thedrifter
07-30-06, 09:52 AM
Sunday, July 30, 2006
At the battlefront, a challenge met
Moon-bathed river obscures hard truth.Columnist Gordon Dillow has returned from a month-long leave during which he was embedded with U.S. Marines in Iraq. Today is the first in a series of reports.
It's a brilliant moonlit night on the eternal Euphrates River in Iraq's western Al Anbar province – and for a moment, at least, the ugliness of this place seems to fade safely away.
There is a dam on the river here, an immense, 10-story-high, 2-mile-wide concrete structure that generates a quarter of Iraq's electrical power. Built by Yugoslavians during the Saddam era, now guarded by tough-looking coalition soldiers from the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, it's also the base of operations for a battalion of U.S. Marines, a thousand young Americans fighting a hard war a million miles from home.
The dam is a remote place, a place of relative safety – the killing is mostly downriver – and from the top of it the vastness of the land stretches endlessly at your feet. On this warm night, the view is breathtaking.
The sky is a deep violet, caught at the tipping point between twilight and darkness; moonbeams dance and shimmer on the black water of the river. In the distance you can see the date-palm groves that line the riverbanks, heavy with fruit, a narrow band of lush, dark green imprisoned by the barren gray desert that stretches off to the horizon.
Beyond the groves, miles away, the lights of the river towns blink in the gentle wind, the welcome cooling breeze that evaporates the sweat and stink of the day and tingles the hairs on your arms.
There's Barwanah, a town of 15,000 people, most of whom just want the war to go away; the Marines there have taken insurgent mortar fire for three days running. Further on is Haditha, a name now associated in American minds, fairly or unfairly, with allegations of mass murder. Still further on is Haqlaniyah, where the rats, as the Marines often call the insurgents, go to hide.
The river towns are a triad of crumbling mortar and wobbly stones and garbage in the streets, situated on the ancient confluence of trade routes leading north and west and south and east. Now they are battlegrounds, places where mortar rounds fall and IEDs explode and sniper shots ring out, places where Americans have died, and more may still die.
But from a safe distance, far away, it's possible to forget that. In an unguarded moment, it's possible to see the twinkling lights of the towns as warm and welcoming; even the red glow of a noxious garbage fire can seem inviting.
In a landscape bathed in moonbeams, sometimes it's hard to really see.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" I say to the dark shape of a Marine standing near me.
He's a young man – all of the Americans here are young – and he's looking at the same scene that I am. But in some ways his eyes are older than mine. And for him there are no unguarded moments.
"I guess," he says. He pauses, thinking about it, and then he adds: "But it'd be a whole lot more beautiful if those blanker-blankers out there weren't trying to blankin' kill us."
It is simple, and it is true. There is no beauty here.
Not yet.
Most of us look at the Iraq war from a safe distance, with our vision obscured and distorted – obscured by the news media, by politicians, by advocates of the left and of the right. They try to tell us that winning will be easy, or that losing would be even easier still.
But it's different for the Marines and soldiers and sailors and airmen who are fighting this war, the ones for whom Iraq is a matter of living or dying or suffering life-altering wounds.
They can't afford to be blinded by moonbeams. They have to see the truth.
And if you ask them, they will tell it to you.
• • •
I recently returned from a month in Iraq as an embedded reporter with U.S. Marines. It was my third time over there in as many years, and in some ways it was the most difficult – not only for me but for the Marines I was with.
There was none of the heady exhilaration of the lightning ground war in the spring of 2003, when victory seemed an easy thing, or the quick-solution hopefulness still present in the spring of 2004. In 2006 almost everyone I met, from lance corporals to lieutenant colonels, has realized what a long, slow and often thankless task the war has become for those who are fighting it.
Yet they continue to fight it, day after day – and they wonder if people back home will give them time to win.
During my trip I got to see a lot of what our Marines and soldiers are facing in Iraq. I went on a night patrol through the spooky streets of Ar-Rutbah with Marines of the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, while feral dogs howled and an IED-planting insurgent shadowed our trail. I went on a midnight raid in Barwanah with Marines of Lima Company of the 3rd Battalion of the 3rd Marine Regiment, looking for a wanted man, a man whose job it is to kill Americans.
I humped and sweated along a dusty road outside Fallujah with Marines from the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, a unit "adopted" by the city of Newport Beach, looking for IEDs and trying not to think about snipers, and I watched as Reserve Marines of the 3rd Civil Affairs Group, Detachment 1, handed out soccer balls and Beanie Babies to Iraqi kids, wondering all the while how many of those kids' fathers and older brothers were trying to kill them.
And I listened. I listened to scores of Marines and Navy corpsmen, and a few members of the Army and Air Force, as they talked about war, and peace, and about their dreams. I also spoke with ordinary Iraqis about their thoughts on Americans and their hopes for their country. I interviewed a former insurgent – at least he claimed he was a former one, not a current one – and a local Iraqi police chief who reveled in killing insurgents, some of whom had recently killed his brother. I spoke with Iraqi Army soldiers, and I had lunch with a sheik.
In a series of forthcoming columns I'll tell you about all those things, and more – not in an effort to change anyone's mind about the war, but simply to report as accurately as I can what I saw there, on the ground, with my own eyes.
Of course, I have my own set of moonbeams that may alter my vision. Mine stem from the deep respect and admiration I have for the young Americans who serve this country in uniform – especially the United States Marines.
The fact is, I love those kids – at age 55, they are all kids to me – especially the infantrymen, the grunts. I like their discipline and their dedication and their simple, deeply felt patriotism. I like their easy laughter, their rough humor and, believe it or not, their basically tender hearts.
And I am in awe of their courage. Sometimes, watching them, I couldn't help but wonder if we as a nation, with our petty concerns and complaints, are actually worthy of them.
Sure, among their tens of thousands there are a few, a very few, who are knaves or fools or who have forgotten or ignored their American warrior values. Just as there are bad doctors and bad lawyers and bad journalists, there are some bad Marines.
But they aren't the Marines I met. And they aren't the Marines I know.
Nevertheless, some of what follows may be jarring to civilian sensibilities. Some of it may be ugly, and much of it may not conform to what you usually see in the news media, or to the strongly held beliefs of pundits and politicians who have never been within a thousand miles of the war zone.
But it will be as true as I can make it. And that's all the Marines I know want.
They want their truth told.
And we can spare them the moonbeams.
Ellie
At the battlefront, a challenge met
Moon-bathed river obscures hard truth.Columnist Gordon Dillow has returned from a month-long leave during which he was embedded with U.S. Marines in Iraq. Today is the first in a series of reports.
It's a brilliant moonlit night on the eternal Euphrates River in Iraq's western Al Anbar province – and for a moment, at least, the ugliness of this place seems to fade safely away.
There is a dam on the river here, an immense, 10-story-high, 2-mile-wide concrete structure that generates a quarter of Iraq's electrical power. Built by Yugoslavians during the Saddam era, now guarded by tough-looking coalition soldiers from the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, it's also the base of operations for a battalion of U.S. Marines, a thousand young Americans fighting a hard war a million miles from home.
The dam is a remote place, a place of relative safety – the killing is mostly downriver – and from the top of it the vastness of the land stretches endlessly at your feet. On this warm night, the view is breathtaking.
The sky is a deep violet, caught at the tipping point between twilight and darkness; moonbeams dance and shimmer on the black water of the river. In the distance you can see the date-palm groves that line the riverbanks, heavy with fruit, a narrow band of lush, dark green imprisoned by the barren gray desert that stretches off to the horizon.
Beyond the groves, miles away, the lights of the river towns blink in the gentle wind, the welcome cooling breeze that evaporates the sweat and stink of the day and tingles the hairs on your arms.
There's Barwanah, a town of 15,000 people, most of whom just want the war to go away; the Marines there have taken insurgent mortar fire for three days running. Further on is Haditha, a name now associated in American minds, fairly or unfairly, with allegations of mass murder. Still further on is Haqlaniyah, where the rats, as the Marines often call the insurgents, go to hide.
The river towns are a triad of crumbling mortar and wobbly stones and garbage in the streets, situated on the ancient confluence of trade routes leading north and west and south and east. Now they are battlegrounds, places where mortar rounds fall and IEDs explode and sniper shots ring out, places where Americans have died, and more may still die.
But from a safe distance, far away, it's possible to forget that. In an unguarded moment, it's possible to see the twinkling lights of the towns as warm and welcoming; even the red glow of a noxious garbage fire can seem inviting.
In a landscape bathed in moonbeams, sometimes it's hard to really see.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" I say to the dark shape of a Marine standing near me.
He's a young man – all of the Americans here are young – and he's looking at the same scene that I am. But in some ways his eyes are older than mine. And for him there are no unguarded moments.
"I guess," he says. He pauses, thinking about it, and then he adds: "But it'd be a whole lot more beautiful if those blanker-blankers out there weren't trying to blankin' kill us."
It is simple, and it is true. There is no beauty here.
Not yet.
Most of us look at the Iraq war from a safe distance, with our vision obscured and distorted – obscured by the news media, by politicians, by advocates of the left and of the right. They try to tell us that winning will be easy, or that losing would be even easier still.
But it's different for the Marines and soldiers and sailors and airmen who are fighting this war, the ones for whom Iraq is a matter of living or dying or suffering life-altering wounds.
They can't afford to be blinded by moonbeams. They have to see the truth.
And if you ask them, they will tell it to you.
• • •
I recently returned from a month in Iraq as an embedded reporter with U.S. Marines. It was my third time over there in as many years, and in some ways it was the most difficult – not only for me but for the Marines I was with.
There was none of the heady exhilaration of the lightning ground war in the spring of 2003, when victory seemed an easy thing, or the quick-solution hopefulness still present in the spring of 2004. In 2006 almost everyone I met, from lance corporals to lieutenant colonels, has realized what a long, slow and often thankless task the war has become for those who are fighting it.
Yet they continue to fight it, day after day – and they wonder if people back home will give them time to win.
During my trip I got to see a lot of what our Marines and soldiers are facing in Iraq. I went on a night patrol through the spooky streets of Ar-Rutbah with Marines of the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, while feral dogs howled and an IED-planting insurgent shadowed our trail. I went on a midnight raid in Barwanah with Marines of Lima Company of the 3rd Battalion of the 3rd Marine Regiment, looking for a wanted man, a man whose job it is to kill Americans.
I humped and sweated along a dusty road outside Fallujah with Marines from the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, a unit "adopted" by the city of Newport Beach, looking for IEDs and trying not to think about snipers, and I watched as Reserve Marines of the 3rd Civil Affairs Group, Detachment 1, handed out soccer balls and Beanie Babies to Iraqi kids, wondering all the while how many of those kids' fathers and older brothers were trying to kill them.
And I listened. I listened to scores of Marines and Navy corpsmen, and a few members of the Army and Air Force, as they talked about war, and peace, and about their dreams. I also spoke with ordinary Iraqis about their thoughts on Americans and their hopes for their country. I interviewed a former insurgent – at least he claimed he was a former one, not a current one – and a local Iraqi police chief who reveled in killing insurgents, some of whom had recently killed his brother. I spoke with Iraqi Army soldiers, and I had lunch with a sheik.
In a series of forthcoming columns I'll tell you about all those things, and more – not in an effort to change anyone's mind about the war, but simply to report as accurately as I can what I saw there, on the ground, with my own eyes.
Of course, I have my own set of moonbeams that may alter my vision. Mine stem from the deep respect and admiration I have for the young Americans who serve this country in uniform – especially the United States Marines.
The fact is, I love those kids – at age 55, they are all kids to me – especially the infantrymen, the grunts. I like their discipline and their dedication and their simple, deeply felt patriotism. I like their easy laughter, their rough humor and, believe it or not, their basically tender hearts.
And I am in awe of their courage. Sometimes, watching them, I couldn't help but wonder if we as a nation, with our petty concerns and complaints, are actually worthy of them.
Sure, among their tens of thousands there are a few, a very few, who are knaves or fools or who have forgotten or ignored their American warrior values. Just as there are bad doctors and bad lawyers and bad journalists, there are some bad Marines.
But they aren't the Marines I met. And they aren't the Marines I know.
Nevertheless, some of what follows may be jarring to civilian sensibilities. Some of it may be ugly, and much of it may not conform to what you usually see in the news media, or to the strongly held beliefs of pundits and politicians who have never been within a thousand miles of the war zone.
But it will be as true as I can make it. And that's all the Marines I know want.
They want their truth told.
And we can spare them the moonbeams.
Ellie