The Iraq War...

Cross post from similar thread on Politics.

______________

At the time, I don't think I gave the cause for the war much consideration at all, actually. I don't recall being particularly swayed by the AQ or WMD lines, but on the other hand, I didn't see any particular downsides to the concept of removing Saddam anyway, even if the motivations for doing so were less than stellar.

My personal interest only really piqued when I was sent there, which is natural enough, I guess. For all the talk about Iraq having been one of the most modern and developed middle-Eastern nations prior to the unpleasantness of 1991 or so, I sure as hell would not have wanted to be in one of the less modern and less developed nations. Granted, they were better off than Afghanistan, but that's hardly Middle-East. I was lucky enough to spend a while at opposite ends of the spectrum, most of my time was in an undeveloped agrarian region, but I also spent some weeks bouncing around a developed city.

My first introduction to Saddam's "Baghdad First" policy came within an hour of crossing the border in March 2004. About the far side of Basra, Highway 1, the main artery to the country's only port city, turned from an immaculate motorway to a dirt trail. I'm not exaggerating, I don't mean 'two lane blacktop', I mean 'desert that has been graded, but nothing else done to it.' Took us four-five hours to get back to the blacktop, which was about 30 miles South of Baghdad. Obviously the government wasn't all that concerned about people wanting to go to/from the outlying areas.

The region I spent most of my time in was a bit unusual, perhaps. Some 30 miles North of Baghdad, right next to Al Dujail. This resulted in an odd mix as, though ostensibly a Shiite part of the world, the population had been a little reduced by massacre and forcibly resettled with Sunni replacements as a reprisal against an assassination attempt in the 1980s. Fairly fertile farmland, and masterfully irrigated, though the people were often living in a strange dichotomy of poverty and modern convenience. Most families had access to a motor vehicle of some sort, for example, but there was no source of clean water or sewage system. I feel I took my life in my hands sometimes when I was invited to share their meals! (I never did come down with anything, thankfully. I broke a few rules in eating local food, but really, could I say 'no' and not offend them?). Electricity was supplied by communally owned generators. These weren't instances of depravity caused by ten years of sanctions, there was no indication that any such services were ever available to them at any stage in the past.

As a general rule, the people seemed to be about what you'd find anywhere. Most of them didn't really care who was going to run the country, as long as they could get a good price for their vegetables in the local market and their kids grew up safe and well educated. Some odd priorities, though... When we asked one town council what they'd like us to build in their town (which had no clinic or school), they said 'football stadium'. Yeah, we told them to try again. As a general rule, our priority of reconstruction was healthcare: Water and medical access. My platoon medic was probably the greatest asset we had, we'd have people walk up to us carrying their kids for things as simple as burns (The kid whose heart was outside his ribcage was beyond my medic's abilities, we had to send that one up the chain. Never did find out what happened him).

I became known to the locals as "Mulazem Tee-el", which, unless my interpreter was lying to me, translated as "Lieutenant Flagpole."
I was a tad taller than most of the locals. I must have cut an impressive figure, one family matriarch tried to fob her daughter off on me. (When I explained 'sorry, I'm married', that didn't stop her. 'Have another wife!'. Upon explaining that Wife #1 would leave me and I'd go to jail, the mother was horrified. How could a country as advanced as the US be so barbaric as to deny a man a second wife? Good question...)

After the first week when we showed up and the insurgents realised they wanted to shoot at easier targets than tanks, combat in my neck of the woods was limited, almost down to a case of satisfying honor. They'd empty a magazine at us, we'd shoot back, nobody would hit anything, and we were all good for the next couple of weeks. With only one exception, most of the serious opposition commuted to our AO. (You don't crap in your own back yard), that one exception was dealt with after three consecutive appointments (I don't think we killed them, we just scared them enough that they left us alone after that).

The Iraqi forces at the time were... unreliable. Some were actually quite good, most of the ones in my area, not so much. After a few months, we had to go on joint patrols, bring a couple of Iraqi lads along with us to show how it was done. Nicer idea in theory than in practice, it took a while before proper emphasis was placed on doing this right. I do recall one day in June or July 2004 when we got a radio call as we were out on patrol: "The CPA has handed over control of the country to an Iraqi interim government. The occupation is over, you are now honoured guests of the Iraqi government." As I looked back over my two tanks, two Hummers, and the various soldiers and civilians interacting, I couldn't see much difference between then and the half hour ago!

Anyway, after a... well, I won't say 'pleasant', but really not bad at all 9 months or so in the fields, we were relocated to Mosul. A reasonably modern city, with a heavy Kurdish presence, so parts of the city were very quiet, with a Kurdish militia keeping an eye on things. Other parts of the city, decidedly not quiet. Depending on which part of the city you went to, there were some very nice houses, and there were also places with open sewers (which we discovered after driving through them). Roads were generally good in the city, though drainage sucked, with some underpasses for major roads being completely flooded after rains. Was the only place we ever saw an Iraqi woman not wearing headgear (Two of them, they were on a shopping street).

City services were non-existant. The police had just been run out of town (hence they sent my tanks up that way), and even the garbage collection wasn't working. The electricity grid was complete chaos, with people stringing up their own lines any which way they wanted. I'd wager this contributed as much to the lack of electricity (overloads and shorts) as a lack of production capacity. (Satellite dishes had started springing up all over the place over the course of the year. I'm told the most popular show was Oprah. No, I have no idea why). I saw one butcher slaughter a cow and let it bleed out on the sidewalk into the gutter. Not sure what the city Health and Safety folks would think of that.

That said, despite all the chaos, life in the city went on as close to normal as you could expect. We commuted every morning and evening in our tanks to our place of work just like everyone else, and got stuck in traffic jams like everyone else. Pretty surreal, really. (Of course, being in tanks, sometimes we just made our own lanes if the delays were too long. Not that we were the only people with a disrespect for the official traffic laws, Iraqi drivers in general sucked in the consideration towards other department). Local football league was in full swing, I parked the tank by a pitch once and just sat there watching the game. (Cue amusement once the locals figured out I was cheering for the guys in the green jerseys).

The big event, and the reason that there was so much emphasis on restoring order in the town, was the elections of January 2005. These would be the first free elections in years, and it turned into a bit of a city-wide party. To reduce the bomb threat, a three-day curfew on vehicles was placed just before the locations of the polling stations was announced: No traffic. An astonishing amount of badminton and volleyball nets got erected, to go with all the football matches that sprouted in the streets. Kindof limited where we could go.

Lots of smiles on election day. Nobody bothered to tell us about the blue dye, and for the life of us we couldn't figure out why the folks we were passing kept smiling and waving their fingers at us and why they were blue. Only one incident at a polling station in our area, a mortar landed about a block away. The people lined up to vote scattered, but they were all back again after about five minutes. They were quite determined to vote.

Anyway, that's the overview of my recollections of ten years ago from my little vantage point ten feet above the ground. My unit is having a ten-year-reunion later this year, I was shocked when I realized how much time had passed. Anyway, I had no particularly negative experiences with the Iraqis, I didn't seem to offend them too much, and the places I saw needed about all the help they could get.