Unfurl the banners! Get the confetti back out of storage! I demand to see eagles soaring majestically on cable TV and the citizenry dancing jubilantly down Main Street! Boys and girls, as of midnight last night, WE WON THE WAR!
That's right. It's over. As you can imagine, the fanfare was intense to the point of excessive, and excessive to the point that Nero himself may have blushed at the pure unrestrained orgy of triumphant self-congratulations that permeated our being on this, the day of Victory: AVID. And I am proud to say that as the bell tolled midnight, the Battalion Commander and XO had both retired to celebrate in private, leaving me alone on the throne of command. You know what that means. I was technically in command of the Main Effort Battalion of the Main Effort Brigade of the Main Effort Division in the Main Effort of the War on Terror when Victory was declared. In sum, I LED US TO VICTORY. That's right. I'll let that sink in. "Lo, my minions, take heed at my new authority," I declared as my commanders walked out the door. "Ye may liken me as unto a god!"
No, adoring throngs of America, please hold back your praise. Your adulations touch me deeply, but a proud warrior thrives only on his own self-assurance and self-congratulations. Ergo, you cannot possibly flatter me more than I flatter myself. I am having a statue erected of my image, staring heroically towards the rising sun with a drawn saber in one hand and the olive branch held nobly aloft in my other. It is quite fetching, especially since I had it constructed entirely out of Babylonian Gold and the tangible joyous emotions of my countrymen (a glowing bronze color, for those of you interested in the particulars).
I ordered the finest in non-alcoholic champagne brought to the TOC and ordered the fattened calf that wandered outside the base gate slaughtered for our feast. All of the men gathered together to cheer and toast ourselves and our great victory. After all, it isn't often that you get to declare victory TWICE in the same war! Our jubilations were magnified a dozen-fold when we were joined by the opposing team, who politely came to partake of our hospitality and congratulate us. We lined up, as all opposing teams do after a rousing bit of sport, and warmly shook hands. "Oh, Ahmed!" I gleefully shouted, embracing him manfully and giving him two wet kisses on his cheeks, "You sly dog! Do you know how hard we were looking for you? Almost had you once or twice, too!" He blushed with modesty and forced humility. "Yes," he responded in his surprisingly perfect English, "You almost had me a few times. But in declaring victory, you have defeated me completely! I am no longer an enemy to the occupying infidels, but a rebel in my own country, fighting against fellow Muslims. Who knew that a simple announcement would succeed where all your technology had failed?" I consoled him with a near-beer and a chunk of beef jerky we had microwaved and were trying to pass off as steak. He said he was positively warmed by my generosity, though I'm fairly sure that was just the heartburn speaking.
It is a sincere honor to see that the Iraqi people are also celebrating our victory with such fervor. The parades, the flags, the speeches... my, it's almost too much. What a fortunate and auspicious day! We assumed they had forgotten about the flowers and dancing that were supposed to herald our entrance into their country, but now we realize that they were just saving them for when we had to leave! How very thoughtful!
There remains, unfortunately, a slight degree of confusion between the levels of the Iraqi Government. Their leadership in Baghdad has declared that our presence is no longer necessary, but someone may have forgotten to send the memo to the Iraqi Army in Mosul. They kept asking for our help throughout the day, calling plaintively for assistance as they located bombs littered across their streets. I was positioned so as to correct their misunderstanding. The conversations can basically summarized like this:
ISF: "Someone/something is shooting/exploding/stabbing/being stabbed. Can we get some help over here?"
Me: "No. No, you can't."
ISF: "But... but... we would really like some help with this."
Me: "Nope! Nope, nope, nope. Not gonna happen. Please address all concerns to your respective leadership and elected officials. It's 30 June, yo!"
I mean, that's how you learn to swim. Or drown. But they learn quickly, so at least we'll know which way they'll go pretty soon. We think they'll be fine.
The American media continued to ask our leaders what this meant as far as troop withdrawals. My wife has voiced similar questions. Fortunately, the difference is that Hope has enough intelligence and experience with the Army to understand the answer. The media is entirely befuddled. "Let's get this straight... you're pulling troops back from the cities, but not from the country?" NO. Stop asking. We are NOT leaving yet. If we did, there is a very real chance that we would present ourselves an opportunity to declare victory a THIRD time in Iraq. Twice is enough, I feel. So we'll be here a bit longer.
I hope you have all marked your calendars. AVID should be declared a national holiday, I argue, and I support this with the evidence that the Iraqi Government has already declared it as one! The initial report is that they wish to call this "National Sovereignty Day," but I'm sure that time and events will force them to reconsider. They'll realize soon enough that "Arbitrary Victory in Iraq Day" is much more fitting.
So. Until next time, adoring throngs of America. I will leave you to your revelry and Dionysian debauchery. (Dionysus, of course, being the Greek god of wine and drama. As Stephen Sondheim sagely noted, this is fitting because "a little wine solves a lot of drama." The Middle East would benefit immeasurably from this wisdom.) Go celebrate victory! We still have Afghanistan and the imminent possibility of Iran and North Korea, but hey, at least we can close the book on this one!
30 June 2009
18 June 2009
MOSUL 18JUN09
Word has reached me through my family that there are concerns about my new job. All these hours away from the fight, in the air conditioning, sitting in my chair and having food delivered... am I getting fat? Restless? Well, a little restless sometimes. And I have been hitting the gym with a determination to burn at least as many calories as I normally did walking around the city carrying a hundred pounds of stuff. I have taken to lifting heavy things repetitively. Needless to say, I am getting bigger. But not as some of my family and friends would suppose.
And I have plenty of entertainment. From my large leather chair in the middle of the TOC, I am occupied at all moments by no less than eight monitors and six stations of soldiers constantly shouting information at me. Throw in a couple of field-grade officers who hover occasionally, wanting to know EVERYTHING that is going on in EVERY little corner of the city, and my work is cut out for me. I jump from -classified- to -classified-, taking a moment to shout back for status on the -classified-, and finally combining all of these assets into a -classified--censored--we'd tell you but we'd have to kill you-. So. You see why I have problems writing about my new job.
The real problem I have is the perpetual struggle to remind myself and my crew that we are Supporters. We assist in the fight, but we are not the fight. We are here to facilitate them and get them the things they need, when they need them, to win. But as in all offices there is a bureaucratic urge to create a little paper tyrant.
"What? The patrol didn't fill out the third line of Form 1026 in accordance with the new guidance from FRAGO 4-26? Battle Captain, stop them! Don't let them go! They're trying to go without our permission!"
I imagine myself, a month ago, trying to push a platoon as quickly as possible into a fight, racing against the clock. I remember the immense fury that would wash over me whenever some bureaucratic ninny tried to grind the gears of war to a halt because someone in the Command Post hadn't crossed the t's. And I look at my radio operator with what little patience I can muster and explain, again, that we are here to help, not hinder. I'll fill in that section myself. I know what they're trying to do. So I push the platoon out the gate, much to the frustration of my crew and my counterpart, the NCOIC (non-commissioned officer in charge). They always ask why I'm going so easy on the line units, and I always just barely refrain from eating them alive.
There is a character in the military that I love, a certain cheerful fatalism, a powerful self-awareness and a conscious loathing of all personal weakness. This is most prevalent on the line, where men have a reason to be a bit fatalistic. It is not so prevalent in the office. Some of the guys definitely have it, and I'm thrilled to see it, but some of these men have been establishing their little kingdoms of memorandum for a bit too long.
I've talked about this particular military character to family and friends before. If for no other reason, the exposure and hopefully conversion to this mentality is one of the best reasons why I would recommend military service to others. It is wonderfully refreshing. In a society so often defined by its hedonism and egoism, where every little scrape or perceived offense is worth a Wagnerian opera of drama and complaining, the character you find here is like breathing clean air again. I remember a soldier cutting his head open on a piece of metal on his bunk back in the States. He ran down the hall, bleeding profusely, apologizing every step of the way. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, no, don't clean that blood up, I'll get it, I didn't mean to bleed on the floor, I'm so sorry!" He was back with the mop and a couple of stitches within the hour. And last week, when a soldier took grenade shrapnel to the rear. The story goes that his platoon came in to the medical center to check on him and saw him grinning from ear to ear, thumbs up. "I always said the Army would give me buns of steel!" he shouted. Or the strange little tradition of some men in Red Platoon who, after every patrol, count each others' limbs and digits. "Another good day!" they declare upon finding the appropriate number, laughing as if it were the peak of wit. How can anyone not love this? The kind of dark humor that pervades the military can be misconstrued as callousness, but a closer look shows that at root we're just amusing ourselves at the quirks of life and death. "You're dying? Well, for God's sake stop being so damned dramatic about it. Seriously. It happens to everyone from time to time."
I guess that this, and the camaraderie built on shared trials, is what I miss most about the line. But the TOC is its own kind of lesson and I'm finding that it offers its own kind of reward. All in all, I'm happy, the days are counting down until mid-tour leave, and I'm practically reunited with my wife (FINALLY) for at least a couple of weeks. So soon. That should easily refuel me for the last four months. We're over half-way done, and only a week and a half before victory, so who can complain?
And I have plenty of entertainment. From my large leather chair in the middle of the TOC, I am occupied at all moments by no less than eight monitors and six stations of soldiers constantly shouting information at me. Throw in a couple of field-grade officers who hover occasionally, wanting to know EVERYTHING that is going on in EVERY little corner of the city, and my work is cut out for me. I jump from -classified- to -classified-, taking a moment to shout back for status on the -classified-, and finally combining all of these assets into a -classified--censored--we'd tell you but we'd have to kill you-. So. You see why I have problems writing about my new job.
The real problem I have is the perpetual struggle to remind myself and my crew that we are Supporters. We assist in the fight, but we are not the fight. We are here to facilitate them and get them the things they need, when they need them, to win. But as in all offices there is a bureaucratic urge to create a little paper tyrant.
"What? The patrol didn't fill out the third line of Form 1026 in accordance with the new guidance from FRAGO 4-26? Battle Captain, stop them! Don't let them go! They're trying to go without our permission!"
I imagine myself, a month ago, trying to push a platoon as quickly as possible into a fight, racing against the clock. I remember the immense fury that would wash over me whenever some bureaucratic ninny tried to grind the gears of war to a halt because someone in the Command Post hadn't crossed the t's. And I look at my radio operator with what little patience I can muster and explain, again, that we are here to help, not hinder. I'll fill in that section myself. I know what they're trying to do. So I push the platoon out the gate, much to the frustration of my crew and my counterpart, the NCOIC (non-commissioned officer in charge). They always ask why I'm going so easy on the line units, and I always just barely refrain from eating them alive.
There is a character in the military that I love, a certain cheerful fatalism, a powerful self-awareness and a conscious loathing of all personal weakness. This is most prevalent on the line, where men have a reason to be a bit fatalistic. It is not so prevalent in the office. Some of the guys definitely have it, and I'm thrilled to see it, but some of these men have been establishing their little kingdoms of memorandum for a bit too long.
I've talked about this particular military character to family and friends before. If for no other reason, the exposure and hopefully conversion to this mentality is one of the best reasons why I would recommend military service to others. It is wonderfully refreshing. In a society so often defined by its hedonism and egoism, where every little scrape or perceived offense is worth a Wagnerian opera of drama and complaining, the character you find here is like breathing clean air again. I remember a soldier cutting his head open on a piece of metal on his bunk back in the States. He ran down the hall, bleeding profusely, apologizing every step of the way. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, no, don't clean that blood up, I'll get it, I didn't mean to bleed on the floor, I'm so sorry!" He was back with the mop and a couple of stitches within the hour. And last week, when a soldier took grenade shrapnel to the rear. The story goes that his platoon came in to the medical center to check on him and saw him grinning from ear to ear, thumbs up. "I always said the Army would give me buns of steel!" he shouted. Or the strange little tradition of some men in Red Platoon who, after every patrol, count each others' limbs and digits. "Another good day!" they declare upon finding the appropriate number, laughing as if it were the peak of wit. How can anyone not love this? The kind of dark humor that pervades the military can be misconstrued as callousness, but a closer look shows that at root we're just amusing ourselves at the quirks of life and death. "You're dying? Well, for God's sake stop being so damned dramatic about it. Seriously. It happens to everyone from time to time."
I guess that this, and the camaraderie built on shared trials, is what I miss most about the line. But the TOC is its own kind of lesson and I'm finding that it offers its own kind of reward. All in all, I'm happy, the days are counting down until mid-tour leave, and I'm practically reunited with my wife (FINALLY) for at least a couple of weeks. So soon. That should easily refuel me for the last four months. We're over half-way done, and only a week and a half before victory, so who can complain?
05 June 2009
MOSUL 06JUN09
Night sweeps over the city of Mosul again. The setting of the sun is a palpable relief, bringing with it the welcome change from impossibly hot to merely unreasonably hot. The dust is still thick in the air, but it is possible from my position as I leave the Tactical Operations Center to see a plume of smoke rising up from a neighborhood a few kilometers away. Mosul's skyline, pierced by the minarets of countless mosques, is overshadowed by such pyres throughout the day. Each one allows you, from a safe distance, to estimate how many lives were lost and how many livelihoods destroyed in any twenty-four hour period.
Medieval physicians in Europe, working on the principle that the body is directed by diverse humours and that an imbalance of any humour would lead to an imbalance of emotion, conjectured that the feeling of hope was the result of too much blood in the system. This is the origin of the word "sanguine," which means both "hopeful" and "blood-like." Hope stems from an excess of blood.
After walking the streets of the Old District, over and over, and inspecting hundreds or thousands of houses built on foundations hundreds or thousands of years old, I wonder if the people of Mosul ever really strayed away from that medieval supposition. When everything is quiet and peaceful, they always strike me as suspicious, distrustful, fatalistic, waiting for the inevitable explosion. But in the aftermath of these blasts, with all of us exposed to an excess of blood, they respond in a way I hadn't anticipated. They seem relieved, optimistic, and hopeful for the future; perhaps that was the last time, they say. Perhaps that was the tipping point and now we can have peace. Maybe the insurgents have said all they wanted to say, maybe the discontent have expressed their rage, maybe everything will be all right. And they settle back into the niche of their existence, comfortable in their tenuous purchase on life in this city, and spend a few days blissfully content. As if there wasn't a war raging around them. But as the days pass, the restlessness begins again; people become more careful on the streets and express their fatalism over cups of chai. It has been too long, they say, and there must be another attack coming. A roadside bomb, perhaps, that will only destroy the curbs and delay my commute to work. Or a grenade that will block traffic and maybe wound one of my neighbors. Maybe random bursts from an assault rifle, or the deliberate murder of one of my family for the express purpose of proving the impotence of Coalition Forces to protect those that I love. Probably a car bomb that will destroy my house. The tension builds as the days go on until the prophesy is fulfilled, the bomb is detonated, and the cycle begins again. Every blast is a communal catharsis, temporary but welcome. Taken as a whole, sometimes I wonder if the entire insurgency is just how the city tries to heal itself by judicious blood-letting. Perhaps they have convinced themselves that they can only be sanguine when their world is sanguinary.
I have trouble sharing their optimism. As we push the insurgents further towards defeat, they grasp at more and more radical tactics. Sordid and reprehensible, as words, aren't properly equipped to tackle these tactics; they are the kind of debauched inhumanity you only find when fanaticism is at its most desperate. Three schoolgirls, aged 10-13, gunned down as they walked to school last week just so the insurgents can demonstrate how our clear-hold-retain operations have failed to drive them from the neighborhoods. A 13-year old boy is allowed to approach a Humvee because he is too young to pose a threat; his grenade kills one and critically wounds two infantrymen of my battalion. A small 10-year old boy throws yet another grenade at one of our trucks, smiling and waving afterward, unaware that he failed to pull the pin and that only an unnatural benevolence kept the men of the unit from gunning him down. Young children are recruited to throw rocks at us. The insurgents, by their own professions, declare that they will either immunize us to the rocks so as to make grenade attacks easier or force us into killing an unarmed child. I see the benefit to their plans, but no part of me can find how the child benefits. We may be cultural aliens, offering strange gifts of Western candy and backpacks from behind our kevlar skins, but we are clearly the only party who has any interest in seeing those children grow into a world where the clocks can't be faithfully set by the explosions.
With AVID (Arbitrary Victory in Iraq Day) rapidly approaching, we find an interesting and promising combination of political and military realities. We are winning. The Iraqi Security Forces are acting with more confidence and competence than we had ever expected, and they are stepping into the role quickly. The word of our imminent departure has done more to set them into action than months of training. The insurgency is dying. Unfortunately, the final death throes are the ugliest part of any life, and the enemy we face now is cornered, mad with rage, and utterly desperate. Nothing is sacred, no one is safe, and no rules apply. But the end is in sight, and though the final steps will be difficult, at this point I can declare that I am sanguine about the future.
Medieval physicians in Europe, working on the principle that the body is directed by diverse humours and that an imbalance of any humour would lead to an imbalance of emotion, conjectured that the feeling of hope was the result of too much blood in the system. This is the origin of the word "sanguine," which means both "hopeful" and "blood-like." Hope stems from an excess of blood.
After walking the streets of the Old District, over and over, and inspecting hundreds or thousands of houses built on foundations hundreds or thousands of years old, I wonder if the people of Mosul ever really strayed away from that medieval supposition. When everything is quiet and peaceful, they always strike me as suspicious, distrustful, fatalistic, waiting for the inevitable explosion. But in the aftermath of these blasts, with all of us exposed to an excess of blood, they respond in a way I hadn't anticipated. They seem relieved, optimistic, and hopeful for the future; perhaps that was the last time, they say. Perhaps that was the tipping point and now we can have peace. Maybe the insurgents have said all they wanted to say, maybe the discontent have expressed their rage, maybe everything will be all right. And they settle back into the niche of their existence, comfortable in their tenuous purchase on life in this city, and spend a few days blissfully content. As if there wasn't a war raging around them. But as the days pass, the restlessness begins again; people become more careful on the streets and express their fatalism over cups of chai. It has been too long, they say, and there must be another attack coming. A roadside bomb, perhaps, that will only destroy the curbs and delay my commute to work. Or a grenade that will block traffic and maybe wound one of my neighbors. Maybe random bursts from an assault rifle, or the deliberate murder of one of my family for the express purpose of proving the impotence of Coalition Forces to protect those that I love. Probably a car bomb that will destroy my house. The tension builds as the days go on until the prophesy is fulfilled, the bomb is detonated, and the cycle begins again. Every blast is a communal catharsis, temporary but welcome. Taken as a whole, sometimes I wonder if the entire insurgency is just how the city tries to heal itself by judicious blood-letting. Perhaps they have convinced themselves that they can only be sanguine when their world is sanguinary.
I have trouble sharing their optimism. As we push the insurgents further towards defeat, they grasp at more and more radical tactics. Sordid and reprehensible, as words, aren't properly equipped to tackle these tactics; they are the kind of debauched inhumanity you only find when fanaticism is at its most desperate. Three schoolgirls, aged 10-13, gunned down as they walked to school last week just so the insurgents can demonstrate how our clear-hold-retain operations have failed to drive them from the neighborhoods. A 13-year old boy is allowed to approach a Humvee because he is too young to pose a threat; his grenade kills one and critically wounds two infantrymen of my battalion. A small 10-year old boy throws yet another grenade at one of our trucks, smiling and waving afterward, unaware that he failed to pull the pin and that only an unnatural benevolence kept the men of the unit from gunning him down. Young children are recruited to throw rocks at us. The insurgents, by their own professions, declare that they will either immunize us to the rocks so as to make grenade attacks easier or force us into killing an unarmed child. I see the benefit to their plans, but no part of me can find how the child benefits. We may be cultural aliens, offering strange gifts of Western candy and backpacks from behind our kevlar skins, but we are clearly the only party who has any interest in seeing those children grow into a world where the clocks can't be faithfully set by the explosions.
With AVID (Arbitrary Victory in Iraq Day) rapidly approaching, we find an interesting and promising combination of political and military realities. We are winning. The Iraqi Security Forces are acting with more confidence and competence than we had ever expected, and they are stepping into the role quickly. The word of our imminent departure has done more to set them into action than months of training. The insurgency is dying. Unfortunately, the final death throes are the ugliest part of any life, and the enemy we face now is cornered, mad with rage, and utterly desperate. Nothing is sacred, no one is safe, and no rules apply. But the end is in sight, and though the final steps will be difficult, at this point I can declare that I am sanguine about the future.
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