Reflections on a Recent Trip to the Middle East - Part 1:Iraq
By Congressman Adam Schiff
Last month, I visited our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a six-member Congressional delegation. It was my second trip to Iraq since the war began, and my seventh visit to our troops stationed overseas. Although our itinerary on some of these fact-finding efforts is heavily circumscribed by the difficulty of moving about in an environment where our planes, helicopters and armored vehicles are attractive targets, I have always found these trips well worth the effort: There is no better way to get a glimpse of the facts on the ground unfiltered by the Pentagon, to get a sense of the morale of the troops, or to be able to say thank you to the many brave men and women who wear the uniform of our armed forces.
We flew C-130 troop transport planes into Baghdad from a neighboring country. I am told that anyone who served in Vietnam would be familiar with these aircraft – they were the workhorse, multipurpose aircraft thirty years ago and still are today. “Be prepared for a rapid vertical descent,” we were advised last year on the same flight, but somehow I didn’t fully comprehend the understatement until the Tennessee Air National Guard Pilot pushed the nose of the plane down and we seemed to rocket towards the ground. (These pilots had been serving in Afghanistan also, and were active for 20 of the preceding 24 months). I was better prepared this year for the evasive maneuvers taken to avoid surface to air missiles.
 |
| Rep. Adam Schiff (CA-29) (far left) greets Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi with an official U.S. Congressional delegation in Baghdad , Iraq . |
Our agenda on touchdown was packed. We met with the top staff of Ambassador John Negroponte (who was in the United States at the time) to be briefed on the reconstruction and political transition, followed by meetings with the military commanders such as General George Casey, in charge of all our armed forces in Iraq, and General David Petraeus, given responsibility for standing up the Iraqi Army and civilian defense forces; and meetings with Iraqi leaders, including Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. And most important of all, we had meals and visits with the predominately young men and women who are doing the difficult and dangerous day-to-day work of trying to maintain security and rebuild a war-torn country.
Much was apparent from our briefings, meetings and tour about the challenges we face in Iraq. Having been there almost exactly a year earlier, I had a point of reference with which to compare the current status. Two conclusions seemed inevitable, one positive the other plainly negative. The political transition had made important strides, and the security situation had only continued to degrade.
A year ago, the Iraqi Governing Council lacked real decision-making authority and was widely perceived as a creature of the coalition authority – which it largely was. It did not enjoy the popular support of the Iraqi people, and although its members served at great personal peril and took their responsibility seriously, still, it did not engender enough support from the population for Iraqis to defend it.
Lawrence Summers, a former Treasury secretary and now the president of Harvard University, once observed that “no one washes a rented car.” This is a great truism about many things in life, and applies to governments as well as cars. The Iraqi people were not going to stand and defend a government in which they lacked ownership.
Prime Minister Allawi struck me as a forceful and courageous man. Fresh from the first successful meeting of delegates to choose an interim national assembly, and an unsuccessful effort to invite radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr into the political process, he outlined his vision for representative government in Iraq. “It will not look like American democracy,” he was quick to point out, but Iraq’s own brand of democratic rule. At the delegates meeting, he boasted, people shook their fists, they shouted, and they found agreement. With mortars striking the outside of the convention center where they met, not a single delegate left. This was Iraqi style democracy, and he wanted all of Iraq to participate, even al-Sadr. But he was clearly losing patience. “I have extended my hand to al-Sadr to join the political process,” he confided, but if al-Sadr continued to use violence “in violation of Iraqi norms,” the prime minister made it clear he was prepared to take action.
The leadership of Prime Minister Allawi, although imperfect, is probably better than we had any right to expect; and the establishment of the interim assembly – a provisional congress – is also an important milestone. But threatening all of this important political progress is the deteriorating security in Iraq. The most critical stage of the political transformation will come with elections in January, and already the coalition is debating whether large urban centers like Fallujah will be excluded from voting. Under the present deadly circumstances, it is difficult to conceive how nationwide elections could be conducted in a matter of months. Yet, with the most influential cleric, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, already impatient for elections, the prime minister and coalition may have no choice but to try.
A year ago, the insurgency appeared confined to a few hundred dead-ender Baathists, Saddam’s Fedayeen, some contingent of foreign fighters, and criminals released by Hussein before the war. Regrettably, the insurgency has spread, fueled by a much more substantial influx of foreign fighters and made more complex by Shiite uprisings in what had been more tranquil parts of the country. More deadly still, Iraqi extremists have adopted the tactics of foreign fighters -- suicide bombings and more sophisticated improvised explosive devises (IEDs) -- which take a daily toll on our troops.
We visited an American military hospital in Baghdad, where I spoke with several Marines hit with IEDs. Two Marines, who lay side by side in adjoining hospital beds, were riding in the same armored humvee when they were struck. I asked them if they had seen the IED just before they hit it. “No,” one replied. “In the beginning, the IEDs were primitive and you could see them by the side of the road. Now, they bury them in the middle of the road with only a small wire protruding, which they use to detonate them. The first thing I knew, I hit the roof of the turret and the windows were blown out. The next time I regained consciousness, I was being medevaced away.” While these two Marines had shrapnel embedded in their legs and faces, a third Marine in the same humvee walked away unharmed. The fourth Marine, they told me, hadn’t been so lucky; he died on the operating table the night before.
Given the significant casualties, and the random nature of the violence in Iraq – in addition to the roadside bombs, mortars and rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) are routinely lobbed at coalition forces – it is impressive that morale is as high as it is among our troops. (We got a small sample of this random violence when two RPGs were fired over the Tigris River in our direction as we prepared to board Apache helicopters, landing 500 yards away and injuring two embassy workers.) This strong morale is a tribute to the strength, discipline and focus of our troops, as well as their training. Morale was highest among those who had a date certain for coming home; they could get through anything. For those at risk of being extended, or involuntarily reinstated under a stop-loss policy, morale was more problematic.
 |
In Baghdad , Rep. Adam Schiff (CA-29) (2 nd from right) met with two soldiers next to Montrose-native Robert K. “Bob” Kelley, an advisor to U.S. Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte. |
There is no question that the burden of this war falls disproportionately on a small number of troops. While this may always be the case in wartime, our Guard and Reserve are constantly being called up, our active duty forces are stretched thin, and the general population has been asked to make no sacrifice for a war effort that we are financing through debt. And it’s not just the physical sacrifice that we are demanding of these brave men and women. Their families struggle too. One Marine from Pasadena had been serving in Iraq since February and was due to return home in the fall. He just learned that his wife had been called up, and she was being sent to Iraq in the fall. Their planes might literally pass each other in the night.
Almost forty percent of the troops in Iraq are in the Guard and Reserve. One of the reasons we are so reliant on the Guard and Reserve is that they possess many of the skill sets needed for post war reconstruction. They are the architects and the engineers, the linguists and the military intelligence, the urban planners and the military police.
Upon my first return from Iraq, I introduced bipartisan legislation to begin the process of reorganizing our armed forces, determining whether we need to shift some of these critical skill sets into the active duty or into a civilian ready response unit. I also cosponsored legislation to increase the number of active duty forces, a sober recognition of the fact that the Cold War dividend was not as large or as long lived as we would have liked. My recent visit to Iraq only underscored the importance of efforts to restructure our military in light of the post Cold War challenges we face.
General Casey warned us to be prepared for another difficult three or four months before the situation began to improve. He is relying on two efforts that he hopes will change the dynamic in Iraq. The first is General Petraeus’ work to rebuild the Iraqi Army, so that Iraqis begin to shoulder most of the security burden. Equipping these indigent forces can be done quickly, but as we saw in Fallujah, teaching them the leadership skills that will inspire Iraqi soldiers to take up arms against Iraqi insurgents is another matter. That takes time. And the second critical piece is the elections. Neither undertaking will be easy; both are very necessary. As General Casey and others so correctly observed, in the end, it will be the Iraqis who will decide Iraq’s future.
|
