Category: Iraq

Pesky Flies

One advantage of having a lot of dust hanging in the air is that it reflects the hot sun.  Al Asad has been unseasonably cool, but daytime temperatures still reach into the upper 90s and we now are bedeviled by little flies.  You can tell when a guy hits a cloud of them.  He starts to move his hands like windshield wipers.   Marines often take off their caps to swat at the little pests, really to not much avail.   They look like American flies, but they are smaller and they seem to be attracted to your mouth, nose and eyes.  Maybe it the moisture they seek.  I don’t think they bite; they just try to land on you.

Most of the endemic Iraqi bugs crawl on the ground.  They can be nasty and poisonous but they cannot easily get around  and we don’t generally have a flying bug problem, except these flies.   I am hoping that they are seasonal and that their season is short.  I recall that there were some around when I arrived last year, but not in the kind of numbers we are seeing now.   Let’s hope it doesn’t last.

Iraqi Money Finally Flows

 In the picture along side are USMC T-shirts for sale in the Hit marketplace. 

On a more optimistic – and unexpected – note, Iraqi government money has started to flow into Western Al Anbar.   We hope that this phenomenon does persist.  Exactly what is happening is beyond my pay grade, but we have seen more than $100 million of Iraqi money funding a variety of projects, the kinds we (Coalition Forces) used to have to finance.   It is about time and I hope this is a turning point.  I am increasingly frustrated that the American taxpayer is getting stuck for things that the Iraqis have the money to do themselves.   We are all about helping, but I don’t want to be left holding the bag.  This Iraqi money flow is a good sign.   Our job is not done, but I think we might be seeing the beginning of the solution.

Memories:  Monty Python & Eddy Arnold

Yesterday’s cigar and movie night featured “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”  I don’t do cigars, but I did go to see the movie.  Most of the guys watching the film were not even born when it was made.  It makes me feel kind of old.   Monty Python has developed into a cultural feature.   Many people quote Monty Python lines w/o knowing really knowing their source.   The pace seems slow when I actually watch Monty Python today.  I am just waiting for the signature lines.   “She turned me into a newt … I got better.”   Monty Python has successfully jumped into the next generation. Whodathunkit?

Not so well remembered these days is Eddy Arnold who I-Tunes inform me recently died.   He was my father’s favorite singer, with his renditions of “Cattle Call,” “Sixteen Tons,” & “The Green Leaves of Summer.”   During the 1970s, he briefly parlayed his limited fame into a gig as spokesman for Log Cabin pancake syrup.

That Eddy Arnold’s passing would have gone unnoticed by me except for I-Tunes, which  after analyzing my esoteric & eclectic music tastes reached into Iraq to tell me about it and made me aware of a very interesting marketing strategy.  My guess is that the number of Eddy Arnold fans has dwindled to a vanishingly small number.  I doubt if there would be living fans enough to justify the re-release of an album and in the pre-internet world nobody but family and friends would have marked the man’s shuffling off this mortal coil.  But internet can identify and cheaply reach even a small number of fans and the cost of search out and reproducing his hits is almost zero, so suddenly there is a market for everything.

Even a huge record store could hold only a few thousand of the most popular recordings.  I-Tunes features millions and it doesn’t matter if they sell only rarely since there is essentially no inventory carrying cost.  Nothing is ever lost or becomes so obscure it cannot be found.   Who knows, maybe Eddy Arnold will touch as whole new generation with “The Last Word in Lonesome is Me.”  Maybe not.   I have to admit that even I am not going to plunk down the $0.99 for one for the old country boy’s hits and even I-Tunes doesn’t feature my favorite Eddy Arnold album “Our Man Down South.”

17 Mai

Today is Norwegian constitution day.   Congratulations.  I neglected to congratulate the Poles on May 3 for theirs.  Let me add that now.   Speaking of memories, I like to remember “my” countries.

We are having a conference about our work in Iraq.  Many of our partners will be coming, including NGOs and contractors.  Below is the keynote speech I plan to give to open the conference.   BTW – when I ask why we are in Iraq, I am very literally talking about the people at the conference, not about the more general question.

The conference will be in a few days, still time if anybody has suggestions re how to improve the speech please send in a comment.

Why Are We Here In Iraq?

More precisely, why do the taxpayers of Indiana, Wisconsin or Texas or Oregon give us the big bucks and the budgets to keep our boots planted precariously on the yellow dirt of Western Iraq?

Our job is to make Western Al Anbar unpleasant for the insurgency and help make the society here unreceptive to a renewal of the violence.  To do that, the people of Western Al Anbar must be reasonably self sufficient and plausibly content.  This is our job, our overriding goal.  Other goals we might have are paths to this ultimate objective or tools for its establishment, but let’s not mistake them for the final destination.

I am pleased that in working toward our ultimate goal that we can often do good.  You might call the good we do here a “collateral benefit”.  I take great personal satisfaction when one of our water projects can restore the productivity to Iraqi soils or when our grant to a rug factory provides job opportunities to local women, but by themselves those good things are not the reasons we are here. 

All our efforts must be aimed at building Iraqi self-sufficiency and producing solutions that can be sustained with the goal of making this place untenable for the insurgents.   In order to do that, we have to be careful not to be distracted by our personal desires to do good or just to help.  Those things are beyond our mandate and – frankly – often beyond our ability to understand or really influence.  And besides all that, we cannot be generous with other people’s, in this case the taxpayers’, money.

Why do I say all this and risk starting this great conference on a sour note?  Because I am tempted just like you are to try to do good and it is only too easy lose sight of the mission.  I have to remind myself – and I want to remind all of you – that what is important in our activities is to help the Iraqis to do things for themselves, not to do things for them.  All the good we do, all of our achievements, will be as meaningless as that yellow dust that blows around in the wind of Anbar if we don’t make ensure that our accomplishments are sustainable by the Anbaris themselves. 

We want to help.  We might see that  it will take only a couple thousand dollars to outfit that school.  We all might get frustrated that the Iraqi government just cannot seem to get its act together and do what needs to be done.   We are tempted just to do it – to do “good”.   When you feel that impulse, just say NO.   Activity is not the same as accomplishment and we should never measure our success by how much we managed to spend or what we have caused to be built but rather by how much we encouraged our local partners to do, spend and build themselves.  Sometimes doing nothing to alleviate  a particular problem is our correct response.

Sometimes things are going wrong not in spite of, but because of our best efforts.

With that caveat out of the way, I want to say that I think we are accomplishing our mission.  We are achieving sustainable progress and I am gratified that we are also helping the people of Western Anbar.  Local governments are increasingly taking the initiative and responsibility for their own affairs.  The Iraqi authorities are poised to spend part of the mountain of cash they have acquired because of higher oil prices right here in Anbar.  At least we hope that is in the works.   The help we are giving vocational training is supplying the types of workers Anbari firms will need to secure a more free-market future and micro-finance loans are helping build those firms.  Courthouses are open and judges are hearing cases.  During this conference, we will hear about all those things and more. 

When you compare the situation in Iraq today to what it was couple of years ago, even a few months ago, the progress is truly astonishing.  Back then, some really smart people declared that we had been defeated in Al Anbar, that Iraq was a lost cause. Some even thought that we should just give up and go home.  Well, some other people just don’t give up so easily.  Today we are talking here about securing the success Coalition Forces and our Iraqi allies have achieved.  They did and are doing their part.  We – all of us – now have our roles to play going forward.  We can help achieve something exceedingly rare in history.   We can tell our grandchildren how we had the chance to help a country at the brink of disaster turn away from chaos and make the future better than the past.  

In the telling and retelling, we will exaggerate our own roles in this enterprise.  If we have succeeded in achieving our goals of a reasonably democratic market oriented & stable Iraq, posterity will be indulgent.

Thank you all for coming.  I look forward to learning from all of you.

Above is Jane Stillwater, a self described hippie grandmother from Berkeley.   She dislikes President Bush with a passion, but she loves the Marines.   She is one of the few journalists we have seen out here in Western Anbar, so I have to give her credit for seeking the truth about Iraq. That is her above in Hit.  You can see her blog at this link.

Below is a town council meeting in Hit.

Above is sunrise at our can city at Camp Ripper.  I am getting used to living in the cans. It is not so bad.

They don’t give metals for what Colonel Malay did, but his decision will save American lives and improve RCT’s performance.  The Colonel decreed that every Marine everywhere in Western Al Anbar have access to icy water and instructed that we buy and deploy enough coolers and freezers to make it so.  (They already have plenty of water, BTW.  The difference is the temperature.) 

He calls the program “Joe Cool”.  The name is clever and has given the program a boost.  He had to face some skepticism.  Marines are tough and proud of it.  The idea that they need this sort of “luxury” grates just a little.  Having ice in the desert seems a bit of a luxury, but they also understand that having cold water to drink means that Marines at isolated posts will be more refreshed and ready to take on anything.

The relentless harsh dryness of this vast desert has desiccated whole armies.  Bringing ice here is really an astonishing achievement.  We all know the stories about the Roman legions carrying chests full of ice into the desert or Saladin bringing ice and snow down from the mountains, but these were novelties that only the few enjoyed.  In this case every Marine has access everywhere. 

Even far away from camp.  Colonel Malay wants to put freezers and generators on seven-tons to bring the ice and cold water to the most isolated Marine units.  The Colonel emphasizes heat related problems will cost a lot more than the price of the cooling units and that a life lost to the scorching heat is beyond price.

Napoleon famously said that an army travels on its stomach.   Even more urgent than food is water, especially in a place like this.  Cool water can make the difference between life and death and certainly between comfort and misery.  Yes, Colonel Malay deserves a metal for doing what he did.  He has saved some lives and made many others a lot better.

From my own point of view, I am happy to have the coolers on every MRAP & Humvee because I can put my cans of Coca-Cola in them and keep them cool.  I am not a big fan of water.   I drink it if I am really thirsty or if there is nothing else available, but ice cold Cola-Light is the way to go if you have a choice.

I am not sure why I felt this so personally.  I didn’t know him. I knew the places he knew and I knew his comrades faces – all those faces full of grief.  The service and the eulogy were short.  He was only a few days past his 19th birthday and had not been in Iraq very long, too young to be gone.  They said that he liked to play football, wrestle and ride dirt bikes.  The pictures showed a young man who liked to lift weights.

He could have been my son.  In fact, his age falls almost exactly between Alex & Espen.  I thought about the decision he had made.  He joined the Army during a time of war, virtually certain to be sent where war was being waged.  It was a brave and honorable decision.  His parents were proud of him but their pride was tempered  by anxiety about the dangers.  I am sure that he told them that his chances of coming safely home were very good, and he was right, but no matter the odds, sometimes things go wrong.

And sometimes it just hits you.  As I sat there I felt a deep sadness for the young man I never met and the heartbroken family I will never see.  It was one of those everyman moments.   “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”  His best friend gave a tribute with all the eloquence of a 19-year-old speaking from the heart.  His friend was looking after him and he was looking after his friend, but sometimes things go wrong.    I watched his colleagues, Americans and Iraqis he worked with, pay their respects.   They felt the loss.  I offered condolences to his friend, but I don’t think he heard me.  His thoughts were far away.

Back at the cans, a dust storm blew in stinging the eyes and throats. 

Above is the city of Hit looking over the Euphrates.

The town is pronounced HEAT with a little more emphasis on the ee.   I don’t really have much to say about this trip that I can share on the blog, but I wanted to include some pictures from our foot patrol.

Above is the river scene.  Very nice.  The water is not 100% clean, so you are a little better off looking at the picture than experiencing the entire scene.

Hit was one of the last places in our AO where the insurgency was defeated, so the people are still adjusting to relative peace.  People here just want to hold onto what they have and it looks like they will get to do that.  We got a good reception as we walked through town.  People were friendly.  Little kids came to ask for candy.  Bigger kids tried to speak to us in English.  They could often say things like “What’s happening?” in a good English accent, but they usually could not actually understand responses.

I learned a little about local media.  There really isn’t much of any except a few newsletters.  Many people have satellite dishes.  They are a status symbol and I was told that a lot of those satellite dishes do not have working televisions attached.  People buy the dish first in hopes of getting a TV later and as a status symbol now.   I don’t know if that is true.  It sounds more like a joke. People like to tell us stories like that.

There were late model cars on the road and a fair amount of traffic even thorough we were well past the usual rush hours.  Iraqis do most of their business in the morning and most of their recreation after dark.  This makes a lot of sense given the hot climate.  Mornings and evenings are pleasant.

Below – still not a nice place, but getting better.

Anyway, yesterday was a long day, but the walk through town made it worthwhile.     

Below – Hit is an irregated agricultural area and the town is full of shops fixing pumps and engines. It looks like a junk heap, but a lot of guys were hard at work.  They proudly showed us their tools and they seemed to be real craftsmen.

I got a good impression from the visit to Hit.  It was good to see so many people actually at work.  We often pass lots of young men just standing around, smoking.  Today, it seemed every adult was doing something useful.   Maybe I just hit Hit at the right time.

Cigar Circle

This is a tradition US Grant would have recognized.   Cigars have long been a part of military life.  I don’t know if George Washington smoked cigars, probably a hazard to a man with wooden teeth, but he did grow tobacco and make cigars on his estates.

The weather this time of the year in Iraq is good.  Mornings are cool; afternoons are hot and evenings are pleasant, so the Marines take the opportunity to talk in the warmth of the evening and smoke cigars.  

Some of them have a cigar club.  They get the cigars and all the accessories from a place call Thompson Cigars of Florida.  Sometimes I understand that firms and individuals sent cigars free.  That is a gift many Marines really appreciate.

I do not smoke cigars, or anything else for that matter, but I can well understand the attraction of the shared interest.  I never disliked cigars as I dislike cigarettes and there is something very comforting, secure and primal about sitting in circle in the evening, exchanging stories and just being the company of other men.  It probably goes back to our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors sitting around the fire, telling stories about the mammoth that got away.  The fire kept dangerous animals out of the circle and the smoke from a campfire kept the bugs at bay.  I don’t know how well the cigars work for these things.

Tandoori Tuesday

Most of the people who work for KBR at the chow hall come from South Asia.  I think it started as a way to make them feel more at home.   Every Tuesday they serve Indian style food.   This is spiced to the taste of those who appreciate it.  I had some today.  It was a bit to hot for me and now I am paying the delayed price.  When I was in college and had a roommate from Pakistan, I used to eat a lot of kima mutter and with time I tolerated more and more curry.  I have lost that immunity.

Fortunately I have some “Pink Bismuth” (the PX usually carries generic brands). 

Dust Everywhere We had some big dust storms while I was gone, but my can was tightly closed so I thought I might avoid some.  I was wrong.  I write the word on the book to show the dust.  This deposited since I was gone.  Note the color.  It is not the kind of dust you find around the house.  All my clothes were dusty. My toothbrush was dusty.  My bed was dusty.   It just didn’t show up well in the pictures, so the best way I can show is with the dusty books above.  They were relatively clean when I left.

Usually, I sweep up or dust a little every day.  It is always dusty, but usually not this bad as a result.  You really don’t appreciate how much dust there is until you go away for a while. 

When I first took over my office & this can where I live, I was a little annoyed with my predecessor.  I though he left the place a bit gritty.  Now I understand that he just moved out a couple days before I moved in and that is all it takes to make the place as dusty as the Addams Family mansion.

It makes me much better appreciate places like the chow hall.  They always keep that place really clean and continually are winning the dust wars. 

Office transition

My staff members are still in tents.  I am in an office can.  It is not unpleasant and my colleagues were very good to me.  They dusted it, so I can home to a relatively clean environment there.  Good to have a little help from your friends.   They are suffering mightily, however, with the heat and the dust in the tents.

Office space geography is a challenge.  I like to do MBWA – management by walking around.  Lots of little problem can be solved before they become big problems and lots of opportunities can be generated before the sparks are lost if the boss is just there to nudge.  Good management is not really rocket science and just being there is much of the secret to success.  That is how I can add value to my already great team.  This office/tent arrangement makes it much harder.  I have to make a special point to walk out to the tent.  I see that I could easily get stuck and isolated in my office can.   There are certainly many things to do in the office, but usually when you are sitting at the desk you appear busier with important things than you actually are.  As I said above, I believe in peripatetic management.  It helps build the team and empowers every good worker. 

Fortunately, this construction period won’t last too long.   I talked to the guys actually doing the work and even the pessimistic scenario says end of May.  They are putting the wiring behind the walls (instead of hanging in front), repainting, giving us a real ceiling and generally improving the area.  My team members will also get two Plexiglas windows, like I have.  I think natural light is important and this will take away from the cave atmosphere.  It looks like we might get something that looks like a real office. 

The guy doing the construction told me that it will still be dusty, however.  Even if they seal the windows and make the doors tight, we cannot avoid the dust.

A Cola Free Environment

The chow hall has a serious problem – no diet cola of any kind.  We have no diet Coke AND no diet Pepsi.  This is a serious problem with the hot weather setting in.  I don’t know how long the crisis situation will persist.  The guys I talked to did not seem to know.  They are waiting for a shipment.

I have a supply in my refrigerator.  A dozen cans, which is good for a couple of days.  I fear I may be forced to drink diet Sprite (which they still have) or even … water.

UPDATE:  Since I wrote this, diet Coke has returned, hallelujah.

Hair Today; Gone Tomorrow

Speaking of water, on the way up I met a woman who was going to Baghdad.  She asked me if I thought the water here made your hair thin or fall out.   I don’t know what made her think I would know anything about hair matters.  Of course, maybe she just thought that I understood bald.   

My speculation is that it is not the water, but the dust.  This dust is alkaline and it always covers everything, including people.   I no longer really have a hair problem, but I do notice that my skin gets dry and flaky.  When I was in the U.S. I noticed it was not so much a problem, but it starting in again now.  Living in this desert is like daily exfoliation using 20-Mule-Team Borax.Maybe hair is related.  Or maybe the hair thing is just perception.  I didn’t have much hair when I arrived.  I don’thave less now.  Long, pretty hair is not much of a concern to me or to most of the guys I work with.

Working in Iraq

Maybe I complain too much.  I really like my colleagues here & the job we are doing together.  When I am done with Iraq, I don’t think I will miss anything about the place, but I will miss the people I work with, both Americans and Iraqis.   Why can’t I get a job like this in a nicer place?

Below – I had limited success with sunflowers.  My colleagues kept them alive while I was gone, but only three came up.  Maybe that is emblematic of all our work in Iraq. The construction workers have been very good and careful in avoiding them.

The big base at Ali Al Salem has a reasonably good chow hall, a nice MWR and a decent, if not great place to sleep.  But the whole installation is like a giant waiting room in a giant bus terminal in the Twilight Zone.

First you have to get all your papers stamped.  This is a fairly efficient, if confusing process.  Suffice to say, go to one tent to mill around until you figure out what to do, but do not leave until there is some kind of stamp on your travel orders.  That stamp is what lets you fly or take the bus.  W/o that stamp you will become a resident of the place.

Below C17 loading.  People get on first and wait for the gear to be loaded.

Another tent is where you catch the flights to Iraq.  You have to sign up for the place you want to go.  It might take a long time or not to get out.  In my case this time, I was very luck and got out the same night I came in.  This is uncommon. 

After sign up, you have to attend a general roll call twice a day.   If you fail to show up, you lose your place.   You also have to attend a specific role call for the flights going where you want to be.  You are not guaranteed a space.  They read off the names of people for whom they have space.  If they read your name and you say “here”, you get manifested for a specific flight.  That does not guarantee you will go or that the flight will fly, but it is a necessary step.

Each flight has a show time.   You show up will all your gear and get ready to wait.   In my recent case, we had a 2315 roll call where they told us we had a midnight show time.  We got on buses at 0145; the plane took off at around 0315 and we were in Al Asad a little more than an hour later.

After show time, you go on “lockdown”, which means you cannot leave the terminal expect to go to the bathroom.  Even that is risky, since they may call your flight at any time … or not.   You want to be around when announcements are made.  That is why you need a buddy system.  Make sure that you ask someone to listen for you if you need to make a head call.   In my above example, we were locked down for an hour and 45 minutes and this was three hours and fifteen minutes before the flight.   Makes you appreciate air travel in the U.S., bad as that can be.   For me, this was a great trip. Sometimes people get stuck for days or weeks.

C17 above – you can see the moving plates.

Our flight was a C17, which is an enormous, cavernous aircraft, like a flying warehouse.  The floor has rollers and modules that make it easy to switch out cargo or seats.  They just lock them into place and that is it.

I like the C17 because it is faster and marginally more comfortable than a C130.  Beyond that, there are lots of seats on the C17, so you usually don’t have to worry so much about getting bumped off it.  Despite my exalted civilian protocol rank, I get no priority, so I am liable to get bumped if someone or something important comes along.

An experienced traveler more than 5′ tall tries to get a seat on the side or in the very front.  It is a tight fit.

Above – reading lights are not so good in flight.

Back to Al Asad

We arrived in the early morning and it was comfortably cool.  I was happy to feel that weather.  As soon as the sun came up, however, it started to get hot.  Within about a half hour you could feel the difference.  It still is nothing like it will be, but we have the harbingers of heat all over the place.

Above – the road to Camp Ripper.  It reminds me of the closing scene of the old “Hulk” TV show, when David Banner has to hit the lonely road.

I decided to walk down.  It is only a 25 minute walk and it was pleasant in the early morning calm.  I am really glad I did that.  It gave me a better impression of Al Asad as I returned and took a little of the edge off the dread I was feeling on coming back.   This is an unpleasant place, but it is not that terrible.  I also looked forward to getting back to the job and back to my friends and colleagues working here.

Below – a new dawn in Al Asad.