Veterans’ Views: Was Iraq worth the fight? By Jed Babbin
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/veterans-views-was-iraq-worth-the-fight/article/2565105#
When America invaded Iraq in 2003, then-President George W. Bush said our goals were to create an Iraq that had never existed before — a democratic Iraq that would be capable of defending and sustaining itself and would be an ally in our long war against terrorism.
None of those goals was achieved. But Bush remained convinced our pledge to nation building shouldn’t end and that we had to commit American troops to combat — and continue to sacrifice lives — indefinitely.
In July 2007, Bush warned against premature withdrawal from Iraq. He said that to leave before our military leaders confirmed that we were ready would be dangerous for Iraq, for the region and for the United States, and could mean that American troops would have to return to Iraq to fight again.
After eight years of war and against the advice of our military leaders, President Obama pulled all U.S. troops out of Iraq in 2011. As some of us predicted, Iraq quickly devolved into sectarian and tribal wars largely controlled by Iran.
Three years later, the rise of ISIS — and its shocking brutality in conquering parts of Iraq and Syria — caused President Obama to launch a stop-and-start air campaign against ISIS that has had little effect. In recent days, ISIS has taken Ramadi, Iraq — where the Anbar Awakening against al-Qaida took place — as well as the ancient city of Palmyra, Syria, site of historic Roman ruins.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Shiite militias are the only effective forces protecting Baghdad. When ISIS seized Ramadi, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said, “What apparently happened was that the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight. They were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force, and yet they failed to fight, they withdrew from the site, and that says to me, and I think to most of us, that we have an issue with the will of the Iraqis to fight ISIL and defend themselves.”
Politicians are still struggling to deal with the questions of whether we should have invaded Iraq in 2003 and what to do now. Even President Bush’s brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, was flummoxed when asked: Given what we know now, should we have invaded Iraq?
As politicians still struggle with these questions — and what to do now — the recent Memorial Day turns our thought to the American veterans who fought so hard to secure Iraq, the ones who gave their lives or watched their brothers and sisters-in-arms give theirs.
What do these veterans think? Should we have invaded Iraq? And what’s their view on our nation’s foreign policy now?
Of course we should ask the veterans. After all, the butcher’s bill — 4,425 American troops and civilians killed in the Iraq War — wasn’t paid by politicians or Americans who went about their business every day as if we weren’t at war. It was paid by the soldiers, Marines, sailors, pilot, and special operators, as their families can attest.
And that bill is still being paid by the military and military families. The Pentagon confirms that Operation Inherent Resolve — the name of the intervention against ISIS in Iraq and Syria — has already cost one man killed in action and four in non-combat deaths.
The dead cannot speak, and those troops who survived the battles don’t pretend to speak for them. But these veterans can speak for themselves.
Here’s what several combat veterans had to say when asked about current foreign policy and whether they believe the sacrifices they and their fallen comrades made were worth it.
‘They just weren’t ready’
Retired Navy SEAL Lt. Jay Redman suffered many wounds —including being shot twice in the face — in an intense firefight near Fallujah, Iraq, in 2007. He has undergone 37 surgeries since then and overcome more challenges than most people can imagine.
“It’s disappointing to see where Iraq is now,” Redman says. “There was a lot of blood, sweat and tears that went into fighting for that ground. It was a slugfest all across that country, no more so than in al-Anbar — and now, al-Anbar has become the ISIS stronghold. With the fall of Ramadi, that city is also an example of failed policies and poor decisions.”
Back in 2007, Redman saw what some in the current administration are just understanding now. “We’ve been training and arming Iraqi security forces for about 11 years, but they still aren’t willing to fight for their country,” he says. When ordered to withdraw and cease training the Iraqi special forces and Iraqi national police to control the insurgents and al-Qaida, Redman says, “We knew those guys just weren’t ready.”
Redman says perhaps the biggest problem was the Iraqi military leadership. Their troops could be trained in mission mechanics, but they were highly deficient in leading themselves on real missions.
“And that continued over those next couple of years as the administration changed and this current administration started saying, ‘Hey, here’s this hard timeline that we’re pulling out of Iraq,’ despite the fact that the troops on the ground were saying that they’re not ready,” Redman says. “We thought then that we were setting the insurgents up for success and ourselves to have to go back into Iraq…I guarantee a lot of the fighters with ISIS are the same guys we were fighting while we were there.”
Redman sums up, saying, “I think it’s sad. You have a lot of dead Americans and severely wounded warriors out there and a lot of guys who are fighting from the invisible wounds of war. And now they’re at home watching all this — places where their brothers were lost are now back in the hands of the enemy. We practically gave it to them.”
At greater risk today
Retired Army Special Forces Lt. Col. Scott Mann was a Green Beret for more than 23 years. He served three long tours in Afghanistan as well as many short tours in Iraq from 2004-11. He believes our nation is at greater risk today because of the policies we’ve followed and the way we’ve hastily withdrawn from both wars.
Speaking of the counterinsurgency strategy developed by Gen. David Petraeus and endorsed by Bush and Obama, Mann says, “COIN is a failed concept.” He asks, “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” and “Will it ever work to project Jeffersonian democracy on tribal societies?”
Mann believes that to actually create a secure Afghanistan, it would take 50-100 years of continuous commitment of special forces to provide security in villages and towns.
Sean Parnell — a former Ranger Captain with the Army’s elite 10th Mountain Division who led the infamous Outlaw Platoon through 485 continuous days of combat on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan — sees what is going on in Iraq as “the writing on the wall” for the future of Afghanistan. “We’ll see the exact same thing in Afghanistan because of our feckless foreign policy,” he says.
Parnell, like most warriors, sees Iraq and Afghanistan in stark terms. “If the U.S. goes to war, we have an obligation to win,” he says. “If we don’t, we have an entire generation of veterans and families wondering if it was worth it.” He believes Obama ended the Iraq War for political reasons, just to “fulfill a campaign promise.”
Nevertheless, Parnell believes we can still win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but — like Scott Mann — only with a long-term, massive shift in policy. He doesn’t believe we need a lot of troops or a lot of money, but we have to abandon COIN in favor of a counter-terrorism strategy that works locally with tribes and villages to provide security and hunts down the worst of the terrorists.
Recent events in Iraq: ‘Extremely frustrating’
Serving in the 101st Airborne Division, then-Chief Warrant Officer(2) Amber Smith was a command pilot flying the Kiowa Warrior armed reconnaissance helicopter over Iraq and Afghanistan. “Our troops are the ones who have to pay the consequences for the political decision President Obama made when he decided to pull all troops out of Iraq in 2011,” she says. “That decision wasn’t made in the best interest of our national security, or what was best for Iraq or stability in the Middle East. It was a political decision, one that had dire consequences and has resulted in the mess we see in Iraq today.
“As a veteran of the Iraq War, it is extremely frustrating to see what has happened in Iraq,” she continues. “ISIS takes city after city, and this administration merely calls it a ‘setback.’ It’s not a setback when an enemy takes control of a city of over 500,000 people like Ramadi.”
Former Army Capt. Matt Zeller served in Afghanistan from 2008-09. He shares a recent call from a Marine buddy who saw several pals die in a flaming vehicle destroyed by an IED. The Marine wonders if they died in vain. Zeller wonders the same thing.
Half-seriously, he says, “If I were president, I’d call Gen. [James] Mattis and tell him to clear everything from Baghdad to the sea and wave to the Israelis on his way by.”
Our dead warriors didn’t die in vain — they rode a wave of history that our politicians still can’t understand.
Jed Babbin, former U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush administration, is a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research and the author of several books, including “In the Words of Our Enemies.”
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