I Cogitate

"Soldier's Story
essay by Kory Turnbow
Publication Date: 9/27/06

I've been asked by numerous friends and acquaintances since my return home in December of last year what I think of the War on Terror, or the War in Iraq. I get the impression that they are typically looking for a sound-bite reply, like I can somehow sum up the situation as a "win" or "lose" like the talking heads on the Fox News Channel.

I believe Afghanistan will go down in history as a successful U.S. military campaign and Iraq will likely go down as a modern-day Vietnam. People think I'm crazy when I say this. After all, as one friend pointed out, "What's the difference between them? Aren't they both Islamic countries?"

...My other big cause for concern at my level was never, and I repeat never, receiving a coherent mission or intent statement for Operation Iraqi Freedom. According to all the doctrine that I had been taught beginning in ROTC and continuing throughout my military career, a soldier needs two things to be able to do his job effectively. The first is a mission statement. This should be a short statement consisting of who, what, when, where, and perhaps most importantly, why we are doing what we are doing. The second thing is the commander's intent. Essentially, this boils down to what the commander would like to see happen, and tells us his intended result. This helps clear the fog of war; lower-level commanders and soldiers can make decisions that will help further the commander's intent, even if the mission becomes unworkable.

Every mission and intent statement I ever saw on this deployment was a huge Power Point slide dissertation written by someone with too much time on his hands. Not one meant anything to me as a commander, and I always tried to create a clear, concise mission statement for my troops during the various operations I sent them on. I don't fault my commanders, nor the Division Commanders, or even the Theater Commanders. I believe that this problem went all the way to the top, with perhaps our Commander in Chief making it the clearest: "Stay the Course." In hindsight, perhaps that's what those Power Point slides were supposed to mean after all ­ nothing.

During my stay in Iraq, I began to hate the words "Stay the Course." After months (or perhaps a year) of searching for what we were really doing in Iraq, I finally heard what I was looking for from Brigadier Gen. Alan Gayhart, the 116th Brigade Combat Team Commander. It was late July 2005, as I recall, and he was addressing his Brigade Officer Corps as part of an officer development program: "So long as the Iraqi Civil War doesn't start here, on our watch, we will have been successful in our job." My months of searching were at an end. It was at that point that I began to question why we were even running missions at the pace we were running them to begin with. After all, the patrols had become nothing more than moving targets. They rarely captured any insurgents, and when they did, they were released back on the streets again within days, with $5 cash in their pockets for every day they spent detained ­ provided by the U.S. for the inconvenience of being detained...

...Based on my experience in Iraq, the present strategy of withdrawing our troops as the Iraqi Army and Police are able to stand up is not going to be effective. This is because the Iraqi Ministry of Defense (MoD) and Ministry of Interior (MoI) are horribly corrupt and not adept at managing their resources. It is quite often that an employee or minister will embezzle funds (provided by the U.S.) that would otherwise be used for paying employees or buying equipment for the security forces. Another favorite trick is to divert money to the minister's own city, instead of spending it in other areas that might require the funds more, due to an insurgent buildup in that area. But the corruption doesn't stop there; it goes down to the provincial and local levels in much the same manner. Perhaps the worst is at the local level, where the local Sheik will attempt to (and be generally successful at) installing commanders into his local IA barracks or IP station who suit his political affiliation at that time. This leaves the Iraqi troops on the ground with no other resource than their U.S. advisors to keep them functional and apolitical."

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