Iraq ‘big picture’ hard to see
Troops let gut-level responses be their guide
By Kelly Kennedy - kellykennedy@militarytimes.com
Posted : September 24, 2007

While patrolling a half-mile street in Mosul, Iraq, in July, a squad from 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, out of Fort Bliss, Texas, taught local children how to hoot like a fan at a hip-hop show — then respectfully asked their parents for permission to search their homes.

In the distance, the soldiers heard gunfire and wondered if another squad was in danger. Later, they learned another squad in their unit was shooting the knobs off doors and forcing its way into people’s homes.

“You hope that platoons understand — that the leadership understands — and they think, ‘Do you just knock down that door?’” said Col. Mark McGuire, chief of staff for the 3rd Medical Command. “Or do you think about the ramifications first?”

But the word isn’t trickling down to everyone.

As generals and politicians on Capitol Hill debate progress defined by statistics, troops say they’re having trouble seeing the big picture. What does democracy look like in Iraq? What are the goals? What’s the end state?

On top of that confusion, the troops’ diverse backgrounds and experiences in Iraq have left many torn between wanting to help and wanting to destroy — and those views don’t always play well into the counterinsurgency tenets created by Army Gen. David Petraeus, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq.

Add to that differing degrees of knowledge about what those tenets are, and ensuring everyone is working toward the same end becomes nearly impossible.

“You can’t see the big picture all the time, and that can be frustrating,” McGuire said. “The leadership needs to help individual soldiers figure out where they fit into the big picture.”

The counterinsurgency manual, a 1,000-page document written in part by Petraeus, espouses building trust between the troops and the locals, allowing the locals to rebuild their own communities, and handing over responsibility to local governments.

Some troops see that working, and others see it as hopeless. All seem to base their opinions on gut-level responses to their own environments. In Adhamiya, soldiers with 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, say the number of Iraqi bodies found in the neighborhood has gone down greatly. But the number of hits the soldiers are taking has increased, leaving the battalion with the highest death rate in Iraq. The soldiers go out on an average of four missions a day, and they say they don’t have a lot of time to talk about the philosophy behind the mission — or what, exactly, the mission is.

“There’s never a clearly defined goal, so there’s no light at the end of the tunnel,” said Sgt. 1st Class Chad Smith, a medic with the 1-26. “That causes a lot of people to waver in their dedication.”

The manual itself is aimed toward master’s degree-level courses with the expectation that officers will pass the information all the way to the lowest enlisted person.

But some days, even if troops know the tenets, the plan gets lost in emotion.

On June 21, an improvised explosive device killed five 1-26th soldiers after they had spent the morning sitting on low couches in Iraqi homes asking what the people needed. The IED went off near an Iraqi army guard post, leading some to believe the Iraqis knew about the bomb.

“Why can’t we do like they did in Samarra?” a 1-26th soldier asked a week later. “We should give [the insurgents] 48 hours to get out, and then level it.”

Destroying a town does not build trust or stability, but in that soldier’s mind, neither did spending time with Iraqis.
Playing for time

Hospital Corpsman Jason Jones of 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, waited at the 399th Combat Support Hospital to be treated for an eye injury.

He was upbeat as he pulled out a camera and showed off photos of the work he’d done in Ramadi.

“These are the sheik’s daughters,” he said, grinning as one would about a favorite niece. “We eat dinner with them, like, once a week. We helped [the sheik] with his bad knees and brought Similac for his kids. He’s a very good man.”

He said that in Ramadi, the Marines never see firefights, and the kids are “always outside.”

“We’re rebuilding the city and they’re not looking to outside sources for help,” he said. “We need to do our job and we need more time.”

At the 399th Combat Support Hospital at Al Asad, Lt. Col. Graham Hoffman, hospital psychiatrist, said he did not support going into Iraq in the first place. He signed up for the Army after Sept. 11, 2001, and is now on his third Iraq tour.

“I don’t know how in the hell we got over here,” he said. “I’m like a socialist — left wing.”

Still, he said, “When you start to get to know the people, you want to help them. They’re so grateful.”

Not all his experiences have been good. The hospital staff had recently treated a 12-year-old boy shot in the back by insurgents because he was playing in a park.

Such tragedies feed his fear that if U.S. troops leave, his Iraqi friends will be killed. But he said he had no solutions — a refrain repeated by almost every service member asked. Capt. Jeremy Brooks, a nutritionist with the 399th, said he also thought the U.S. should not have invaded Iraq, “but I think now that we’re here, it would be a mistake to pull out.”

In the face of such diverse thinking about the nature of the mission, McGuire, 3rd MedCom’s chief of staff, said leaders need to work harder to ensure everyone understands the master plan. He tucks a “counterinsurgency pearl” into every briefing to try to spread the word, but he said he wishes everyone would just read the counterinsurgency manual (www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-24.pdf).

“Does everybody get it?” he said. “I wish they did. Everybody, every day, needs to read a paragraph.”

At the same time, McGuire understands the confusion among U.S. troops that is born of the chaos and violence still raging across much of Iraq.

“The insurgency wants to have the world back to the way they like it,” he said. “That’s been going on for three, four thousand years. And here we sit.”

Ellie