marinemom
12-25-05, 07:34 AM
Aviator's Hope For Iraq
By Jim Hoagland
Washington Post
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Christmas past, present and future will visit Maj. Scott Cooper at Iraq's Al Asad air base this year. The Marine aviator's love-hate relationship with the militarized piece of desert that is his temporary home reflects broader feelings about Iraq, a land he has come to have misgivings about even as he fights to help protect it.
Only a few Christmas seasons ago, Cooper patrolled the skies over Iraq enforcing a no-fly zone. Back then he had to watch out for the MiG-25 Foxbat interceptors sent up from Al Asad to challenge Cooper's EA-6B Prowler. Now Cooper is based at that facility, 120 miles west of Baghdad, and he will fly ground support missions for U.S. and Iraqi forces throughout this holiday weekend.
This is his fifth extended Middle East deployment in the past eight years. In e-mails, phone calls and too-infrequent personal meetings over that time, Cooper has helped me keep track of what the conflict in Iraq -- and the conflict at home over Iraq -- looks like to one Marine who thinks a lot about the role of the U.S. military in world affairs and in American society. He worries a lot about public support, which he calls "the soft underbelly of any military action." He continues in an e-mail:
"We began this endeavor in Iraq out of a general consensus" born on Sept. 11, 2001, about the need "to eliminate individuals, groups and regimes who commit or support terrorism -- and to deter those who might be planning to do so. It was deemed important, by both the executive branch and the Congress, to demonstrate American military power, and will, for a region that held American will in particularly low esteem."
To pick that consensus apart now with backward-looking, overly partisan debates endangers a vital mission that needs adjustments but that can still be accomplished. He expresses that idea in these words:
"The insurgents are not winning the overall struggle here," even if the United States has been unable to prevail militarily in the Sunni heartland, where Cooper is based. "They have not been able to extend the rebellion beyond the Sunni population. More than three-quarters of the Iraqi population are not engaged in the insurgency. In fact, they actively oppose it.
"And al Qaeda is losing the larger war on terrorism. Its immediate goal was to topple Muslim regimes in the Middle East who were friendly to the United States. No Muslim regime has fallen. A number of Arab countries and Pakistan have extended their cooperation to eliminate al Qaeda," he continues.
"We must define success by the changed behavior that is occurring in the region and by the fact that Iraq is no longer a threat to the region or the world. As a member of a weary military, I can attest that there are considerable sacrifices involved in all these endeavors. But if we are realistic about our goals, we can accomplish them."
In Christmas present, Cooper wonders if the American public "is growing impatient and losing sight of the fact that any engagement uncovers other problems, and sometimes creates even more problems. We need to do better at adjusting to them as they emerge. But we can in the long run reduce our military presence, to remain here not as Iraq's keeper but as an ally who is asked to stay on, as we have been in Europe and in the Pacific."
That is the challenge of Christmas future at Al Asad. The triumph of Operation Desert Storm in 1991 "is not an example we can use as our only model, in which we fight a short, overwhelming war and then come home to a victory parade," Cooper maintains. "Consolidating the changes wrought by war must include tending to its unforeseen consequences, and that necessitates presence, for a long time."
The aviator is hardly oblivious to Iraq's sectarian divisions, its culture of violence and long degradation under Saddam Hussein: "Iraq continues to be a collectivity of separate families and clans. A seeming lack of concern for the future by many Iraqis is the most troublesome quality we encounter. There is a puzzling indifference to what we are doing and even to what their new political leaders are doing."
Modest and practical, Scott Cooper would be the first to say that his views are personal, limited and subject to evolution. But this Marine's experiences over and at Al Asad have given him an unusual opportunity to understand that change in Iraq is both difficult -- and possible.
By Jim Hoagland
Washington Post
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Christmas past, present and future will visit Maj. Scott Cooper at Iraq's Al Asad air base this year. The Marine aviator's love-hate relationship with the militarized piece of desert that is his temporary home reflects broader feelings about Iraq, a land he has come to have misgivings about even as he fights to help protect it.
Only a few Christmas seasons ago, Cooper patrolled the skies over Iraq enforcing a no-fly zone. Back then he had to watch out for the MiG-25 Foxbat interceptors sent up from Al Asad to challenge Cooper's EA-6B Prowler. Now Cooper is based at that facility, 120 miles west of Baghdad, and he will fly ground support missions for U.S. and Iraqi forces throughout this holiday weekend.
This is his fifth extended Middle East deployment in the past eight years. In e-mails, phone calls and too-infrequent personal meetings over that time, Cooper has helped me keep track of what the conflict in Iraq -- and the conflict at home over Iraq -- looks like to one Marine who thinks a lot about the role of the U.S. military in world affairs and in American society. He worries a lot about public support, which he calls "the soft underbelly of any military action." He continues in an e-mail:
"We began this endeavor in Iraq out of a general consensus" born on Sept. 11, 2001, about the need "to eliminate individuals, groups and regimes who commit or support terrorism -- and to deter those who might be planning to do so. It was deemed important, by both the executive branch and the Congress, to demonstrate American military power, and will, for a region that held American will in particularly low esteem."
To pick that consensus apart now with backward-looking, overly partisan debates endangers a vital mission that needs adjustments but that can still be accomplished. He expresses that idea in these words:
"The insurgents are not winning the overall struggle here," even if the United States has been unable to prevail militarily in the Sunni heartland, where Cooper is based. "They have not been able to extend the rebellion beyond the Sunni population. More than three-quarters of the Iraqi population are not engaged in the insurgency. In fact, they actively oppose it.
"And al Qaeda is losing the larger war on terrorism. Its immediate goal was to topple Muslim regimes in the Middle East who were friendly to the United States. No Muslim regime has fallen. A number of Arab countries and Pakistan have extended their cooperation to eliminate al Qaeda," he continues.
"We must define success by the changed behavior that is occurring in the region and by the fact that Iraq is no longer a threat to the region or the world. As a member of a weary military, I can attest that there are considerable sacrifices involved in all these endeavors. But if we are realistic about our goals, we can accomplish them."
In Christmas present, Cooper wonders if the American public "is growing impatient and losing sight of the fact that any engagement uncovers other problems, and sometimes creates even more problems. We need to do better at adjusting to them as they emerge. But we can in the long run reduce our military presence, to remain here not as Iraq's keeper but as an ally who is asked to stay on, as we have been in Europe and in the Pacific."
That is the challenge of Christmas future at Al Asad. The triumph of Operation Desert Storm in 1991 "is not an example we can use as our only model, in which we fight a short, overwhelming war and then come home to a victory parade," Cooper maintains. "Consolidating the changes wrought by war must include tending to its unforeseen consequences, and that necessitates presence, for a long time."
The aviator is hardly oblivious to Iraq's sectarian divisions, its culture of violence and long degradation under Saddam Hussein: "Iraq continues to be a collectivity of separate families and clans. A seeming lack of concern for the future by many Iraqis is the most troublesome quality we encounter. There is a puzzling indifference to what we are doing and even to what their new political leaders are doing."
Modest and practical, Scott Cooper would be the first to say that his views are personal, limited and subject to evolution. But this Marine's experiences over and at Al Asad have given him an unusual opportunity to understand that change in Iraq is both difficult -- and possible.