Deliberacy

You all ready for a full blown rant? I hope so ‘cause that’s what’s coming next—you’ve been warned.

In July of this year the Bush administration announced their approval of a $20 billion arms sale package to Saudi Arabia. 20 billion dollars worth of weapons of mass, and individual, destruction happily turned over to the homeland of Osama Bin Ladin and the majority of the 9/11 hijackers. It seems like a no-brainer to me…but as our current leaders have proven again and again their policy is all about the Benjamins, and the Saudi’s are nothing if not rolling in cash.

So why bring this up now? Well, it has something to do with an appalling report in today’s BBC.

A nineteen year old woman, gang-raped by 14 men, was sentenced to 90 lashes for breaking gender segregation laws. In other words, she shouldn’t have been where the men could rape her in the first place. When she appealed the sentence, the judge upped it to 200 lashes and 6 months in jail. Makes sense, I mean how in God..er..uh..Allah’s name, could she have been so “criminal” as to get in a car with a man she wasn’t related to. It probably had nothing to do with the fact the Saudi women are not allowed to drive. Or vote. Hell, Laura Bush just made a trip there in an effort to convince Saudi women that it’s ok to discuss breast health (ie cancer) with their doctors.

This near total oppression of women thing sounds vaguely familiar.

Wait, wait…it’ll come to me.

I know—isn’t this the kind of thing we’d expect from say…the Taliban? Those ultimate evil baddies who represent everything truly good Americans are opposed to. If I remember correctly, improving conditions for women was one of America’s great rationalizations for invading Afghanistan six year ago. But apparently, so long as you’re an ally (even a dubious one) with cash to burn, then women’s rights are immaterial.

Today an article about the deaths of seven American soldiers in Iraq brought to my attention an inspired letter that appeared in the New York Times, Aug. 19 2007. Funny how this honest and well reasoned piece didn’t get much attention in the wider media forum. This from the front perspective should be required reading for every American citizen…so here it is.

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VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, he political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and in this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are ilitarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the battle space remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, riminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers? expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American
investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.

However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a time-sensitive target acquisition mission on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flowno a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse– namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.

The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.

Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington’s insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made — de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government — places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please
every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. Lucky Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are –an army of occupation — and force
our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing he incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.

About the authors: Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.

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Omar Mora and Yance Gray were killed today with five other soldiers in a truck accident outside Baghdad. My heart goes out to the families of all. And my appreciation to Mora, Gray, Jayamaha, Smith, Roebuck, Sandmeier and Murphy for their courage and honesty.

This morning I stumbled upon this little article on the BBC News.  It’s worth reading, then sending the link to someone else so they can read it too.

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When suffering gets personal

On his return from Afghanistan, BBC world affairs editor John Simpson reveals how his attitude to covering stories about violence and suffering has changed.

The explosion was just close by. The windows of my hotel billowed inwards like sails in a storm, and the walls shuddered.

A pause, then the alarms and sirens started up all round. My camera team and I got there quickly.

The stench of high explosive still hung over everything. The screaming had mostly stopped, and the rescue workers were dealing with the still-living and collecting up bits of bodies.

The police were starting to take out their frustration and anger on the photographers.

This was in Kabul just the other day but I have seen these things dozens and dozens of times during my career.

Shock of new life

I have never been a great one for the kind of reporting that tells you how the journalist feels when something terrible happens.

It seems to me that we need reporters to be crisp and accurate and unexcitable, like ambulance crews. You certainly do not want an ambulance-man leaning over you and telling you how he feels about your injuries.

You just want him to say they will get you sorted out in no time flat.

But in Kabul the other day, and in Baghdad a couple of weeks earlier, I could not help noticing a change within myself.

I tried to find out dispassionately what had happened, of course, but when I looked at the bodies on their stretchers and the injured moaning in pain I felt a new kind of anger.

I knew immediately what it was all about.

Last year, after four miscarriages over a period of some years and virtually giving up all hope of having a baby, my wife and I had a son: a healthy, active, jolly little boy we have named Rafe (short for Ranulph).

With six billion people on earth, having a child is scarcely a rarity. But in our case it was so unexpected, so gratifying, that Rafe seems to us like a miracle.

Gut anger

I already had two daughters by my first marriage and have always, fortunately, been close to them: even more so, now that we all - weirdly - have children of the same sort of age.

But I confess that when my daughters were young I was not so aware of their uniqueness: everyone of my age seemed to have children then. I understand things better now.

And to see the miracle of other people’s lives snuffed out wantonly on the streets of Baghdad or Kabul, or London for that matter, for some scarcely understood political or religious motive, seems to me nothing short of blasphemy.

I do not just loathe the stench of high explosive, I have come to loathe the attitudes of people who use high explosive for their own purposes: insurgents, terrorists, the intelligence services of a dozen countries, governments which target towns and cities and always have a ready apology when they kill the wrong people.

High explosive means hospitals with blood on the walls and corridors, and ordinary people like you and me, lying on the floor or on a gurney, ears ringing with the noise of the explosion, nostrils filled with the stench of it still.

The screams of others who are worse hurt than us. The fear and despair of the small number of doctors who have to deal with so many life-or-death cases, and know that they are condemning many of them to a slow, painful death.

“The armed struggle,” said an African resistance song from the 1980s, “is an act of love.” Try explaining that to the people lying in the hospital corridors.

Everybody hurts

The idea that some civilians are decent and righteous, while others deserve everything they get, or else should not have been in the way, seems to me to be intolerable.

I hope I never did think that attacks on civilians - any civilians - were justified but now I know for certain they are not.

Having been through the first and second Gulf Wars, and watched the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the Nato bombing of Belgrade in 1999, I do not really care any longer what the cause is. It is the civilians on the receiving-end who matter.

I am sorry if this sounds pious or sentimental. I do not mean it to be.

But I have finally understood something, through the blessing of having another child late on.

It is that life itself is immensely valuable. Not just the lives of people who think and look and maybe worship like you and me, people who are attractive or well-educated or rich, people who are the right type of Christian or the right type of Muslim. All lives.

I realise this is terribly sententious: the moral equivalent of a motto from a Christmas cracker.

Still, just because something is obvious does not automatically mean it is totally lacking in value.

I am certainly not going to stop going to the kind of places where these things happen. But, at the grand old age of 62, my reaction to them has changed.
The fact is, my time reporting on violence and bombings in places like Baghdad and Kabul has shown me one essential thing: that the lives of the poor, the stupid, the old, the ugly, are no less precious to them and to the people around them, than the life of my little son Rafe is precious to me.

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I wish I had the means of contacting Mr. Simpson and thanking him for making the effort to share the realizations his first hand experiences have inspired with those “civilians” fortunate enough to not understand the reality of war. Thank you John Simpson, I wish you well.

This seems to be my month for joining things. First a writing workshop, now a movement. Deliberacy was born just in time to participate in the One Million Blogs for Peace campaign. The goal is pretty self-explanatory: to have 1,000,000 bloggers by March 20, 2008 who’ve made the pledge:

I believe in the immediate withdrawal of all foreign combat troops from the nation of Iraq. I believe in using my blog, in whole or in part, as a tool toward this end.

If you’re interested in learning more about this campaign or in reading some of the other blogs I’ve added the info to my blogroll.