The Nature of Our War

CHAPTER IV

We have learned, to our regret, that while you are certainly better for preparing, the war you prepare for is rarely the war you get.

-General Victor Krulak, U.S.M.C.

I longed for the woods. Those silent trails where all you heard was the chirping of birds. There were few birds in Iraq, and I had not paused long enough to hear their song. Peace, precious peace. All I wanted was to return to the time I had peace. Before combat. Just to sit. Just to be alone. Everything had changed. Was the warfare that my superiors didn’t talk about? I think it was. All of our preparation could not have prepared me for this. I hated the Marines, I hated being around them. I hated myself. So for the next few days I excluded myself from everything I could. I did not play cards, I didn’t laugh, and I didn’t socialize. I began to write fervently; I was blessed and cursed with time.

It was then I began to think about the nature of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I sat there far north of the buildings we just wrecked; the lives we just wrecked, and ruminated about the purpose of this war. I should have the sense of mind to question it further than I did; giving myself up as someone else’s man, someone else’s pawn for the sake of patriotism. It wasn’t that simple though….I needed to understand the war. It was unfolding differently than I had been trained. Since landing in Kuwait, we had prepared for a conventional war to fight against conventional forces, but to my alarm we were fighting unconventional forces, fanatics both foreign and domestic hiding behind civilians bent on destroying as many Americans as possible. This war was not solitary in nature. It was deeper than simply invading Iraq, a deep-seated resentment for America and what she stood for was the motivator for the fighters. I had never heard of such a thing as fanatics fighting for a mass murderer; fighting and dying for Saddam and not for anything else. It was madness.

The truth about Operation Iraqi Freedom was that, for sporadic moments at least, we waged total war. It was opposite the doctrine of limited war that the United States was used to, to say the least. Digging deep the scathing truth remains clear. At least 124,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in the war and occupation by both sides. Some estimates give a figure of over a million. They were the afterbirth of an otherwise clean and efficient war that ate up the newspapers of home and fueled the anti-war protests around the globe. The simple fact was that sometimes, we cast away the morals and high ethical standards of the United States Armed Services to achieve our goal, and that was to submit Iraq, and kill Saddam Hussein. Anyone who got in the way was of secondary importance. The order “recon by fire” was the single order that sacked Iraq used on nearly all fronts in the theatre of operations. General Tommy Franks was quoted saying “we don’t do body counts” to the San Francisco Chronicle in May 2003, and at the time that was a correct appraisal of the situation. And, what did we get from all this? The most efficient invasion in history.

How many stories, I wondered after the war, can be told of how a soldier mistakenly killed a civilian as a result of combat action, or purposely killed one to accomplish the mission? Many. Countless, I told myself. Though I could never interview enough soldiers and Marines to establish the fact I knew it to be true by the numbers. It was total warfare I participated in, and I had to accept that the U.S. had participated in. It was total warfare that the guerilla wanted. They try to teach morals in the Marine Corps in the hope that some of it will stick when the time came, it did for me, and I struggle with it every day, and I know my comrades do as well, because they know what really happened on the ground in Iraq, and keep those truths locked up seldom revealed. It was the price of accomplishing the mission, and that was commonly to root out the combatants from the civilians at any given time. It was the Iraqi combatant who disguised himself in the civilian population that received the most contempt from U.S. forces. How dare he, the guerilla he was, attack us from within his loved one's reach. He pushed us to the extreme, he pushed us to kill, and doing so destroyed our sense of morality for life. Mission accomplished you bastards.

Total war. The best means to bring war to an end. The best means in which to incur moral injury in which soldiers regret things that they have done to bring war to a speedy end, is the most effective way to cause an enemy to submit to your will and end hostilities. Destroying homes, destroying the means in which to thrive bringing the war into the hearts of civilians is precisely what our enemy was doing. He was exposing a weakness, or so he thought, in the American military where he assumed that we would not act if civilians were mixed into the fray. In truth, it was his best chance of succeeding against the technologically and numerically superior force. Fear. He exposed fear because he knew we were trained to “do the right thing” in the face of adversity. He wanted war with America, not war for Saddam, and that made it an entirely different more personal matter. Our reaction to the guerilla reflected his success, as it did our seriousness. Total war does not sit well with good men. I had to go deeper.

We were fighting a war on the run. Sprinting to Baghdad was our priority, and not to entangle ourselves in firefights along the way. Speed and time had removed us from fighting a war of convention as much as our enemy utilized civilians to hide himself from fighting a war of convention. If we had stopped for every firefight along the way our enemy would regroup himself and become stronger. The result was two opposing forces slammed together with shock and awe neither one quite ready to do battle but forced into it. It was a highway war. The tempo of battle was just too fast to fight a conventional war, a limited war. Reconnaissance, foresight into enemy territory, was non-existent. We resorted to fire, and that in turn resulted in fire. The enemy was made more numerous when the civilian picked up his AK-47 to defend his home. We made the enemy more numerous using “recon by fire,” but at the same time that method so shocked the enemy that he hid himself however he could to keep fighting. There was little else he could do to be effective against the highway-bound force. Civilians were the true victims. This was total war.

The average soldier was in the dark. He was isolated with his unit in the back of an Amtrak, or a Bradley, or a 7-ton truck or a Humvee. They had little knowledge outside what they were doing at the moment. I felt for these men. They had radio to keep abreast of the movements of their units, but they seldom had knowledge of the grand movements of the army and what the objectives were outside their direct control. If they got wind of their coordinates, it was mot within hours as they were in a whole different place in time; moving so fast one could be in desert or a jungle at the drop of a dime. When the door of the AAV came crashing down the Marines had to think fast and gain a knowledge of the tactical situation within seconds. The best leader was one who could digest the situation as the door fell and direct his Marines appropriately for success. After combat action, that precious moment when the Marines could grasp their surroundings, they filed into the AAV’s once again on the road to another firefight. The walls of the inside of the Amtrak were suffocating, the Marines standing up on their seats just to see outside the top. Those who sat or dosed as the convoy pressed on were truly in the dark.

Our armies were beholden to their convoys. If we had a weakness, that was it. The Marines were bound to the highway, and therefore bound north. If the enemy had the good sense to resist us, then he should be constantly regrouping north staging the strongest fighters in the Karbala Gap where the U.S. forces must pass through to get to Baghdad. We moved slowly as a mechanized force due to the vast difference between the tanks in front to the rear-most guard; sometimes a convoy would span 100 kilometers from front to rear. It was the Marines who were primarily highway-bound, whereas the Army approaching from the desert to the left flank was more fluid, mobile separate from the highways. He had the luxury of attacking where he pleased and moving about as he pleased partially because Saddam had positioned a token force there. The U.S. airborne and special force troops landing north near Mosul and Kirkuk were a shock force meant to reinforce the 70,000 Kurdish Peshmerga fighting against Saddam and take out the heavier concentration of tanks and mechanized forces there. More paratroopers landed in the far west near Al-Rutbah, and they were the least mobile isolated in the desert. They, and the Army to the west however, had more tactical freedom than the Marines. The Marines were poised to take the brunt of the fighting. And they did; RCT-5 encountering more resistance and combat than any other combat team. The tanks proximity to their respective convoys limited their combat capability to within a dozen miles from support. The curse of heavy tanks was their reliance on fuel and supply. But this did not satisfy me….I had to question the war itself.

Was our war a just war? I had questioned it before combat, but after combat it changed me. It changed everything. I could now view the war with an unobstructed lens, from one who was there and fired the bullets and scattered the enemy. From one who was there when the civilians hid for their lives, and from one who sacked the oilfields and taken prisoners. A just war is what I needed to ease my soul; a war founded on rights worthy of sacrifice.

I had read Carl Von Clausewitz and Baron Antoine de Jomini, great philosophers of war, and concluded they were the compass through which I needed to examine this struggle. Jomini, the best lens in which to examine mechanized warfare states:

The most just war is one in which was founded upon undoubted rights, and which, in addition, promises to the state advantages commensurate with the sacrifices required and the hazards incurred. Unfortunately, in our times there are so many doubtful and contested rights that most wars, though apparently based upon bequests, or wills, or marriages, are in reality but wars of expediency.

Was it a just war? Undoubted rights of humanity are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. From the humble lens of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, and John Locke before him were correct. The Iraqi’s deserved the same human rights, and that was just. The Constitution was worth fighting for, and it was an attack on the Constitution on September 11th that I was in the desert fighting. The attack was a threat against my way of life, and that was worth fighting for. But there was something else. We sought the Al-Qaeda and claimed that Saddam had been providing them nourishment. We sought to avenge ourselves for 3,000 lives lost on our soil against a predator whose allegiance knew no bounds but contempt for the United States. We were attacking Iraq, a nation that had no direct role in September 11th. Our justification in going to war was humane, but not constitutionally binding. So, that was it. I was making war for not for the Constitution, but for human rights. Freedom from tyranny. That which the United States so championed against Britain. I could understand it, but nowhere in our Constitution does it obligate us to overthrow regimes for the sake of humanity, and since I fought for the Constitution, I felt misplaced. Inappropriate. Un-just. It felt like vanity where we were forcing freedom on a people that had not yet risen up to claim it themselves. Claiming ones freedom from tyranny is necessary for democratic development, and the people were not ready. It was not our business to dictate the next course of development for an entire nation, and in that we were un-just.

Would this war provide the United States “advantages commensurate with the sacrifices required?” The United States could only afford so much casualties as its citizens would permit. The Vietnam War is proof of this logic. So, it was to be a quick war, or a failure. Many view Operation Enduring Freedom as a failure in proportion with the lives lost. The advantages of this war according to the Bush Administration is one less nation that harbored terrorists, but in truth any nation can harbor a terrorist as long as that terrorist is acting in the interest of the state. It is not reasonable to make war on all nations that can harbor your enemy, and according to the Bush Doctrine that is what must be done. The doctrine is impossible. There was nothing but rhetoric from the Bush Administration explaining that Saddam had terrorists that were acting against the United States; there was no proof. The Al Qaeda were everywhere indeed, it is possible they were in Iraq, but they were mostly concentrated in Afghanistan, Syria, and Somalia among others. If we were interested in wiping out the Al Qaeda who attacked the U.S. in the first place, there were more nations worthy of our action than Iraq, such as Afghanistan where we were fighting the Al-Qaeda daily in pursuance of doctrine. According to the doctrine though, Iraq should have been least concerned where it concerned our true enemies. The oil would not be ours, it belonged to Iraq, and Iraq later cost the U.S. taxpayer billions in reconstruction and aid just to keep it afloat. The United States would sacrifice much in war. 4,491 U.S. soldiers dead and many more casualties all for a small gain: to have another friendly government in the Middle East. The advantages were not commensurate with the sacrifices required, and that was un-just.

What about Weapons of Mass Destruction? Is it a right of the state to have WMD? If it is a right of the state regardless of who or what controls the state, then the reason to go to war to take away WMD from Saddam is unjust. Here are some universal truths:

1.) It is the right of every nation to have weapons to defend themselves. That is without question.

2.) It is the right of every nation to go to war if it so chooses. That is without question. “War is merely a continuation of policy by other means,” according to Clausewitz, and since every nation may make policy, they may go to war.

3.) It is therefore the right of every nation to have weapons capable of destroying an enemy.

4.) Saddam used WMD against his own people and on Iran: that is without question.

He used weapons that caused death as much as a conventional bullet would. The difference is in the interest of humanity, and not nations. A nation does not have the right to possess WMD if it has been proven that it had been used on non-combatants within or without that country according to international law, and if it was the policy of that nation to regularly use them without restraint. It is a twisted manner of warfare that the people of the world find unacceptable especially in the wrong hands. Saddam did not have the right to have WMD according to the United Nations. So, it is not an intrinsic right for a nation to have WMD because it is the higher interest of peaceable nations to live without the threat of WMD. Going to war to relieve Saddam of WMD was justified, only if he still had them and hid them from U.N. inspectors. A high-ranking defector of the regime, Hussein Kamel al-Majid had stated years before OIF that all WMD material was destroyed. If he was compliant with the U.N. and he had no WMD left, then going to war with Saddam because of WMD was un-justified. No WMD was ever found in Iraq after 2003, therefore, unless it happens to be found hidden away in the future, the United States was unjustified in invading Iraq on that premise.

It was a war of expediency then. A matter of policy. In 1998, President Bill Clinton was approached by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz about invading Iraq. It was unfinished business since the Gulf War where these policymakers believed that Iraq had to go, and a pro-western government installed in its place. War was something that the American people would not have stood for at the time, but bombing was almost always acceptable, and that’s exactly what President Clinton did initiating Operation Desert Fox where the U.S. and British bombed Iraqi chemical weapons facilities because they had not been complying with U.N. inspectors. Clinton also signed into law H.R. 4655, the Iraqi Liberation Act, funding opposition groups to oust the regime and replace it with a democracy. Taking out Saddam was not a new idea. Saddam was an upstart firing scuds at his neighbors including Israel on many occasions. Arguably it can be said that there had been whisperings in the United States government about taking Iraq all along. The United States could use another ally in the Middle East like Israel, but unlike Israel, Iraq has oil and is centrally located giving the U.S. more power over middle eastern states. It was expedient then, useful, and convenient to establish a pro-U.S. government in Iraq.

We were justified invading Iraq only because of humanity. It was the humane thing to do. Jomini states:

A war of invasion without good reason - like that of Genghis Khan - is a crime against humanity; but it may be excused, if not approved, when induced by great interests or when conducted with good motives.

Saddam had murdered about a million people during his reign. Saddam had proven himself a ruthless killer. That was without question. His crimes against humanity were without question. So, why would people fight for him? I certainly know why I fought, I fought to defend the Constitution of the United States from enemies foreign and domestic. It was from that oath and humanity that I justified going to war. The attack on our soil September 11th 2001 was enough reason to go to war. But what justified my enemy? Did he honestly believe that life under a tyrant was worth fighting for? The bullets that whizzed by my head were proof something was worth fighting for. So, there was some principle that lay just under the surface. Most were afraid. They were scared to death of Saddam and his henchmen. It is well known that the Ba’ath militia and Fedayeen Saddam threatened to death civilians who did not fight, or killed those who resisted the regime. That was only half the reason. The other half was simple. Fanatics who entered Iraq to fight from all corners of the world did so to because they hated the United States, hated the West, what it stood for, and its interference in middle-eastern affairs. That was the principle. That was worth dying for. Not Saddam.

Outside the benefit to humanity then, our war was un-just. That did not sit well with me. I focused on the benefit of the Iraqi’s. They were the prize, and not the killing of a few Fedayeen. Killing was a pure luxury on the road to Baghdad. Yes, it was a jewel on one's crown to know that evil men were destroyed, but at the same time it was an unwelcome one. It changed me, and I hated how the nature of the killing caused me moral injury because civilians were mixed in the fray. The only thing that truly ails a soldier is the regret for things he has done. I had that regret, and it would shape how I interacted with the world, with every soul, for the rest of my life.