"The Braden Files" Blog
At the press conference I attended I was struck by the cynical smart-ass questioning.more like hectoring of the flag officer spokesman. After the imbedded reporters, it is back to business as usual with the baiting and lecturing.
De Atkine's preliminary report on conditions in Iraq
(Here's a great article by Tex DeAtkine, an old PSYOP and Middle East Guru who's been coaxed out of the school house at Bragg for one last hoorah. Great reading. His insights can't be discounted.
-- Bill G.)
I have been in Iraq going on about three weeks now working with a PSYOP unit, but I have spent most of my time roaming about the Provisional Coalition Authority palace and listening to any of the chiefs or their Indians who would talk to me (and most do), as well as daily and long discussions with the many Iraqis who work with us. This is my interim report on my observations and my initial analysis of what I have heard and seen.
First some bottom lines.
Since my last trip in June, life has gotten much better for the Iraqis and worse for American soldiers. I do not mean the usual quality of life stuff, e.g., food, accommodations, entertainment, R&R, etc. Actually that is very good in most cases. I mean security. In June I got around the city fairly well, but now we must be very cautious. Every American killed or injured is a propaganda victory for the Thugs arrayed against us. Running up and down the roads just to prove we can do it is an exercise in Russian roulette.
Meanwhile the Iraqis are enjoying life to an extent they haven't had for decades. Every commodity is available, the shops are full, a few nightclubs are reviving, satellite dishes are like mushrooms sprouting everywhere. Families are out at night (although there is still a crime problem in some areas). Dozens of internet cafes have appeared. The Iraqis are watching Friends and Ally McBeal (one of the favorites). Arab music (which I love) is booming out everywhere. Food in plentiful, booze is available; the girls are out in western dress, beautifully attired and made up. And I might add, many are exceedingly attractive.
No Iraq it isn't up to US standards, decent dental or medical care is only available to the very wealthy, and the infrastructure is falling apart. Saddam invested an unbelievable amount of money in palaces and hunting clubs, and his cronies emulated his example. Electricity still goes out; fuel lines are long. They pay about 5 cents a liter!!! The looting destroyed what little remained of the infrastructure and we have had to start from scratch.
The miskin (miserable poor) Shia in Sadr city live in squalor but ironically it is one of the safer places we can go. The middle and upper class Sunni areas are usually hostile but that is a generalization not true in a number of areas. One on one they are still a friendly and hospitable people. I eat at an Arab restaurant every night and have yet to pay for a meal. I tried a number of times and was told, "do you want to spoil the evening?" So the question is why? Why, with ridding Iraq of Saddam and bringing a chance for a decent life to these people do we still lose a soldier or two every day?
The recent Oxford University survey of the Iraqi people is the best yet. According to it 75% of the people do not trust us! But only 1% wants Saddam back. The undeniable truth here is that 99% of our soldiers want us out of here but only 17% of the Iraqis do.at least in the short term. The latter statistic is by survey, the soldier survey by anecdotal evidence. (I say 99% because a few have fallen madly in love with Layla or Jamila). These are all contradictions. How can one explain them? They shoot at us. They love us, they hate us, they want us out, and they want us to stay!! It is difficult I know because I have tried a number of times and I realize how difficult it is to explain to Pentagon or White House staff the nuances of the situation here.
First of all we are dealing with people who have an in-bred cynicism, a distrust of authority, all authority, and we are the only authority in town. They have never trusted their rulers. Why would they suddenly bind their lives over to us, particularly with our track record of abandoning allies in the recent past?
Secondly, we are not Arabs, we are not Muslims; we are kufr (infidels) to many of the people here. There is no way to modify or change that fact. Tolerance is in short supply in this part of the world. Christians are particularly fearful of what comes next. A number of Christian owned liquor stores have been burned by Shia militants. There is a certain amount of secularism in the urban areas (ironically thanks to Saddam who regularly killed off radical clerics), but make no mistake about it, this is a very Muslim country. There are Wahhabi influences in this country among the Sunni, and the Shia are enforcing new rules of dress and conduct on their people. The town in which the Spaniards were murdered is a prime example. It is a Wahhabi town. Many townspeople thought they were Jews, which in the Wahhabi doctrine is a good enough reason to kill them.
Thirdly we are occupiers of their country and while liberating them we killed people and destroyed a number of buildings that are visible everywhere, huge charred ruins of twisted metal and concrete, a constant reminder that their army was defeated in a war. That obviously bothers them a great deal. We were amazingly judicious and careful in our destruction, but nevertheless there was some collateral damage. And innocents died, as well as soldiers. Their country was defeated. That is the reality they live with.
We drive through their streets with tanks and constantly stop people, search them, women included, change their money, take over the homes of elitist Bathiis, (all for a damn good reason) and very often our troops are not culturally attuned to the society. Every day I watch young marines search women, not with hands but with metal detectors. Nevertheless it is humiliating experience for people here. I must say, however, that overall the American soldier is a great ambassador. But after you get shot at every day or an improvised explosive device blows up nearby in the same village and young men taunt you with pictures of Saddam Hussein, making gestures like they are shouldering an RPG, the hearts and minds go out the window. I totally understand that, but apparently there are a number of reporters who do not, or perhaps for political reasons choose not to care. At the press conference I attended I was struck by the cynical smart-ass questioning.more like hectoring of the flag officer spokesman. After the imbedded reporters, it is back to business as usual with the baiting and lecturing.
Fourthly, this was a mafia-run country. A relatively small number of people ran this country by fear and intimidation. Violence and cruelty that often rivaled that of the Soviet regime has characterized their lives for decades. The fear is still here. Our translators tell us that only their family, not even their life-long friends, know they work for us. Not because they would be seen as traitors but because the Baathi mafia would find out and kill them. It happens almost every day. Yet hundreds line up at the gate every day for jobs. They work hard for $10 a day or less.
Fifth, as part of the above point, people who have lived in an environment of fear, have a problem with trust of neighbors, even relatives, let alone we Americans. Saddam was fond of telling his cronies, "I will cut my own hand off before I give up power".. and in killing his two sons-in-law he demonstrated what he meant. Hussein the Dictator is mostly a dead issue (many Iraqis think he is dead; they say why have we seen no video?), but his legacy lives on, a legacy of paranoia, getting the drop on your neighbor, looting the power companies, museums, Life is a zero sum game. If he has it I won't. There isn't enough to go around. How can I trust the Americans? I don't even trust my in-laws or next-door neighbor!
Finally, we must understand our culpability in this, civilian and military. We committed a number of monumental errors of judgment, compounded by a palpable arrogance, and a continuing case of self-deception and denial. We demobilized the army, the only respected institution in Iraq (not the Republican Guard or Special Republican Guard or the various intelligence and security services). There was no one to restore order at the end of the war and hundreds of thousands of men were out of a job with families to support. Ex-Generals in big villas with fancy cars were now selling their jewelry and furniture. Not that I feel sorry for them but now they stay home and in the words of one young Iraqi woman, "order their wives about and plot against the coalition." Where we needed pragmatism we injected some Wilsonian balderdash. They are, in many cases, the core of the leadership against us. It is more a matter of pride and honor than any deeply rooted patriotism.
As an adjunct to this everyone should go back and read Ralph Peters' article in Parameters, (Summer 1994), called The New Warrior Class. The thugs who shoot at our soldiers are perfect examples of what he wrote about. They are poor, aimless, disaffected urban or village nobodies, who cannot pay the mahr, bride price for a decent girl. Now they are given a weapon, a half-baked ideology, some slogans to shout, perhaps a uniform or headband, and they now swagger about the streets, pushing around the people who looked down on them. As Peters accurately predicted, the disenfranchised officer class provides the leadership. Now we have a commercial firm trying to build a new army, of which so far we have one battalion. The first battalion seems to have come out well but we have a very long way to go before they can pick up some of the burden. We destroyed the rule of Saddam Hussein and the entire ruling structure but put nothing in its place for weeks, and since then we have alternated between bad guy, good guy techniques. In their eyes, the Iraqis do not trust us for good reasons. From Saddam, as they constantly tell us, they got consistency. He did what he said he would do.
It is obvious that there is a wide chasm between the military command and the civilian side of the house. Its effects are manifested in delayed projects, inconsistent policies, backtracking, and an atmosphere of frenetic but unfocussed activity. After taking numbers of casualties and basically doing very little about it, we began some offensive operations against the former regime loyalists (FRL), a bad term actually because few are really loyal to Hussein. They have gone beyond him, but now the "experts" are claiming this will further alienate the population. Mostly wrong! Actually many Iraqis have been pushing us to do more and bring the thugs to heel. They do not want to live in a chaotic environment. The old Arab saying applies here.. One day of chaos is worse than a thousand years of tyranny.
There is ample blame to go around. The DOD experts were wrong, the academics were wrong, (and I was wrong too) and the advisors to President Bush should admit they were wrong and be contrite, instead of making excuses. These White House folks, mostly very young and brash, come in for 60-90 days, check the block on their resume and do dumb things. Young 30 something's females hold meetings with grizzled old Bedouin tribal chiefs and violate every known tradition of the Arab world. They mean well but tear down what takes months to build.
Having written all this, the bottom line is we take three steps forward every week and two steps back, but that still gives us a plus which continues to add up. People work very hard here. There is nothing to do so people are at work till 11-12 midnight and up again at 6.
There is a conviction we cannot afford to fail. It would be catastrophic for our country for decades to come. You can be sure they will come after us, not the Iraqis.. but all our other enemies, particularly the Muslim radicals who will see us as weak and ineffectual.
Basically it seems the coalition military understand this is a war we must win while the civilian component is involved in winning the peace. But there is no peace. The war goes on. I do believe we are gaining the upper hand on the battlefield but my take on that varies from day to day. And we continue to lose one or two young soldiers a day.
The 700 projects on the list to consume the 18.6 billion dollar construction appropriation should be a big boost. General Kellog has arrived with a good team and will get this thing going soon. The problem is achieving and maintaining enough security to actually get the project completed and not blown up. I understand that some of the companies are having a difficult times keeping their ex-pat employees. They are under great pressure from their families to come home. Even with the astronomical salaries it is a tough sell. People who drive supplies up to Takrit and Faluja draw 100 k salaries. I am not sure I would do it that myself. It is highway 13, Saigon to Ben Cat all over again.
Finally I must say I was wrong in seeing the Iraqis as just another slightly different group of Arabs. They are an immensely complicated people. The Arab, Muslim fatalism and outlook on life, combined with 35 years of the most repressive, intrusive state control over people one could imagine, put Iraq on par with Stalin's control and paranoia.
As an Iraqi Brigadier told me today, in his neighborhood there was a monitor who knew every small detail about each household, to include who was pregnant and the due date. This was the system throughout the urban areas. As he said, "our minds, and spirit were destroyed, our trust in each other, even our belief in ourselves was destroyed. We cannot function without a strong leader." The imprint of Hussein on him was disconcerting. It was if he were trying to exorcise an evil spirit, and as he talked he became agitated, almost hysterical. A fellow Iraqi sitting with us summed up the Iraqi mentality very well when he said that an Iraqi is the only person in the world who can be both a dedicated communist and devout Muslim at the same time. They are a multi-layered people who cannot be reduced to a one-dimensional personality.
Enough rambling for now. One last thought. This is a media war. The only way we can lose is to lose the battle for the American people. And we need the stakes of this war carefully explained, not by slogans or phony patriotic appeals, but pragmatic reasoning. Whether we should be here at all is a matter for historians, but not political cheap shots. You cannot say you support the troops but not the war. How do you support the troop about to go on patrol in Fallujah and yet tell him he may die for a worthless ill-considered war?
Tex DeAtkine
Baghdad Iraq 4 Dec 2003
Postscript 6 Dec. Visited civil affairs units in Qa'im and Falujah today.
A couple of the hottest places in Iraq. Amazing people in the civil affairs. All reserves and they go out almost every day, get shot at, grenaded, taunted, spit on and yet they are back the next day. This is a pysops/information/civil affairs war. I just hope our leadership understands this. We cannot win it with massive "sweeps" ala RVN, but with special, well-trained political military warriors, soldiers who are as comfortable drinking tea and coffee with the tribal leaders as kicking down doors and eliminating the hard core. They will be required to do both.
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