EMBEDDED IN SUNNI IRAQ
Macomber, Shawn
~ N THE SAME FEBRUARY DAY I FINALLY got around to cleaning out the massive duffle bag I had hauled for several weeks through the volatile cities of Iraq's Sunni triangle, a band of...
...History has played upon my life with the light brushes of a fortuitous feather...
...The lights go back up and the convoy rumbles back to life...
...But we do not approve of Iran running Iraq...
...Thirteen...
...In my haste I first got caught on the vehicle's fire extinguisher, tearing a mile wide hole in the back of my pants...
...He has one wife and is engaged to another," the commander said, before pausing and waving his cigarette...
...The curfew is holding things up...
...It isn't as ifAmerican soldiers are expecting sissy embedded journalists to be warrior souls, but one still imagines most fearless (okay, scared witless) correspondents must strive to acquit themselves with a bit more aplomb than I was able to muster on my first night raid of a suspected terrorist hideout in the heart of Sunni Mosul...
...Such a realization can be profoundly moving--and unendingly embarrassing...
...He knows the ride is a chance to show respect and signal Americans' growing confidence in the abilities of Iraqi forces...
...That is all it will take...
...We're waiting for something that never comes...
...At that moment the weight ofjust how unfair and cruel this world is weighs upon me more heavily than my 40 pounds ofbody armor...
...There are too few workers...
...It's a perfect place to get shot...
...I wondered: How could this man whom life had dealt such a dire, terrible hand show such warmth toward me, a tourist in his misery, an American civilian who hit the jackpot the day he was born...
...Matthaidess asked through an interpreter...
...But no one comes away from it unchanged, which is why war always has to be the last resort for us as a nation...
...he asked, as if some part of the mess Iraq made out of Kuwait was worth emulating...
...Through the ultra-reinforced window I can see the gunner of the Humvee leading the convoy swiveling quickly back and forth atop his vehicle, searching for last minute threats, exposing himself to those threats with a brazen fortitude...
...Basically recording the minutiae of life in Iraq's second largest city that the rest of the world often forgets exists here, overshadowed as lator, we had a great little conversation about the tedium and joy of newspaper grunt work, a rare honest relation of shared experiences...
...This one says, 'Thank you for giving your life for your country,'" he said...
...So with the ripped back door of my khakis flapping in the wind like a flag and stray dogs barking wildly just outside my field of vision, we jogged along trash strewn alleys gurgling with a liquid that smelled somewhat akin to raw sewage, taking up positions to back up the Iraqi Army elements taking the lead on this joint operation...
...A previously silent Iraqi broke into hearty laughter...
...Tell Rumsfeld to build a new Iraq army with Sunnis...
...We want to be free to do as we please...
...The Americans pay restitution for the door...
...Sans uniform, I was frequently mistaken as a local at night...
...After all, what sort of signal would it send if American military officers planning soon to turn chunks of Mosul over to Iraqi Army forces were afraid to ride along with those very forces...
...The contractors were joking again...
...Captain's hard," one of the soldiers enthused as we pulled out...
...He is press as well...
...Is it still clung to for joy or reassurance or out of fear...
...Meanwhile, back on base, support troops would ask me if my editors had forced me to come to Iraq and call me crazy when I said they had not...
...I breathed a sigh of relief...
...Are you building relationships with them...
...I told him you were...
...Are they beginning to trust you...
...N THE SAME FEBRUARY DAY I FINALLY got around to cleaning out the massive duffle bag I had hauled for several weeks through the volatile cities of Iraq's Sunni triangle, a band of insurgents stormed the Shiite al-Askari mosque in Samarra and blew its historic golden dome to smithereens, setting off a series of retributive attacks that left hundreds dead and more than one wag stateside prophesying a civil war that would make the Book of Revelation look like a holiday tour guide...
...If you could sell initiative in this county you'd be a millionaire...
...Is it covered over with the dusty earth of the Middle East in an all-too-early grave...
...Later back at the American base, Matthaidess expressed both optimism and frustration...
...The armed guards grip their tricked out M-16s all the more tightly...
...I still loved the letter...
...You cannot trust everyone...
...As we closed in on the target the call to disembark from the Stryker armored personnel carrier came a bit too suddenly for me...
...The man demurs...
...U NFORTUNATELY, THE MORALE OF IRAQIS seems to be of secondary concern, despite the fact that this is precisely what everything else rides on...
...Don't worry, I'd be doing the same thing to you if I was in Boston" he offered generouslybefore adding, "But why don't you move out of the doorway...
...Inside, however, are not images from a wedding or company barbeque, but of men in orange jumpsuits throwing garbage into dump trucks...
...The truth is that the default position with regards to governance in many Iraqi minds is still top down, command and control...
...We are making more friends every day," the Iraqi said, grandly gesturing with both arms, as the Iraqi soldiers in the room cracked up...
...Talk about a moment of clarity...
...Then his commander ordered him to load in...
...This alone should speak volumes about the courage and commitment the Iraqi Army supposedly doesn't have...
...Soldiers going out everyday on combat or humanitarian missions were generally more upbeat and less morose...
...Pat Buchanan's worst nightmare made manifest...
...Three beats, four beats...
...Silence descends and for the next ten minutes a tension grows like a fast moving fungus in a Petri dish, uglier by the moment...
...Unlike in Samarra, where Sunnis look at anyWesterner with eyes offire, here in Mosul they talk easily with Americans, voicing concerns and conspiracy theories in equal parts...
...He wants to know if you are with the press," the interpreter said to my relief...
...All right, but are you being good to the people...
...Matthaidess--a warrior now to some degree forced into the part of steward of American taxpayer dollars-doesn't relent: "Right, but there's still trash on the street and people are still concerned...
...Any guy is a bad guy, we got him before he can do anything," the officer answered...
...I don't know...
...He said press is good...
...Women and children are wailing, tears streaming down fearfrozen faces, hoarded into a separate room while the house is searched...
...Two beats...
...The lights all go out...
...He just waved his hand and walked away...
...Are they providing you intelligence...
...Iraqi soldiers swarm into the residential home, securing it before the Americans enter...
...No one is buying the 100 tons of trash bags on hand...
...Well, I haven't seen him lately, but I'll keep it in mind if I do," Matthaidess said...
...M1 is back to normal...
...I followed this up by cracking my helmet-festooned head into the steel lip of the Stryker's door, like some giant stumbling around a McDonald's play area...
...I stand in the middle of this scene sticking out like a sore thumb...
...I've got my hands full with one wife and no kids," Matthaidess laughed...
...The longer one spends in Iraq the less clear the outcomes seem...
...Unless you're a steadfast partisan of the pro-war or anti-war contingents who believes Iraqis are alljolly little creatures who merely flash into existence when it's time to dip their fingers in magical purple ink or, conversely, that the country's entire population is either imprisoned at Abu Ghraib or the victim of suicide bombers, Iraq is a place that is bound to break your heart...
...For Iraqis, it has been more like a ball-peen hammer...
...What are you going to do if Shiites win the most parliament seats...
...The supervisor smiles as if the album erases the discrepancy...
...34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2006...
...One ofthe Iraqis looked over at me and smiled a smile so brief that its authenticity could not be questioned...
...Aside from the horrors on our television screens, Iraq is a place where people go to work, raise children, have car accidents, watch television, worry about the little things...
...The Rhino driver tosses his ball cap on the dashboard and grabs his helmet...
...The air around the compound was thick and moist with the condensational blessings of a steadily humming Tigris flanking its rear quarter mightily and providing a welcome respite from the typical odors of a country that still burns the vast majority of its garbage in open pits...
...Back in the living room of my peaceful Boston apartment, sunrays accented dust particles lilting in the air as I tugged out the bag's tightly crammed contents piece by piece...
...One soldier wouldn't even speak to me after I said I'd volunteered...
...The lack ofa proactive, offensive footing does not comfort when one is exposed to violence...
...Captain Matthaidess asked how things are in the area...
...And then an Iraqi waste management businessman, completely open and willing to work with Americans, suggests litter bugs should be jailed or even shot...
...I MAGINE CHAPERONING INTO A COMBAT ZONE SOMEONE who was kept out ofthe National Honor Society in high school because he failed freshman year gym class, and you'll get some idea of the sacrifices being made by the U.S...
...The isolation of base life also colors how these soldiers see the larger picture of the war...
...To see a woman sitting at a bus stop with all the glass of its enclosure blown out and dried blood on the ground is to witness an almost unfathomable courage in the face of adversity, unheralded yet common in Iraq today...
...There are a lot of good people in Mosul doing good things for the community at great risk to themselves, but there's still a ways to go," he sighed...
...Ahead of us the Humvee gunner drops into his vehicle...
...Most of these men are likely headed to much more dangerous destinations than I, homes in suburbs of Baghdad that may or may not be out of the line of fire on any given day...
...No one watches Channel Mosul," he said, gasping for breath...
...Confronted with a society roiling in primitivistic violence, yet offering unprecedented access to the mechanisms ofliberal democracy and the knowledgeenhancing, horizon-broadening technology, which path will her young male companions choose...
...Sometimes all they get around to saying is how much they love horses or how cool it is that the sky is blue, but I read'em a hundred times anyway and keep every one...
...ation...
...Jail or worse...
...After a minute or two of nodding and crunching that seemed loud as a jackhammer outside a silent city under curfew, he laughed a bit ruefully...
...Where is that cloth now...
...When I was out with combat soldiers, they would ask about the political situation in America or express great affinity for ordinary Iraqis and unrestrained disdain for the "bad guys," as insurgent elements and foreign Islamic militants are ubiquiMAY 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 33 EMBEDDED IN SUNNI IRAQ tously referred to, or exhort me to give their mission at least a fair shake in my dispatches...
...The soldier laughed again, putting on his helmet to head off to his bunk for some shut-eye before what promised to be a dangerous morning patrol...
...Though, in my defense, another week of table tennis instead ofbasketball and I might have pulled it out...
...When this does not sate Matthaidess, the man pulls out a Wal-Mart-esque photo album decorated with pictures of flowers and the words "Beautiful Memories" across the front in sprawling faux-elegant script...
...How often did I complain about a job that was manna from heaven in this young man's eyes...
...Sometimes a small spotlight tracks potential targets, giving a glimpse of the gnarled underbrush from whence so many terrible things can spring...
...Suddenly you remember that this isn't Peoria...
...military on behalf of the embed program...
...Maybe even hope...
...Pat Buchanan's second worst nightmare made manifest...
...A few feet out he stopped, thought for a moment, and turned back...
...Later that night, an informant points out another, similar home where two of the target's associates are holed up...
...How many kids does he have, again...
...And here's hoping justice will one day make such endurance a relic of a lost time...
...I have ten of my own...
...The Iraqi soldiers are hyped up...
...A 22-year-old Army specialist sat one night on a base in Mosul as he snacked on a Butterfinger bar and prepared to read a Dear Soldier missive as the last minutes before 3:00 A.M~ ticked away...
...Iraqi soldiers accosted me anytime I wandered too far from American soldiers and shouted belligerent questions in Arabic...
...How many wives...
...As soldiers pop trunks and ask questions, Captain Matthaidess strikes up conversations with people on the street and in the shops...
...There is something surreal-tragicomic, even-about being the only one in the posse without enhanced night vision technologyin the dead of night...
...The top slams closed...
...The next night the target is captured at another residence...
...A non-combat support role where you're not worrying about IEDs or sniper fire might sound like a fairly plum gig to an outsider, but the truth is there is little glory in working around base all day and then worrying about some random mortar shell or rocket...
...Twelve...
...I've heard war described as a one-way door...
...We all have satellite dishes now...
...Some people lie to you...
...You can't help but admire the hell out of him...
...It affects everyone differently...
...once you pass through you can never go back," Captain Aaron Barreda told me one night in Samarra...
...A 20-something girl started loudly reminiscing about her college days...
...Until now it's been too easy to do that...
...Or will the next decade bring about some semblance of true liberby Shawn Macomber 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2006 A privileged American perspective on life in a difficult place...
...Even in one of the most heavily armored vehicles known to man, surrounded by military escorts, fear begins to set in...
...Instead of firing squads and jail, Matthaidess suggests buying ad time on Mosul's local television station to encourage neighborhood clean-up...
...After a few tense minutes waiting, wide open on the street, the Captain turns to us and whispers, "Breach in three.., two.., one," a cue followed by two enormously loud flashes, bangs, and, seconds later, a crash as the steel door caves in...
...Twenty dollars goes a long way in Iraq and the man of the house seems much less agitated after he receives the cash, which isn't to say that he doesn't still seem beside himself with anger...
...In a combat zone, striving for perfection is apparently not always the highest calling to answer...
...I hope what follows does some justice to the lives of our soldiers and the quiet multitudes of Iraqis who simply endure because that is all they've ever known...
...A sheaf of intelligence reports may find a nearby cousin in a stack of letters written by young elementary school children...
...Most adults in Samarra have no use for us infidels, but children will swarm around any Westerners who venture into their town...
...We're trying to get people in this community to the point where they work together to solve their own problems, rather than running up to the nearest Stryker...
...A series of successful elections has gone offwell and a sort of amnesia about the past, egged on by desire for a peaceful future, sets in...
...Per 30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2006 SHAWN MACOMBER usual, before any Iraqi will talk business a glass ofchai must be in front of every guest and a cigarette in every hand that will accept one...
...We're getting complaints that it takes two or three weeks in some parts of the city...
...Rarely leaving base means rarely interacting with individual Iraqis or the real life society swirling around them...
...Matthaidess decides to eschew the fortified steel safety of the Stryker to ride with the Iraqis...
...Thus, dots on a map denoting potential insurgent safe houses can sometimes be only inches away from, say, Tootsie Rolls representing a little bit of manufactured 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2006 SHAWN MACOMBER sugary goodness...
...And wouldn't you be...
...Then the excuses begin...
...He needs a front-loader...
...I certainly didn't moonlight as a terrorist hunter risking my life on bullet-riddled streets...
...Five beats, six beats...
...Matthaidess asks a Sunni vegetable stand owner sipping Pepsi out of an old school long bottle as women in full burkas peruse his wares...
...And unlike me, they cannot leave the theater of battle anytime they choose...
...A computer programmer sitting upstairs in his ergonomic chair surrounded by faux exotic plants will probably have a different level of morale than the shipping clerk in the basement warehouse...
...If I live on Shifa Street and my trash was picked up today, how long will it be until it's picked up again...
...Ahead of the Rhino the night rolls out with an intense durability usually found in rural areas, giving no indication that a city with a population of more than 5 million lies not far ahead...
...En route to a joint patrol with Iraqi forces, Captain Ed Matthaidess of the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment, made a slight detour to ask the aforementioned waste management businessman why $800,000 appropriated to him has not had a more pronounced effect on the trash-filled streets...
...It only hammers home the point that you are the recipient of violence but never the deliverer of retribution...
...The language was enough to fend them off, but it was still a disorienting enough situation to merit avoidance...
...Only in early Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart films is cigarette puffing more ubiquitous...
...The man of the house is livid as his AK-47 is disassembled...
...It was a real sweet thought...
...Some soldiers become stronger and better for it and others.., just don't...
...More than once I found myself on a darkened street or cutting through a velvet sky in a helicopter with only the little green dots over soldiers' eyes and firing guns visible...
...It's made them lazy about their own future in a lot of ways...
...It's funny: Even when you know it will do no good, you resort to answering questions well: Chasing car accidents, sitting in on city meetings, patiently listening to local politicians too big for their britches...
...People must be afraid of what the government will do if they litter," he offers...
...Shawn Macomber is a Boston-based writer and frequent contributor to The American Spectator...
...Are you guys going to work together peacefully...
...Ultimately nothing is found...
...We do not want the religious government they want," another Sunni man suddenly shouted...
...To an outsider it may seem crazy, but he doesn't want to turn down the Iraqis' invitation...
...I just wonder what y'all are telling everybody over there about how we're doing over here...
...American and Iraqi soldiers gather in the courtyard of the compound, surrounded by sandbags and swirls of razor wire...
...For those passing their tour in these little American enclaves, Iraq is but a nameless, faceless beast that occasionally lobs death over their walls...
...If Iraqis decide to be led by Shiites or Kurds that is fine," the vendor answered...
...T HE PLAN FOR THE DAY'S JOINT-OP is agreed upon: Patrol a market in beautiful, but dangerous, old town Mosul conducting random searches for car bombs and contraband...
...Kids...
...What with the explosions, soldiers swarming your MAY 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 29 EMBEDDED IN SUNNI I RAQ you don't understand in full English sentences...
...The Americans are variously attempting to calm the few overzealous Iraqi soldiers, question the home's occupants, and reassure everyone that if no contraband or terrorist suspects are found the visit will be short...
...The Americans load up into ultra-armored Stryker carriers EMBEDDED IN SUNNI IRAQ that regularly take IED blasts without loss of life or damage, while Iraqis pile into pick-up trucks spraypainted camouflage, some of which look as if they couldn't take a hair turn, never mind a Rocket Propelled Grenade...
...As in the garbage collector's office, it's not clear if the laughter is a cultural tic or if most Iraqis think the quote/unquote "American way" is more comedy than philosophy...
...I mean, shoot, I'd do it if that's what it comes down to, but it sure the hell's not my grand plan for Iraq...
...News of the latest atrocity takes on a new dimension once you've walked the streets of Samarra, Mosul, Tikrit, and Baghdad with an American or Iraqi soldier or Sunni, Shiite, or Kurd civilian...
...I love these kids' letters," he said as he tore into the envelope...
...Likewise, we cannot approach the question of the state of morale in Iraq in a serious way until we acknowledge our troops are not a large, indistinguishable conglomerate...
...Suddenly the Rhino stops, leaning slightly as it rests in what for it must be a minor crevasse, but would likely break the axle of a car...
...One beat passes...
...T HE EDGES OF THE WOODEN TABLES in the small huts where troops meet to go over last minute details of missions are often littered with the entrails of the disemboweled care packages sent by grateful fellow Americans half a world away...
...E ARLIER THAT EVENING we rendezvoused with the Iraqi Army raid team at a fortified outpost in western Mosul...
...I f the girl survives this chaotic time, will the stunted, backward religious fundamentalism enshrined with America's tacit approval in the new "liberal" Iraqi constitution land her cloistered behind a burka at age 16 for the rest of her life, all that kinetic energy and potential snuffed out...
...When I was a cub reporter chasing car accidents and trying to stay awake during town meetings I went home at night to unwind via the various distractions of modern life in an affluent society...
...And so the fledgling warrior soul takes another hit...
...I lose count of the others...
...It is Mosul...
...This was brought into sharp relieffor me as I rode into Baghdad in the dead ofnight on a 13-ton fiber-armored Winnebago that in the 1980s could have been the punch line to any scene featuring obsessive weapons aficionado Eugene Tackleberry in any one ofthe Police Academy movies...
...Finally, he said, the police need to start imposing stricter anti-trash measures...
...It becomes considerably less humorous or fanciful, however, when you're about to board one to travel from Baghdad International Airport to the International Zone (formerly the Green Zone) on a road that has alternately been described as "ambush alley" and "the road of death...
...While American and Iraqi commanders hashed out tactics over several large maps, a young Iraqi soldier dragged an interpreter towards me...
...W E ARRIVE MIDDAY at an Iraqi Army compound and the officers greet us warrdly at the door...
...Many Sunnis are quite fearful of the Iraqi Army's well-known, if reportedly rapidly declining, interrogation excesses...
...Doubtless some of this dust originated in Samarra,-perhaps even a bit of it was wed to me on the day before the December 15 election when I stood in front of the al-Askari mosque itself...
...Both the pro-war and antiwar contingents could probably pull something out of that bit to bolster their case...
...It was no different at al-Askari where boys gave me the thumbs-up sign and a girl of six or seven took my hand to squeeze it for a moment, proudly holding up a muddy piece of cloth embroidered with flowers with the other...
...More chai and cigarettes abound...
...A T TIMES THE SHOOTS AND LEAVES of the new (hopefully) democratic order in Iraq can partially obscure the deeply entrenched psychological effects of three decades of brutal totalitarian rule...
...He needs three bulldozers...
...Still, it's a friendly relationship and Matthaidess makes small talk, asking the commander about his cousin, also an Iraqi Army officer...
...I lean into one soldier's ear and apologize for following so closely...
...The most popular theory this particular day is that America has allowed Iran to fix the Iraqi election and is conspiring to subvert the will of Sunnis who make up the majority of Iraqis...
...Then I noticed the look on the faces of the Iraqis, unchanging through the short ordeal, resigned to whatever was to come...
...Turns out this young Iraqi soldier writes for a fledgling weekly newspaper in Mosul covering the sort of material anyone who started out at a daily newspaper knows all too dren crying...
...Matthaidess returned...
...Suspicion may remain, but there is no proof of any wrongdoing or contraband...
...Did you know that Saddam sent 28,000 sanitation workers into Kuwait, while ~e have so few...
...If you try to explain Sunnis are actually only approximately 35 percent or that there is no love lost between Iran and the United States, expect a friendly dismissal...
...The problem with gauging morale in Iraq, however, is the same as it would be gauging morale in any office in America: Experiences vary widely depending on the role...
Vol. 39 • May 2006 • No. 4
