If you want to understand why our military is failing in Iraq you only need to watch two documentaries: Alpha Company: Iraq Diary and Gangs of Iraq by Frontline. There is no single, simple answer to our dilemma. It is a combination of things. It is a failure of military leadership. It is a failure to recruit, deploy, and sustain in the enough troops in the field who have the language and cultural skills required to win hearts and minds. And it is a failure to have enough troops to effectively control territory without antagonizing the local population.
Alpha Company: Iraq Diary takes you inside a Marine platoon operating in the vicinity of Fallujah. I don’t think the filmmaker appreciated that he was creating an indictment of the Marines. I think his intent was to create an upbeat, rah rah, support the troops filmography.
But he inadvertently delivers something else–we are asking Marines to do a job they are not trained or equipped to carry out.
In one episode you see the troops barge into an Iraqi house in the middle of the night and roust the family. The sleepy eyed, bewildered Iraqis are given five minutes to vacate the residence, which the Marines are taking over as a staging base. (This was filmed in the summer of 2005.) That does not win you the “hearts and minds” of the locals. We did similar things to the Germans during World War II but the Germans were the enemy.
I could not help but think how I would react if foreign troops were kicking in my door and rousting my family and humiliating me. I would want to kill them. And, if I ever got the chance, I would. Well guess what boys and girls? Welcome to Iraq.
The Marine grunts are hardworking but culturally clueless. Most of these kids are high school graduates. They are not widely traveled, do not speak multiple languages, and have limited cultural experience. I do not blame the troops. I blame their leaders. The grunts are dependent on their chain of command and unfortunately the Captain leading them is brave but equally clueless. In one instance he reinforces the troops’ prejudice towards the “hajis” when he says, “if there is such a thing as an honest Iraqi I haven’t found him”.
The disdain for the Iraqis is prevalent throughout the platoon and is understandable. The Marines are taking casualties from an unseen enemy. They have a fatalistic attitude toward IEDs. They are trained to engage an enemy that will stand in fight. But they are caught in an insurgency that enjoys substantial local support.
The Marine Corps, now on its third deployment of units to Iraq, does not have the luxury of sending out units trained to understand and interact appropriately with the Iraqis Sunnis in and around Fallujah. When your buddy is blown up by a roadside bomb you are not in the mood to win “hearts and minds”. You want to kick someone’s ass. This helps explain why the violence there has continued unabated.
The Rules of Engagement (ROE) are also on display. Every Iraqi man/boy of “military” age is rounded up in sweeps, handcuffed, and tossed into the back of trucks. They are taken off an interrogated and then, more often than not, they are later released. Of course, while they are custody, they get to meet new friends in prison. And in prison they form new bonds. Bonds that transcend their local tribe and create the infrastructure of insurgency. Keep that in mind as you watch the number of U.S. casualties continue to mount.
Iraqis taken into custody normally do not stand trial in public. The Iraqi government has no widespread, common legal procedure in place for trying, convicting, and punishing guys suspected of planting IEDs. Without an effective judicial system there is no deterrent to “crime”. But there is ample incentive to hate American troops.
Ironically the Marines comment accurately about the nature of the enemy they are up against. They note that there are very few foreign fighters and very little Al Qaeda. It is the money stupid. Guys are more likely to plant IEDs (improvised explosive devices) in order to make a buck rather than to express solidarity with “insurgents”. But instead of focusing efforts on putting money in the hands of the locals and gettting the economy going, the Marines are kicking in doors and doing mass sweeps.
If you have a chance to watch Alpha Company: Iraq Diary your heart will not swell with pride. You will have a sickening pit in your stomach. Our kids are being asked to carry out a mission they are not trained to handle.
The Gangs of Iraq is more recent and, in some respects, more alarming. Martin Smith and company finished shooting it the fall of 2006. The documentary premieres on 17 April on PBS stations. According to the blurb at Frontline:
GANGS OF IRAQ tracks the history and events that led to the current sectarian crisis, why the Iraqi elections didn’t curb escalating Shia-Sunni sectarianism, and how top Iraqi officials have downplayed or denied the growing sectarian militia forces. By the summer of 2006, the coalition had identified at least 23 militias operating in Baghdad. Some were small splinter groups or criminal gangs. But others were large sectarian militias, and the two largest, the Badr Corps and the Mehdi Army, remained enetrenched within Iraq’s police and army.
As we have seen recently we are not turning any corners. When John McCain and Lindsey Graham did their walkabout in an Iraqi market no Iraqi police or soldiers were in sight? Why? Because U.S. commanders did not trust them to keep the Senators alive. And let’s not forget the bomb in the Iraqi Parliament last week and the bridge that was blown up.
Oh yeah. Almost forgot. More U.S. troops died last month than Iraqi troops in combat. That tells you in a nutshell who is carrying the water on this front. The Iraqis are not standing up. They are not taking control of the fight. We are doing the fighting and we are doing the dying. And to what end? Instead of winning hearts and minds we are alienating the various ethnis communities. Most soldiers I have met who have been in Iraq despise the “hajis”. There is no love or affection for the Iraqi people. There is hatred and contempt. Unfortunately most Iraqis are reciprocating. As long as the cultural gulf separating Americans and Iraqis remains unbridged we cannot win.
