I just received this email from a friend who just finished his 2 week leave at home. He's a UCLAW graduate who volunteered with the reserves to go to Iraq for 1 year. Yes, that's right - left his high paying law firm to serve his country.
I admire him greatly. I've left his name off, but if you routinely follow military blogs, you'll see his writings often.
Subject: Back in Baqubah
I made it back to Baqubah on Monday, and spent my first full day at work today. In total, I spent about four weeks away from my team – a week for a division conference and some decompression time at FOB Speicher near Tikrit, then some travel delays, then two weeks of leave, then a couple of days of travel back. Strangely, though, it feels good to be back. I missed my friends in the unit, and was anxious to rejoin them in Baqubah. I think I set a new record coming back from Kuwait; it took me just 26 hours from the time I stepped off the plane in Kuwait City to when I jumped off the Blackhawk in Baqubah. (Most guys take a few days to make their way back after leave, lingering at some of the plusher bases for a day or two in between flights.) As you all know from the news, a lot’s been going on here. I think the press has exaggerated the potential for civil war, but it’s still been a busy time, particularly for my team of police advisers. As much as I enjoyed being home, I really wanted to get back here as quickly as possible to take care of my guys.
Traveling in and out of Iraq was quite an adventure. First we got delayed at the big basecamp near Tikrit for 3 days while we waited for the weather and the Air Force to cooperate (both can be quite intransigent). I spent most of this time corralled in a tent on the FOB Speicher airfield, unable to leave for fear that the C-130 would show up and leave for Kuwait without me. It was incredibly boring. I read two or three books while sitting in the tent, read (and reread) a couple of magazines, and went for a couple of short runs next to the airfield. Fortunately, things moved quicker once we got to Kuwait. The Army put us on a charter ATA flight that stopped in Eastern Europe, Ireland, and Bangor, Maine, before arriving Dallas, where I changed planes to fly to LAX, arriving on the 15th. On the way back from leave, the flight only stopped once, in Shannon, Ireland, and made it to Kuwait in about half the time it took us to fly to the states. But thanks to the Army’s puritanical rules on alcohol, we couldn’t sample the local beer going either direction during our stops in Ireland, which was a total bummer. I understand where the policy comes from. But if we fly through Ireland on our redeployment flight, I might be tempted to look the other way so everyone can drink a pint or two of Guinness.
So… the $64,000 question from everyone has been: “is it really that bad over there?” The answer is, just as to all questions in law school: “it depends.” The bad events are certainly bad; it was bad when the Sunnis blew up the mosque in nearby Samarra, and it was bad when 50 insurgents attacked a refinery in Narwan, an outlying village between here and Baghdad. But while the reports of those incidents have been accurate, I think the reports on just those incidents provide an incomplete picture of life over here. Life goes on in Baqubah for the average Iraqi man or woman. The marketplace still runs; the schools still run; there are still massive queues at the gas stations during the week, and massive traffic jams in the heart of the city. There is not the sense here that the country is on the brink of civil war. Quite the contrary, in fact. Our experiences with violence in the past (which did not boil over into civil war) have taught us that the country can go to the brink and back without devolving into civil war. So that’s where we’re at right now. Iraqi police and army could have done better in responding initially, as could the U.S. military. But things appear to have calmed down. Things are as normal here as they can be given the circumstances.
A lot has changed in the last month for our team. Our commander was removed and sent to a higher headquarters as a staff officer. The colonel who replaced him is really smart, really calm, and there has been a palpable improvement in the command climate as a result of the change. I worry a little that the new colonel is too conventional for our mission, but we’ve got enough unconventional people on the team that I think it’ll work out. Another big change is that we’ve completely moved to a new compound. We now live and work in an annex to the state capital building, about 800m up the street from our old compound at the provincial police headquarters. I moved myself to the new digs before I left, but I had to commute back and forth each day to the old headquarters for work. Living and working in the same place is a lot better, because you don’t have the run the risk of driving on the roads every morning and evening. There’s a small dining facility here, which is nice because we get fresher, more varied food. There’s also a decent gym, so we’ve got a good place to go burn off stress and relax.
It’s still more austere here than the large bases where most Americans live in Iraq, but I prefer to live here, away from the flagpole and all the scrutiny that comes when you’re on a big base. Plus, we’re a lot closer to the Iraqis here, which makes us a lot more effective. Last night, I was able to walk over to meet with some Iraqi colonels who man a planning cell for the security forces in the province. If I lived on a big base, I couldn’t do that; I’d have to mount a combat patrol to drive out to meet them, and it probably wouldn’t happen.
Summer is already starting to come around, which is a real bummer because the winter weather in Iraq is so mild and enjoyable. We get the worst kind of heat here, because Baqubah sits in a river valley, so it’s both unbearably hot (130-140 degrees) and humid. Lovely. The region is also supposed to have a thriving population of mosquitoes and other critters, so we’re all treating our uniforms with pesticide and preparing a stockage of DEET to lather on when the bugs come. My office and barracks room have air conditioning units, but I’ll be surprised if they last through the summer. And there’s just no way around the heat when you’re out on a mission: wearing body armor and doing a mission in the summer heat will absolutely suck. Oh well.
At least the next couple of weeks look pretty interesting. I’m working with the brigade’s JAG officer to advise and improve the local judiciary and its operations. Our work won’t involve much teaching about the law per se; it’d be pretty arrogant for us to teach Iraqi judges about Iraqi law. Instead, we’re going to focus on making the courts run more smoothly and effectively, kind of like consultants might do for an ailing corporation back in the states. I’m also going out to do some more police station assessments, and to supervise some of the law enforcement training that we’re doing. It’s a very dynamic time here. The command has put a much greater emphasis on building the police and other rule of law institutions (courts, attorneys, jails, etc.) than before, even moreso than when I left on leave, based on the recognition that you can’t win a counterinsurgency fight by simply focusing on the military aspects of the problem. I’m cautiously optimistic because this is what I came here to do. Regardless of the ultimate outcome of this war, I think help these Iraqi institutions develop over the next several months while we’re here.
It was really great to see so many of you back in the United States. I’m sorry that I couldn’t see everyone, because I had only 2 weeks in town. With a little luck though, I’ll be able to see you all when I come back in September or October, especially if I’m able to follow through on my post-deployment plan of taking a long road trip with Peet to relax, unwind and see friends. Now that I’m back in Iraq, I’ll try to send more updates from over here (I left my laptop in Iraq so I could travel lightly, which is why I’ve been largely off the net for the past few weeks). I’ll also send a few more pictures so you can see how we’re living and working, and better visualize some of the more colorful moments that I write about. Talk to you soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment