We have finally come to a part in our deployment where we are able to go and do "Army" stuff: drive huge vehicles, load live ammunition into our magazines, and put on 65 pounds of gear only to sit in a heavily up-armored Hum-Vee (HMMWV, for High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle, in military parlance) and drive at the breakneck speed of 15 mph down a crowded city street. All the while, to use Aaron's newly coined euphemism, we "give the enemy a chance to kill us" and do so in as menacing a manner as possible. Let me be quick to point out, though, that none of this is new. Americans have been running patrols in the streets of Mosul, Basra, Baghdad, Tikrit, Tal Afar and a host of smaller suburbs, towns and neighborhoods for nearly 8 years now. But as of 31 August 2011, we are in Operation: New Dawn. We have to abide by a good number of rules that severely restrict pretty much every one of our freedoms - save our right to defend ourselves with deadly force if needed (of course, when you have people in my platoon who grew up in the Iraq of 2004 or the Surge of 2007, there are going to be some growing pains. But I digress).
[More digression: know the only thing we can still do without asking anyone? Give free candy to kids. So we do. In spades. And when we chuck that stuff from the tops of our moving vehicles, small mobs form and kids literally being fighting over who gets the red tootsie roll pop because it has the Indian pointing to the star in the corner, which we tell them means they get a free one. Never mind that (1) they don't sell them here so you can't exactly get "free" ones (2) no store in America has ever, ever given even one free tootsie roll pop because some future diabetic kid handed them seventy wrappers with stars, and (3) we are literally giving it away, so every tootsie roll pop is free. We have succeeded in propagating that myth in Iraq. You're welcome.]
Iraq, and the American role in Iraq in general, has definitely come full circle. Most glaring is that when we meet with Iraqis or run joint patrols, it is on their schedule, not ours. When we go somewhere we usually are required to call them ahead of time, check in at all checkpoints along the road -- and, might I add, there appears to be a cottage industry here making checkpoints because there are like fifteen within a few miles of my unit's area -- and request permission, always request permission, either in person or through e-mail, to conduct any sort of dismounted operation. This is an interesting - and sometimes scarily difficult for senior officers and non-commissioned officers to grasp - concept for some people. Not without reason: we have spent 8 years more or less dictating to the Iraqis what they would do, how they would dress, how they would organize their Armies... essentially assuming their Ba'ath party connections made them somehow stupider or less efficient. What they have now - mind you, no small feat, considering the timeline they made for themselves and also that they did this while fighting a freaking war - is a professional Army in most every sense. The funny thing is, when we as American Soldiers see them doing the job we have taught them to do -- but a job which we have been used to doing ourselves -- it scares us. It bothers us. All of a sudden, they don't need us... we have become - gasp - redundant. How do we respond?
I bring this up because today was the perfect example of this paradigm shift. We met with a local Federal Police leader whose policemen operate in our sector and, therefore, is one of our points of contact for anything which happens in those. He was an incredibly interesting man: graduated in 1989 from the same military academy as Muammar Gadaffi, fought against the Americans in the first Gulf War, survived and, in fact, prospered in the ten years between the wars, changed sides in 2003, stayed in the Iraqi Army until 2008 and accepted his current post in 2008. He is incredibly competent, chain smokes cheap cigarettes and even drinks Monsters... in fact, we brought him a few today because he was running low. So, more or less, he has been American-ized. Or at least Army-ized. While we were talking to him, his Soldiers ran in, proudly announcing that they found a few items which were probably intended to be used against us. Before we could gather our American "dream team" of site exploiters and intelligence gatherers, he had dispatched his own, dictated a memo to the next person above him in his chain of command outlining the details of the discovery, and debriefed us on what had happened in such a manner that would make any West Pointer or OCS grad jealous in its efficiency. Funny thing is, telling us was little more than formality; he had taken care of everything and was really just being nice. We sat dumbfounded while all this happened: yes, they could do it on their own. And no, thank you, they did not need our help.
In fifty years, when I am on my fifth bourbon of the afternoon and my punk teenage grandkids with their dyed hair, piercings and general angst ask me about what Iraq was like, I hope I am coherent enough to tell them stories like what happened today. We might not have "won" Iraq, and we might never "win" a war against an idea, like terrorism... but days like today help me realize that we have done a whole lot toward making this country stable. Has it been worth the thousands of American dead? Probably not. But then again, I hold strong to the fact that nothing is worth even one dead person. But we came into Iraq with a mission - overt or unstated, depending on your political leanings I suppose - to set up a stable country in the Middle East. And taking today as a microcosm, we have. And, based on what we originally had to work with, we have been wildly successful. We have former Saddam loyalists, who fought against us 20 years ago, actively trying to protect us from insurgents. We have Soldiers who barter with us for cigarettes, coffee and candy. We have set up a working system. Sure it scares some of us -- not me, because it means less work for me, but some people are definitely scared -- but it shouldn't. We have given them all the answers. We are like the bad guy at the end of the game: we spent months plotting for the superhero to come to our lair knowing full well he might beat us, but also spent months strewing his path with extra lives, more ammo, and whole turkey legs to give him the advantage. So when he defeats us, or to carry the simile even farther, when the Iraqis actually replace us... why are we so surprised?
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