Deployment Roundup, Part II

8/14/2007 11:26:00 PM UTC +0300

In addition to the personal experiences in the previous post, I've also developed some general conclusions regarding the occupation of Iraq. Please note that these thoughts do not constitute official perspectives of the Dept of Defense, US Air Force, etc., plus these thoughts are inherently limited by the scope of the work I was doing, which leaves out a good portion of the actual happenings in Iraq. I will also attempt to leave my personal opinions on the occupation out of this post, however I'd be happy to discuss these opinions in private.

1. Morale is likely to be a serious problem if the United States does not reduce it's deployed troop strength in the near term. Military personnel tend to believe in what they are doing, and are accepting of deployments. However, we now have significant numbers of troops--particularly in the Army--who are doing third and even fourth tours in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Furthermore, the Army has been forced to dig as deep as the inactive reserves, which is a group of people who, across the board, are not interested in being in the military any longer. You can't take someone who has resigned from the Army away from their civilian life for 12-15 months and expect them to be happy about it. If current manning levels are to continue, the other services will need to dig deeper to make up for the Army's current over-manning. I can say from my own experience that there are resources within the Air Force that remain largely untapped. The Air Force is picking up some slack by producing more one-year deployments, however the United States occupation of Iraq is reaching the end of what is reasonably manageable in terms of longevity.


2. Previous failures in raising the Iraqi Army and Police are not accurate predictors for the success of future similar efforts. For example, attrition has been a consistent problem in the Iraqi Army, however the enactment of new measures to resolve this problem will yield different results from those previously achieved. Every effort to secure Iraq, whether it be unique or similar to efforts attempted in the past, will be somehow different, as a result of developments as broad as political climate to availability of equipment. One cannot simply say that because we have failed in the past, we will continue to fail.


3. Building a nation like Iraq takes a much longer time than most Americans are willing to tolerate. Perhaps the Bush administration is to blame for the generally unrealistic notions people have about how long the occupation of Iraq will need to last, but nonetheless, the American people should be prepared to take a decade to see any tangible return on our efforts. Just installing in all the necessary infrastructure will take several years. One also cannot assume that because Iraq is still regularly subject to terrorist attacks, that the building of infrastructure is significantly hindered. Establishing a functioning government and shutting down terrorist organizations in Iraq are, generally speaking, independent tasks. It would be incorrect to assume that because one of these tasks may meet with limited success, that the other is not perfectly on track.


4. The end of our involvement in Iraq is not simply a success/failure paradigm. People talk about how Iraq has been a failure, but it's not so black and white. If the United States were to pull out of Iraq immediately, there are some places that would have a good chance of remaining secure. In particular, the Kurdish region to the North is generally well-defended, and has been standing for some time now with relatively little US assistance. As such, the question we need to consider is what level of assistance will provide a reasonable amount of security in Iraq, while not over-burdening the American taxpayer. This is not an easy question to answer, which is probably why so many people avoid it altogether.


5. The United States is ultimately attempting to impose radical change on the Iraqi culture. Saddam Hussein was (arguably) successful at establishing a functioning government, but that society was based on ultimate authority rather than personal incentives. We've completely pulled the rug out from under the entire Iraqi people. The Iraq Army historically operated by intimidating troops and their families with death, prison, and torture, yet now we expect Iraqis to accept that they must form a military and be internally driven to do whatever is necessary to support their nation. There are similar changes taking place in commerce, utilities, resource management, etc. Such a transition will ultimately take generations, because there are thirty-year-old Iraqi citizens who have never experienced any other way of life. Perhaps a more accurate way of looking at the occupation of Iraq is as the United States providing Iraq an opportunity to build the sort of country that it wants to have. Our aim is to simply prevent external forces from having an undue influence on this process, not telling Iraq how to run their country.

This post concludes my blog. I hope you've enjoyed reading, and please do keep in touch!

Best,
-- 1Lt Daniel Todd Currie

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Deployment Roundup, Part I

8/13/2007 01:06:00 PM UTC +0300

I'm back at Camp Sather, and what do you know, they lost my flight reservation out of BIAP. At the very least, I'm booked for the 16th, which will still get me out of Al Udeid by the 18th. Plus I have a good spot on the "space available" list, which will probably get me out according to my original plan. Nonetheless, I'm back to the musty bunk beds for at least 12 hours or so. 'Marginal internet service, and not a lot of places to hang out, but at least they have air conditioning and electrical outlets in the tent. Though the unease of living in a war zone still persists, I couldn't be happier to have left the International Zone behind.

What's really most amazing to me is that all of this knowledge that I slaved over the last six months is now valuable for nostalgic purposes only. I no longer need to know where all the Iraqi Heavy Equipment Transporters are, or how many ILAV's are remaining to be delivered, or what kind of equipment is necessary in a Mobile Field Kitchen. This sort of information was really the only thing for which I've been accountable for the last six months. All the sudden my life feels empty, but it's also incredibly liberating.

I was surprised by how attached I felt upon departure. Just prior to leaving my office for the last time, I made the rounds, shook everyone's hand, and let them all know how good it was to work with them... Most of the time I really meant it, and by the time I got to my bosses (I had three), I was a bit of a wreck. I shed a few tears and eventually just had to sit down and regain my composure. We all smiled and laughed at each other, because we all felt similarly. It was a touching moment--despite all our differences and disagreements, we were able to just sit for a minute and acknowledge that we would miss each other.

I had a couple of goals for this deployment. One was purely a physical one--I planned to get myself in the kind of shape necessary to get a 100% score on the Air Force Physical Fitness Test. I'm still not quite there on pushups (I'll never be good at them, given the way my body is put together), but I managed to reduce my three-mile run time from about 23 minutes, down to my personal best of 19:29, all while putting on about 5 kg of muscle. I'm in the best shape of my life.

I'll be honest, part of the reason to come here was also to save a bunch of money. I managed to pay off my car and academic loans (roughly $20k total), and save up an additional $10k or so, which feels great. The pay here is nothing extraordinary, but having essentially zero living expenses makes essentially every dollar earned go straight to the bank. I'm excited to be able to start investing and looking into perhaps owning some property in the next year or so.

Another goal of mine was to gain a better understanding of what the military really does. It's fine to sit in an office all day and work on procurement for the military, but you just can't have a great understanding of what military ideology is all about until you've really lived it.

A fourth goal was to better comprehend what's happening in Iraq. We hear all kinds of things on the news, and it was always interesting to read the volumes of reports about what is going on right in front of your nose, and be able to confidently say that only a minority of it is both accurate and balanced.

I'll elaborate on the fulfillment of the two prior goals in my next post, which I realize is what a lot of people will be most interested to read about, and is deserving of a post of its own.

Lastly, I simply wanted to better understand people. It's very easy to become sheltered in our private lives, since we tend only to engage people and activities with which we feel we have some sort of commonality. I've grown tired, over the recent few years, of all the politically-charged conflict that seems to exist within the American people. Everyone is convinced that they know what is best for the world. Yet without a broader perspective, it became clear to me that I could never appreciate the variety of good intentions people have in communities outside my own. This deployment gave me an eye-opening glimpse of just how broad political and social discourse can be. On a similar note, I'll leave you with the brief address I gave to my peers at my farewell reception (edited for readability, and because I don't have a clue what actually came out of my mouth):

"Today is a bittersweet day for me. It's a sweet day because I'm finally going home after six months away from my friends and family. But it's also a bitter day (short pause, allowing the audience to prepare for me to say that it's bitter because I'm leaving all these great people) because I cut myself shaving this morning.

"I hope that all of you truly appreciate what a tremendous opportunity it is to serve here. We will all go home to our other military assignments or to the civilian life, and will be among peers who will either not understand what it's like to deploy, or will have had vastly different deployment experiences. Most of us will never do anything of this magnitude the rest of our lives.

"After such an experience, it's important to ask yourself, "What have I learned? How have I grown?" I could list a couple dozen things, but I'd rather just describe one important thing, something that perhaps you'll actually remember about me.

"Over the past few months, you've gotten to know Lieutenant Currie, United States Air Force, but few of you know anything about Daniel Currie, United States Citizen. I grew up in a middle class family in Portland, Oregon. I busted my ass in school and managed to graduate salutatorian of my class. From there, I went off to an Ivy League university, one of the more liberal schools in the country, where I studied mechanical engineering and music composition. And just four years ago, I joined 300,000 New Yorkers on the streets, protesting military involvement in Iraq. How did I end up here?

"My rather unique background has given me an interesting perspective. For many political and social issues, I've spent time on both sides of the wire. I've experienced different environments and lifestyles, and have known people of many different ideals and beliefs.

"Shortly after my arrival, [our unit commander] said in one of his allocutions of few words (this is a joke--he is a bit long-winded, and yet begins most of his addresses by saying, "I'm a man of few words..."), "Nobody wakes up, looks in the mirror, and says to themselves, I want to do a bad job today." I think he was referring to the J4 (our organization's name), regarding the level of professionalism and dedication exhibited by all of us. But if you believe this to be true, you have to expand this idea beyond J4, MNSTC-I, the Department of Defense, or even the United States. This is true of every man and woman on Earth.

"What have I learned? How have I grown? I've learned that we are truly a product of our environment, that we are all genuinely dedicated to making the world a better place. I've grown in that I am less apt to see people as right or wrong, but rather as having different solutions to similar problems. And I've learned that if you really step back and carefully consider how greatly another persons background, upbringing, and current circumstances differ from yours, you can rarely find fault in their actions.

"Those of you staying behind, I wish you the best of luck and that you safely find your way home. Thank you making this deployment such a positive experience."

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My Little Friend

7/29/2007 08:05:00 AM UTC +0300

For those of you not in the loop, I'm getting close to the end of my tour. I have a little over two weeks left, and I'm beginning to think about how I'm going to transfer my job to the next poor sap, as well as how I'm going to get all my stuff out of here, make all the necessary travel arrangements, etc. The combination of anticipation and uneasiness makes for a huge weight on my shoulders.

A little gecko has taken up residence among the sand bags outside my trailer. He is just waking up when I come home, and he greets me before skittering off to eat some tasty bugs.

I'd like to take him home with me. This place is not safe, and he doesn't even have a helmet or any body armor. What will happen if he gets hit with a rocket? He doesn't stand a chance.

Time really does fly here. I'm afraid I'll blink and I'll be on my flight home. This may not be the most pleasant place in the world, but I still need to take it all in before I leave. I don't want to forget what has happened here.

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Things To Do In Baghdad When You're Bored

7/06/2007 09:53:00 PM UTC +0300

Mostly, I pass my free time at home on my computer, just keeping in touch with family, friends, and a few random strangers. You can't sit on your duff all the time, but you also don't always care to wander around in the heat and gear and where would you go, anyway?

I started shaving my head recently. Don't worry, ladies, it will grow back! This is not a permanent look, but it's actually very nice for this sort of environment--much cleaner and cooler than the greasy mop I wore around the first four months.



Phantom hair:



Another fun thing to do in Baghdad is prowl around in damaged buildings. Yes mother, this is perfectly safe. Maybe not safe by OSHA standards, but it's no more dangerous than being in Baghdad in the first place.

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Doha

6/19/2007 08:27:00 PM UTC +0300

Most of my time on R&R was spent at the recreation facilities on Camp As Sayliyah. However, we did get an opportunity to leave the installation on an organized tour of Doha. I'm sure that to some extent, this trip was a canned look at the sites most appealing to Westerners, and avoided other parts of the city that the Qatari people might prefer we stay away from. This is probably for the best, since there are, without doubt, mixed feelings about Americans among the local populace, and there was no concealing the military background of this generally uncouth group of young American tourists.

We started in the outskirts of the city, with some camel stables and a few food markets. The food markets, despite being somewhat less sanitary than what we're accustomed to in the US, were very well supplied with a variety of foods that rivals any grocery I've seen. The seafood market was a sure source for incontinence as far as I was concerned, but seemed to be working for the hundreds of bustling patrons. We were discouraged from photographing the locals, but I did get a photo of this rather indignant camel. (Indignant camels are not hard to find.)



From what little I saw this day, I'd say that Qatar is facing a difficult cultural transition. The history of the Middle East dwells on continual struggle for resources (fertile land and water, to name two huge ones), and the mentality behind this struggle has bled over to private lives, where this influx of money and Western culture has created a huge interest in vanity. Qatar deals in lots of gold and pearls, and most of the jewelry exchanges are also outside of the urban downtown area. The gold "souqs" (Arabic for "shops", I presume) deal in some of the most elaborate jewelry I've ever seen. It's not necessarily valuable, just big.



The downtown area is architecturally quite progressive. The buildings are all very modern, and the infrastructure is pretty much ready for the sort of traffic that a large city generates. There are perhaps more buildings over 40 stories tall in Doha than in all of Boston, yet the population of the whole country of Qatar is only 841,000 (estimated). Furthermore, at least half of these buildings are under construction. It's hard for me to imagine these buildings being leased any time soon. See Google Maps satellite imagery.

It is apparent that Qatar is posturing itself to be a resort and international business hub for the world. This is the only reason I can find for the enormous effort being put into this kind of development. They know that oil money will run out some day and for Qatar to remain economically viable, they'll need a new industry to expand. It's good to see that they are planning ahead, but I wonder if a culture can survive on its investments alone.



If you clicked on the google map link above, you can see just how much development they have planned. There's also a large flat rectangular building in the center of the downtown area. This is the City Center Mall--perhaps the largest mall I've ever been in, though once again, lots of vacancy here for planned expansion. If it were empty, this mall would feel very much like an American mall. There are many of the same retailers, and just a similar feel. However when you load it up with people, it takes on a very different atmosphere.

Before this trip, I'd never seen Muslims in traditional dress (men and women). I had expected that this division in cultural standards between genders would noticeably manifest itself in the way men and women act in public. Women would only be seen shopping for household necessities and taking care of the children. Men would be off doing whatever it is men do. I'm sure this is true in some places in the Middle East, but it's less true in Qatar, and not at all true in this mall.

Young men stand around and joke and try to look tough. Young women scamper about in gaggles, giggling and gossiping. Couples walk around hand in hand, with children in tow behind them. Were it not for their dress, their behavior would be basically indistinguishable from what I'm used to back home. It was frankly a bit eerie to see so many men and women dressed in basically identical clothing, living out their normal lives. (Sorry, no photos here either.) Though, to be fair, it was equally eerie the first time I walked into a Base Exchange back home and saw everyone shopping for clothes and buying groceries in military uniform. I guess I simply expect people with such different appearances to behave differently as well.

Our last stop on the tour was at the old souqs. This is the primary area in Doha where craftsmen and artisans can sell their goods. These little shops go on and on and on, there are probably several kilometers of little alleys with shops on all sides. Much of the area has been roofed between the buildings, so you feel like you're wandering around in catacombs. I could have spent hours looking at all the shops, but we had limited time as it was growing late in the day. There were lots of really great photo opportunities here, though without a tripod, nothing turned out well in the waning light. Use your imagination.



That's all I have for my trip. The return travel was relatively uneventful, except for the gut-tumbling landing in Kuwait (which cannot be adequately described in this forum). My next post will take us back to Baghdad.

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