranger in response to the above post. I feel like it is appropriate to include it here, although I’ll keep the person anonymous just to be respectful. We didn’t know each other personally at the time, he just happened upon the post and connected with it. And his words were very much appreciated by me:
The piece you wrote struck a real chord. I served as an Airborne Ranger in the Army, to include time in Iraq, and the attitude of the First Infantry soldier in the story was all too familiar. It made me cringe with embarrassment. You go on to (very graciously) excuse that soldier's behavior while refraining to lay out the very, very important role that non-combat arms personnel play in a theater of war. I've learned that we're always going to feel that our personal contribution wasn't enough, that we should have assumed a more intense role, that we should've pushed to take on a job even more wrought with danger. If you're like me, you will always feel that way. But you shouldn't. Allow me to share a quick anecdote:
One of my soldiers lost his shit about six months into our deployment. He was a young kid, only nineteen, and he was being bombarded by rumors that his wife was cheating on him. He had only known her for a few months before we came down on orders for Iraq. Being the naive, romantic knucklehead that he was, they got married a few days before we shipped out. The combined stress of our op-tempo along with thoughts of his girl messing around was understandably too much to bear. He was deemed a threat to himself and others and was committed to the psych ward in Baghdad hospital. I was tasked with securing him from the hospital and getting him to Germany by any means necessary. The details of how that went down is another story in itself. The part I want to share with you is my experience in Balad with the Air Force personnel who served there.
We arrived in Balad by helicopter and processed through whatever Air Force unit was tasked with getting wounded service members out of country. I'm hard pressed to recall another instance in which I felt so comforted and appreciated and in which I was treated with such warm and caring attention. It didn't matter to them that I was in perfect health, it was as if they didn't believe me when I insisted I was fine and needed no care. I realize it's lazy to reference pop culture but it's super late right now and I have to work tomorrow, so in an effort to save time I'll just say that it was like that scene in Monty Python's "The Holy Grail" when Sir Galahad stumbles upon the castle full of women who insist on tending to his every need (though no one requested that I spank them). It was like being wrapped in a warm blanket of pure soothing joy. It was like a mother's embrace. I am eternally grateful to those folks, all Air Force, all non-combat arms. Their job was just as important as mine. As was yours.
This email felt a lot more poignant and meaningful when I began typing than it does now at its conclusion, but maybe that's something you can relate to as well.