Charles Faint, U.S. Army (Retired) Iraq: 2004, 2007, 2008
I was excited to go to Iraq. I was glad I didn’t miss my war.
When my wife and I left Korea, we returned to Fort Huachuca for the Military Intelligence Advanced Officer Course, which at the time included a program of instruction at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas called CASSS, or CAS-cubed (Combined Arms Services and Staff School). To my surprise, the war in Afghanistan was still going on. But surely, it would be over by the time I got through my training and made it to a unit that was actually going to war.
I watched “shock and awe” unfurl with bombs over Baghdad while I was running on a treadmill at Fort Leavenworth. Given how quickly we handled Iraq the last time (my father’s war) and knowing the amount of training that I still had in front of me, I was still sure that everything would be over before it began for me.
I ended up catching a lucky break at the Advanced Course. Because I had already served in Korea and already been a company commander, my assignments manager offered me my pick of available jobs. The 5th Special Forces Group sounded like a good option. Not only had my father served in that unit back when he was a Green Beret, but it was also located at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, which was a short drive away from my parents and sister in Northern Alabama. And I knew that 5th Group was already heavily involved in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and with both of those wars about to end, this was probably my last, best chance to not be the only kid on my block without a combat patch.
The reality, however, was very different than my expectations. I languished on staff at 5th Group for several months with no deployment in sight, to the point where I was actively trying to leave Group and go to the 101st Airborne Division because I knew the 101st (where I had previously served as an Infantry lieutenant) would immediately send me to Iraq. Thankfully that didn’t work out. 5th Group put me in charge of the Group Military Intelligence Detachment and later, the Group Support Company. I eventually made it to Iraq for the first of what turned out to be three tours in Iraq, and four in Afghanistan, in support of what turned out to be a decades-long War on Terror.
My first tour in Iraq was with 5th Group, and my second and third were while I was assigned to the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). I was based at what eventually became known as Camp Syverson, which was named after one of my 5th Group colleagues who was killed in action in Iraq. I was an intelligence officer serving in special operations (SOF) units. I never killed anyone directly, and in fact, I never even fired my weapon at anyone. I got shot at just enough to earn a Combat Action Badge and performed well enough to earn four Bronze Star medals over the course of my career. But I was not an “operator” and I was not a senior leader. I was just a guy who was there.
I spent most of my time in Iraq on the large forward operating base of Balad. Because of my work, I seldom ventured out, with occasional trips to Basra, Mosul, and of course, Baghdad. All of those trips were flights, and almost all of those flights were at night. I did a few covert vehicle movements inside of Baghdad and had one completely uneventful convoy on a main supply route, where I fell asleep upright in a surprisingly-comfy MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle). But one flight still stands out in my mind.
I disagree.
Knowing what we knew at the time, a legit case could have been made (and in my opinion was made) that Iraq was trying to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Saddam Hussein possessed chemical weapons and had used them in the past. There were examples of dual-use technical acquisition by Iraq, and some of the initial reports of WMD seemed plausible. Also, Hussein wanted people, especially the Iranians, to think he had WMDs as a regime security measure. He assumed that the CIA would know he didn’t have them. Which, of course, either they didn’t, or they did know but wanted us to go into Iraq anyway. And people forget that we did, in fact, find chemical weapons in Iraq after we invaded, although nothing on the scale of what we were sold by the Bush Administration, the Intelligence Community, and, yes, Colin Powell.
That’s not to absolve Colin Powell of blame completely. In my opinion, one of the reasons we did what we did in Iraq was because of the Powell Doctrine, which others have summarized as “you break it, you bought it” when it comes to attacking other regimes. That type of thinking engendered a type of paternal ownership that doesn’t come from the typical “bomb everyone and go home” approach that we had in Desert Storm. In hindsight, I think we would have been much better off bombing Saddam back into submission than letting his oil-rich, strategically-placed country fall into sectarian, Iran-dominated ruin.
But hindsight is a luxury we never have in the moment.
Speaking of hindsight, we now know the intel was super-sketch and circular, and that much of the intel community came to the answer that they knew the Bush Administration (and many others outside of it) wanted. So going into Iraq, especially when we were already fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, was a mistake. But we made things far, far worse, and perhaps ensured that we would never be able to win, by doing the following:
1) De-Baathification 2) Disbanding the Iraqi military 3) Not adequately securing the borders with Syria and Iran 4) Believing in the “Powell Doctrine” of “you break it, you bought it” 5) Trying to turn a Middle Eastern dictatorship into a Western-style democratic state overnight
In the interests of time, I’m only going to address the first point, De-Baathification, because it may have been the worst mistake we made in Iraq, aside from the decision to invade in the first place. For those unfamiliar with the situation, the Baath Party was the ruling political party in Iraq prior to the U.S.-led invasion and occupation in 2003. De-Baathification was a policy of bewildering stupidity that involved stripping all Baathist-affiliated public service of their power and responsibility—immediately and in perpetuity.
While we definitely needed to take steps to ensure that a Baathist shadow government did not undermine the democratic goals we had for Iraq, we could have used a more-reasonable “De-Saddamification” program that would have eliminated the worst offenders, but largely kept the organizational infrastructure in place to run the country. I’ll use an example:
To continue the deck of cards analogy, I’m going to use an example from the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), which is one of the ways my best friend from childhood, Mike Warnock, and I bonded when we were in high school. We recently got back into the game as grown men in our 50s. I asked Mike to co-author this article with me because, like me, he has some unique perspectives on the war in Iraq, and like me, he agrees with my likening my experience there to a certain D&D analogy.
In D&D, there is a magic item called the Deck of Many Things. It’s like a grab bag of everything good and bad that can happen to a character. For example, your character may draw a card that bestows powers, or fabulous magical items. Alternatively, you could summon a devil that wants to kill you or draw a card that conjures an avatar of death itself. You could achieve riches, or you could fall to Ruin, and be stripped of your worldly possessions. You could even lose your soul to The Void.
In the D&D campaign Mike and I participated in a few months back (which also included a third Iraq vet in the party and was presided over by a fourth), our party encountered a Deck of Many Things. We were all veteran gamers and knew the risks were great. But so were the potential rewards. The first couple of draws went well; I think my character drew the Throne card, entitling him to a small manor and some other useful things. Another character drew the Key card, or was it the Moon? I don’t know, it was something useful I don’t remember. But I do remember that one of the other players drew The Void, which meant his character’s soul was sucked from his body and imprisoned. We spent the rest of the campaign trying to get it back.
I think that’s a very useful analogy for our shared experience in Iraq: we hoped for the Throne, but as a nation, our collective soul got sucked into The Void.
One of the most interesting things about the Deck is that draws are voluntary. You can choose to partake, but you don’t get to choose the outcome. That’s kind of how it went down in Iraq; we didn’t have to take a bite of Iraq, especially when we hadn’t yet finished the serving of Afghanistan that was still on our plate. Like my character, a lot of people got rich off of the decision. But like what happened to a friend of mine, a lot of people lost their souls there as well.
And the worst part about it was, we didn’t have to do it in the first place.
So no, I don’t blame Colin Powell for Iraq. At least, not entirely. All of us share the blame. And as for my own thoughts about the war in Iraq, overall, at the end of the day, I’m more upset about how things ended, than about the way they began: just like my D&D party was with the Deck of Many Things.
Mike Warnock, U.S. Army (Retired), Iraq: 2004, 2009 407th Expeditionary Medical Group (USAF) 14th Combat Support Hospital (U.S. Army) Operating Room Nurse
I had two extremely different experiences in Iraq, both while serving as an Operating Room (OR) nurse. They’re not just different for the obvious reasons: Air Force vs. Army, deploying to Tallil vs. Baghdad, being a staff nurse vs. the OR Officer in Charge, or being five years apart. Each deployment has a tale that comes with it: the context of who I was and where I was in life when I went. Writing about either feels like pulling on a thread that threatens to release a tangled mess along with it.
When I think about the “Global War on Terror,” my first memory of it, of course, was the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. I was in the Air Force at the time. Our first surgical case was delayed, and when the second plane struck the south tower, surgery was canceled for the day. We all gathered around the TV in the waiting room. When the Pentagon was hit, it felt like we were at war. I called my wife who was home with our infant daughter. We were in the process of getting our cable fixed—she hadn’t seen the news yet. I told her to stay put and had no idea when I’d get home.
Our medical group commander (a colonel) came rushing into the waiting room. Someone called the room to attention. His hands clasped together, he ordered the door to the room closed and locked.
He looked around the room, clearly agitated: “First, does everyone here have at least a secret clearance?” The man was sweating profusely. There were enlisted airmen in the room who didn’t have a secret clearance.
Each of us nodded solemnly in the affirmative: “Yes, sir!”
“The President of the United States is due to land here in less than 30 minutes ...” Just then the volume seemed to shoot up on the TV: “Breaking news! President Bush is set to arrive at Barksdale Air Force base in Louisiana …”
On any other day, it would have been hilarious.
My first military duty assignment was at the 2nd Medical Group at Barksdale Air Force Base (AFB). When President Bush took off from Florida on the morning of 9/11, he landed at Barksdale AFB before eventually proceeding to Offutt AFB, Nebraska later that day.
A blanket of fear and anger lay over the country. I recall driving behind a pickup truck on which someone had written across the back windshield, “NUKE THE BASTARDS.” I thought to myself, “Who?” Who are we going to nuke? There isn’t anyone to nuke ... it’s terrorism.
I joined the Air Force (AF) in 1998 as a direct commission officer OR nurse. By that time, I’d already worked two years as an OR nurse at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, NC. It was a level I trauma center and my surgical specialty was neurosurgery. I had joined the AF because the Army was RIFing (Reduction in Force, i.e., kicking out) their nurses back then. Being in the AF instead of the Army was already a strike against me. Why? Because I desperately wanted to, in the only way I could, follow in my dad’s footsteps. He’d been a soldier, and part of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) since the early 1980s. But that’s all I knew.
When joining the military, you’re permitted to list three preferred duty locations on a “dream sheet.” I listed the largest ORs the AF had. As my dad had once told me, I wanted to be “where the action was” and in my world that was a high-speed trauma center like the OR I’d just left. These were perishable skills. But the AF saw it differently. They sent me to a small OR in Barksdale AFB, Louisiana. Why? Because the AF had only a few medical centers and wanted to put personnel there who needed that experience. They wanted more seasoned nurses at their smaller ORs that had less support.
My first unit reflected exactly what the Army recruiter had told me [no opportunities]. There were two OR nurses already there, both of whom had been recently RIF’d by the Army and cross-commissioned into the AF. One of them had been enlisted for 12 years then RIF’d after commissioning and serving as a nurse for 3 years—the Army had kicked her out with 15 years of service. Both the major who ran the OR, including his replacement, as well as the NCOIC (Non-commissioned officer in charge) had also started their military careers in the Army. I quickly learned that it was difficult to make rank in the AF. The ”up or out” mentality dominated the culture and if you couldn’t make the 20 years, they’d kick you out with nothing to show for it. The threat of not being able to make 20 years reigned supreme.
I wanted to see the world and wanted to go to a “real” unit. I had wanted to go to Europe or Japan, but my wife did not. It was a bridge too far for her. She was born and raised in North Carolina, so moving to Louisiana had been a big leap for her. When the opportunity to go to Alaska came, it was a compromise we could both agree on: an OCONUS (outside the contiguous United States) assignment that was still part of the U.S.
On Sept. 11, 2001, as I watched the buildings come down, I was angry, scared, and wanted to go to war. Finally, being in the military would have a purpose. We had to fight back. Mixed into it all, I also felt ashamed. I wasn’t a warfighter. I wasn’t even in the Army. And worst of all I was relieved that we were going to war because I’d probably be able to serve 20 years. The military would need people and that meant job security.
When I watched Colin Powell brief the U.N. about the threat of Iraq’s WMD program, he struck me as a man who wasn’t 100 percent confident in what he was saying. There was no conviction in his tone. His words were the polished, but nonetheless hollow, statements of a canned brief. It sounded to me like he was relaying information he didn’t necessarily trust. And when President Bush linked Al Qaeda with Iraq, I don’t know anybody who honestly believed it. But at the end of the day, I didn’t care. When I got to Alaska, I volunteered for everything and got exactly what I asked for. Yet I came away angrier at life than I’d ever been—and wouldn’t fully understand why until almost 20 years later (to be discussed in subsequent articles).
What people forget, and young people didn’t experience, is that we’d instituted a no-fly zone in Iraq and had been hunting for WMDs in Iraq for years before 9/11. Saddam had used chemical weapons on the Kurds and had previously attempted to build a nuclear reactor. Colin Powell, just like my commander on 9/11 briefing “secret” information about the POTUS arriving at Barksdale AFB, moved forward with the information he had on hand.
We invaded Iraq the same way. It’s also how we live our lives.