A Picture May be “Worth a Thousand Words”, but it’s Rarely Clear in the Fog of War
Please see the original posted at Small Wars Journal, October 13, 2015; by Jay Morse and Prof. Geoff Corn.
It is a tragic inevitability of war that innocent civilians often pay a price for the chaos of battle, and the unfortunate loss of life resulting from Saturday’s destruction of a hospital in Kunduz should sadden us all. There may have been a time in history when massive civilian casualties were considered a tolerable consequence of armed conflict, but international law today demands a respect for human life that is fundamentally incompatible with any concept of “total war.” We should be neither surprised nor dismayed that the international response to this tragedy has been so intense. However, we should also be careful not to confuse sympathy for the victims of this incident with an assumption that the attack was in violation of international law. Human error and the proverbial “fog of war” will always create a risk of unintended consequences, and the law that regulates war also recognizes that no military force can ever guarantee error-free warfare.
Our military is without question the most professional and well-equipped force in the world. However, while both our weapons systems and our laws have progressed, the reality is that even the very best amongst the profession of arms can only hope to mitigate the risk of civilian casualties on today’s battlefield. It is unrealistic to expect a force to guarantee attack execution perfection, and the unfortunate casualties resulting from the destruction of the hospital in Afghanistan serves as powerful reminder of this certainty.
It is important to pause and mourn the loss of life, as it is important to conduct a thorough investigation in an effort to prevent similar events from happening in the future. But it is just as important to ensure that American pilots are not automatically branded as “war criminals” without understanding the law and how it applies. Some of the international reaction to Kunduz symbolizes the risk that emotion will adversely affect proper legal critique of military operations. Assessing compliance with the requirements of the international laws of war, or humanitarian law, is distorted by the tendency to engage in “consequence based” analysis: civilians died, therefore, as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) President Meinie Nicolai asserts, the attack constitutes a “grave violation of international humanitarian law.” Her statement is both premature and legally misleading. Tragic images of civilian suffering naturally paints a legally troubling picture, but a force’s compliance with international law must be judged upon an accurate understanding of the law, focused on the pre-attack situation – not on post-attack effects.
There should be no debate as to what law applied to regulate the Kunduz attack decisions. While international humanitarian law was developed primarily to regulate war between states, there are core rules that regulate all conflicts, including those against non-state organized armed groups, such as the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. Forces engaged in these hybrid conflicts are bound by certain fundamental international legal obligations: to limit deliberate attacks only to “military objectives” (a legitimate military target); to take all feasible precautions to mitigate the risk to civilians resulting from those attacks; and to forego any attack on a lawful military target when the anticipated civilian casualties would significantly outweigh the anticipated military advantage to be gained from the attack (the so-called “proportionality” rule). In addition to these general obligations, one rule seems particularly relevant to the bombing in Kunduz: the extensive protection afforded to hospitals.
Though no object in the battle-space enjoys more legal protection, a hospital is not completely immune from being lawfully attacked, despite an MSF spokesperson’s assertion that “bombing a fully functioning hospital can never be justified.” International law prohibits attacking hospitals so long as they are not being used by the enemy in a manner inconsistent with their exclusive medical and humanitarian function. Even when a commander has intelligence indicating misuse, humanitarian law requires that the commander, normally through an intermediary like the International Committee of the Red Cross, issue a demand to the enemy that he terminate his misuse of the hospital before any attack may be lawfully conducted. The only exception to this requirement is when friendly forces are actually under fire from a hospital and have no alternative other than to respond with force.
Any attack on a hospital will automatically trigger intense scrutiny by U.S. commanders, but it is invalid to immediately draw a conclusion that the law must have been violated simply because a hospital was hit. Too many variables need to be assessed. If the hospital was intentionally targeted, an investigation must determine whether notice of the hospital’s status was conveyed to U.S. forces; if the notice was properly integrated into the planning process; if there were indications that the hospital was being used improperly; if a warning was issued by U.S. forces; and whether the hospital was the actual intended target or was rather the result of an attack on another target nearby. If the attack was directed against a nearby target, then an investigation should determine if U.S. forces took feasible precautions to mitigate the risk to the hospital. The commander should have assessed whether attacking a nearby target would risk damaging the hospital; what was the anticipated level of damage; and how it compared to the anticipated benefit of the attack. Finally, and probably most likely in the bombing at Kunduz, an investigation should determine whether the attack on the hospital was the result of human or technical error, and if so, whether that error was reasonable under the circumstances.
Answering these complex questions requires a thorough investigation that recreates the situation that confronted the U.S. commanders and pilots who executed this mission. Nonetheless, President Meinie Nicolai almost immediately condemned the attack as a “grave violation” of international humanitarian law. Her reaction – that because a hospital was attacked, it must be a violation of international law – is an unfortunate outgrowth of the incorrect assumption that modern professional militaries are capable of executing error-free operations. This assumption is completely at odds with the reality of warfare, no matter how “precision” our weapons. Furthermore, even President Nicolai’s assertion that the U.S. committed a “grave violation” – the most serious category of war crimes – is legally impossible, as a grave breach may occur only during an international armed conflict – a conflict between states. Whether President Nicolai is misinformed or simply misspoke, her statements illuminate the gross misunderstanding the public has of the laws as they apply to armed conflict.
Nations have attempted to set rules for war for surely as long as there has been warfare itself, and continuing efforts to both improve and implement the law are essential to advancing the aspirations that always motivated these rules: to strike a balance between the need to allow states to wage war while limiting, as much as possible, the inevitable human suffering produced by conflict. Condemnation of attacks based purely on results not only distorts this balance, but applies the law erroneously and sets a dangerous precedence. Of course, none of this means mean that U.S. military personnel operate with impunity, and President Obama’s order to conduct a thorough investigation is correct (though certainly redundant). There is a robust and clear body of law that proscribes actions while simultaneously giving military personnel a structure to determine not only what is a legitimate target, but also, just as importantly, when and how you can attack that target. If an investigation concludes that the law was violated, accountability for that violation is essential. And not to assuage international public opinion, but to reinforce the essential link between complying with international humanitarian law and legitimately claiming status as a professional armed force. The reality is that armed forces of the United States are regularly trained on whom and what constitutes a legitimate target. The personnel involved in the targeting process not only understand the law, but also the strategic and political implications of attacking a typically civilian facility such as a hospital. Only a comprehensive investigation will reveal whether the attack was the result of human or technical error, or perhaps even (though highly unlikely) malicious intent; only this determination will indicate whether there was in fact a violation of the law.
The bombing of the hospital in Kunduz certainly aggravates the tragedies of more than a decade of war in Afghanistan, and will only make US efforts to stem ISIS and a resurgent Taliban that much more difficult. But the fact remains that war today is, as it has always been, a brutal endeavor, and no matter how precise our weapons or thorough our analysis, human error will lead to tragedy. This doesn’t make it a war crime.
Jay Morse is retired US Army lieutenant colonel and is a partner in the law firm of Corn, Jensen & Morse. He can be reached at jaymorse.org or jay.morse@cornjensenmorse.com.
Geoffrey Corn is a retired US Army lieutenant colonel and is a Professor of Law at South Texas College of Law in Houston, Texas. He can be reached at gcorn@stcl.edu.
Four Weeks in Bogotá (y Todovía Tengo mi Cabeza).
Bogotá sits on a high plain at 8,660 feet, her more than eight million inhabitants mashed up against the Eastern Cordillera of the Andes mountain range and sprawling west to the very limits of the Savannah of Bogotá. The city is huge – one of the twenty-five biggest in the world and the fastest growing in Latin America – and I can see much of it from my fourth floor studio apartment in the Chapinero Alto neighborhood. I have come here both to try to learn Spanish and to spend a few months transitioning from twenty-two years of government service into a new life in the civilian world; Bogotá serving as an air lock, keeping the figurative bad air from my past where it belongs and letting me breath something new and untainted. Unfortunately, the literal air at more than a mile and half high is thin and, along Septima (7th Avenue), one of Bogotá’s main north-south arteries, throat-achingly dirty. The city has a small army of exhaust-spewing buses and a huge one of tiny yellow Hyundai taxis that yield to no one, and they seem to be on the road twenty-four hours a day.
Every American guide book and website profess to Bogotá’s decreased crime rate since the 1990’s, but also warn of a continued reputation for violence. As such I’ve restricted my travel to the neighborhoods between la Candelaria – Bogotá’s original pueblo and city center – and the tower-apartmented neighborhoods of the north side of town, where the young and upwardly mobile reside. Regardless, I came to Colombia prepared for the worst, and my threat mitigation involves carrying small amounts of cash; making little eye contact; growing an intimidating beard complete with a Louisiana-shaped bald spot; and adopting a feigned accent where I speak Spanish quickly, hoping to thwart would-be muggers by leading them to believe I am not a gringo but rather an immigrant from some far off land where the Spanish is so pure and golden it is spoken at a pace unintelligible to mere Colombianos. I mentally prepare for my attackers both with imaginary action (where I swiftly disarm them, knocking them out with an elbow to the face and then gently lowering them to the ground, teaching them a lesson in both the power of violence and kindness) and imaginary words (“You want my wallet? Well guess what. I don’t carry a wallet. I carry a money clip. So go fuck off”). But the truth is that I have never felt threatened or uncomfortable, and Rollos (a native of Bogotá [i]) are disarmingly kind and patient.
I spend my first days in the Hotel B3 in the Virrey neighborhood, and over the weekend the neighboring eponymous park fills with runners, leashless dogs of all sizes, a small troupe of teenage acrobats treating a slack line like it’s a trampoline, athletes using the two or three open-air gyms, and the thick, sweet tinge of marijuana. I have never smoked it, but even I can tell what the good stuff smells like. I try to run the footpath, but the altitude sears my lungs, so I instead spend the mornings drinking coffee with the crowd and listening to a gypsy band compete for our attention with an impressively muscular and immaculately dressed transvestite playing a wicked Spanish guitar.
My home for the rest of the month is in the hilly, middle-class, bohemian and gay (both in emotion and sexual orientation) neighborhood of Chapinero Alto, a collection of older two-storey row houses and newer apartment buildings. This city is crowded but peppered with parks, and every inch of space is used. Two blocks from my apartment is Parque Portugal (which I quickly label “Parque Marijuana,” or, after my Spanish improves, “Parque Lleno de Mierda de Perro”) and it is never empty. The benches along the solo winding path host musicians, beer-drinkers, and the ubiquitous necking college students intertwined so tightly they look like a Picasso. A concrete court seems to be used for basketball only early on Sunday mornings; the remainder of the time it is used for fútbol sala by kids and dads; by grimy construction workers on lunch break, uniformly attired in boots, denim jeans and t-shirts, orange safety-helmets lined up neatly on a slope; or by a four-on-four night league where the shoe of choice is a dirty Chuck Taylor and the athletes are so skilled it seems to me that the small, deflated ball might be glued to their feet. Colombianos might be Catholic but their religion is fútbol, and a Colombia national team jersey is the single most popular article of clothing, particularly on game days, when the city is riotous with the yellow uniform (and if fútbol is their religion, tejo is their vice, a Colobmian cultural version of bowling. Except with gunpowder and far more beer and other drunk people standing near your target. Did I mention gunpowder?).
On Sundays the main roads of Bogotá shut down to vehicle traffic for ciclovia, and hundreds of thousands of residents walk, run, and ride (relatively) smog-free. It has been going on since 1974, started as a way to open more roads for pedestrians and bicyclists, and if you take Septima from north to south, you can end up downtown in a modern-day bazaar replete with carnival games, junk vendors, food stands, chalk artists, llama rides, jugglers, cuy races, and street performers with skill levels from drunk to painful to huckster to needs work to spectacularly talented. Keep walking and end up in la Candelaria, home to the federal government, countless hostels, world-class graffiti, and the labyrinthine Botero Museum, a world so fat and joyous that even the graphic shooting of Pablo Escobar looks like it might have been kind of fun.
Four weeks is not enough for Bogotá; I want to know the city. After a lifetime of being a mere intruder into foreign territories, I want to feel like a local. I want a bartender to know me by name, I want to give secret directions to cab drivers that show my local knowledge, I want to sing with the nonstop chants and pounding drumbeats at a Milenarios game; to know the feeling of joy when the streets erupt after Colombia scores against Peru. I want to know the hangover cure for aguardiente, or where to find the best arepas for breakfast. Nor is four weeks enough to learn Spanish, and I think the rotating Andres-Manuel-Rafael trio of security guards in my apartment building has learned more of my language than I of theirs. I want to tell them how lovely are the days in Bogota, with their counterintuitive morning heat and afternoon chill. I want to tell the taxi drivers that the music is actually Aerosmith, not Guns and Roses, and that regardless, neither are my compañeros. I want to flesh out, in Spanish, this “American” thing, where apparently every Colombian calls themselves – nee, every resident of every country in North, Central and South America – an “American.” Though I may be a North American, and “gringo”, when non-epithetical, is fine by me, I am certainly not a United Statesian, and after four weeks of struggling to read signs, patiently waiting for a turn at the gym, asking for directions and generally feeling like an immigrant where you don’t speak the language but learn enough to know that you sound like a child, which frustratingly compels you to speak even less; after all of this I feel confident that I can adequately express what it means to be American.
[i] As opposed to “Costeños” from Cartagena, or “Paisas” from Medellin.
Portugal in Pictures
Guanajuato in Pictures
Guatemala
Coming Home
Savannah, Georgia/June 7, 2005
So I’m coming home. Today is the 2nd of June, and tomorrow I will leave Bahgdad after just 135 days in country. It seems like a long time, but still significantly shorter than the tour of those I leave behind (tour. Such a funny application of the word, though with plenty of company in the Army lexicon: collateral damage, high-value target (if it’s such high value, why are we trying to destroy it?), smart-bomb, low-intensity conflict, knock and search. Sometimes – don’t tell anyone – I feel funny using these words, like I’m the guy who might believe there’s an alien in Area 51, or there was someone on the grassy knoll. The language of conspirators). Some introspection: I have mixed emotions about leaving. Can anyone commiserate? I want to get the hell out of here – fast – yet I have these feelings of not wanting to leave these guys I have trained, lived with, interacted with on a daily basis since the middle of October; of not wanting to leave this significant thing in my life; of wanting to help improve what seems, at times, a dire situation. Don’t be misled; I do not believe this to be my fight. But these are my friends, and it is my uniform, and it is my job, and I do believe, in spite of it all, that the burden borne to the biggest guy on the block is to make life better for everyone else. But it’s also my family I am going home to, and my country, and all of you. I suppose I can take solace, if you’re into self-flagellation, in the fact that I’ll surely be back here in the near future.
Baghdad is soon to be home to the biggest US embassy in the world. Surely the next time around we’ll have spread our good American cheer far and wide enough that I can get a beer outside the front gate. Already, I’ve had Iraqi school boys sing Snoop Dog lyrics to me and proudly flash me their middle finger (“hey mistah! Fucka you!”). Ah, progress. You cannot stop it, you can only hope to contain it.
Each morning here I awake acutely aware of the paradox of participating in something with which I don’t entirely agree. Usually I contend myself with the belief I’m an integral part of the greater good, or by helping soldiers who made some pretty stupid decisions, or by helping other officers to be better people and attorneys and by trying to be a better one myself. But some mornings I don’t know entirely how to deal with it. Some mornings I wake wanting to be Russell Means, wanting to be Jim Harrison, wanting to be Marla Ruzicka. I want to shake things up a bit, I want to be anti-establishment. Some mornings I simply want some insight along with my coffee, want the information I think I’ve earned and deserve, not only as to what makes one country invade another, but also as to what makes a man strap a bomb to his back and run into a dining facility, or a group of people waiting to worship, or into a school. Surely it’s not as simply as oil; surely it’s not as simple as 72 virgins and eternal bliss. Surely it’s complicated, its pursuit and discovery merited by the loss of lives, national identity, religious upheaval, and billions of dollars. Right? Surely it’s an enviable thing, this quality of not only being willing to die for your cause, but to willingly die for your cause.
For 130 days straight neither the war nor its effects has reached out and touched me. When I’d wanted to see it, I had to go out and touch it myself. But we’ve angered the insurgency, apparently, by encircling Baghdad, and in the evening of day 131, prompted by the sound of gunfire, I stepped outside my trailer to watch tracers ricochet off of who-knows-what and fly into the night sky, framed against the backdrop of a dusty, yellowed Baghdad moon. Then on day 132, while waiting for a helicopter, I watched a VBIED-inspired mushroom cloud rise above the tree-line, the accompanying boom reaching me only seconds later. Day 133 brought a mortar round to my living area, about 200 meters from my own trailer, and today, day 134, I heard and felt – despite a building, a mountain, countless concrete barriers and a distance of about 400 meters between it and I, I felt – the effects of two 122mm rockets, the first landing harmlessly in between the chapel and the finance office, the second landing in the middle of our shopping complex, killing two and injuring seventeen soldiers, civilian contractors, and Iraqi businessmen. Two or three of the injured soldiers, and one of the dead, all members of the Georgia National Guard, had been here less than a week. Your length of time in this country does not dictate your chances of death. Day one equals day 100 equals day 135 equals day 365. It’s like flipping a coin: No matter how many times you come up heads, you’re even money for tails the next time around.
Break. I’m home. I’m home, and I have read my above letter. Such pessimism, Jose! Such despair! Such chagrin! It sounds as if I wrote those words with bombs exploding behind me, on the run, running, leaping to latch onto a departing helicopter, my three duffel bags hanging from one arm as I desperately clung to the helicopter skid with the other (“Keep flying, Copperhead 35, I’m good! Get out of the impact area! Save yourself!). Such (melo)drama in my words, and I wasn’t even loaded when I wrote them! But I’m sending them out anyway, because I’m home now, and have so many good things to tell you – mostly how it’s not as bad as the media (or I) portray it, and that Iraqis and Americans, along with a few Italians, Estonians, Brits, Aussies, and Poles (sorry Michael Moore, I saw no Moroccan monkeys) are doing great things on a daily basis, and that Iraq, the Middle East, and hopefully America, will be the better for it. We hope.
Two stories to end with, one of ambition, one of optimism (sort of): About three weeks ago, I ran into a young soldier sleeping in the sun, sprawled in a folding camping chair while waiting to talk to an attorney. Sergeant Hester, a 23 year-old shoe salesman and member of the Kentucky National Guard, is a Military Police soldier, with a mission to “shadow,” or guard, civilian semi-tractor/trailer convoys while they travel from city to city. At the end of March, SGT Hester and about nine other soldiers were shadowing a convoy of about twenty supply trucks, almost exclusively driven by third-country nationals (Aussies, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshi), when they were ambushed by approximately 75 (mostly Iraqi) insurgents. SGT Hester and the other American soldiers were in their armored vehicles at the back of the convoy when the insurgents initiated the attack with small-arms fire and Rocket Propelled Grenades. The soldiers immediately sped to the front of the convoy, where SGT Hester’s vehicle took a direct hit from one of the RPG’s. After first administering first-aid to the gunner, SGT Hester then left the vehicle and headed for an empty canal where she – yes, she – and one other soldier proceeded to kill or injure 10-20 of the enemy. SGT Hester threw grenades, fired her weapon at close range, went back to her vehicle at least once to get more ammunition, and had to take a break about half-way through the 45-minute gun battle to regain her energy. As she put it, at one point the fighting was “toe to toe.” Though none of the American soldiers were killed, several were injured. An ominous sign of the insurgents’ intent was found at the end of the battle when the U.S. Soldiers confiscated, among other things, several sets of hand-cuffs (for taking prisoners) and a videotape of the early stages of the operation, immediately preceded by a film of the insurgents beheading a third-country national, most likely some truck driver, here to make more money in one year that he might see at home in ten. So is it a good thing that any young American is placed in a position where they must kill or be killed? No way. Do I hope that SGT Leigh Ann Hester, Silver Star pinned upon her busty chest, gets the opportunity to testify before Congress? Or maybe arm-wrestle some charcoal-suited, bespectacled, pomaded gentlemen from (insert red state)? Absolutely.
Second story: About the same time I met SGT Hester, I hadn’t left the base in about a month and was feeling a bit stir crazy. The JAG officer for the Louisiana National Guard (yes, they’re exactly as you would expect them to be) invited me to go with them to deliver some clothes and school supplies to preschool-aged children in a western suburb of Baghdad.
A convoy, in and of itself, is an adventure: The narrow Baghdad streets are absolutely slammed, every traffic circle doubles as an open market, and life zooms by through the small, bullet-proof window of your armored vehicle. Little kids smile and wave, young men glare, women avoid eye contact all together. I have two loaded weapons, but the quarters inside our vehicles are so cramped that I could never hope to use either without getting out of the vehicle, so I’m literally along for the ride. We drive by the school twice before our translator figures out where it is, but we finally stop, announcing our presence with authority (how could we not?). Our five-vehicle convoy parks on the sidewalk; the front, middle, and rear vehicles each manned with .50 cal machine guns pointing in opposite directions. Our presence has reduced traffic to one-lane, but life continues. People are lined up outside an ice-cream parlor, three men in sandals load sodas onto a truck, a man and his daughter sit on the hood of his car, laughing. But for our presence, it seems to be a scene you would see in any major city in the world. We exit the vehicles, about twenty men and one woman, all of us with loaded weapons, armored vests, and dark sunglasses, and meet a few of the teachers at the gate. The school itself, behind a gated entryway, is two nondescript slump block buildings without windows. Outside, trash and rubble are strewn everywhere, faded paintings of Disney characters on the walls. We are escorted to a one-room building, where the remaining teachers await us. All are women; two are dressed fully in black and but for their eyes, completely covered (how ironic, I think – I’m completed covered as well).
In stark contrast to the outside, the inside of the building is exceptionally clean, tidy, and orderly. A row of miniature plastic chairs lines the far wall, each occupied by a wide-eyed, dark-haired Iraqi child. They are beautiful, apprehensive, and silent. I wonder what they must think, as we roar inside the class room, carrying boxes and talking loudly. Do they think we have come to kill them? To stuff them inside these big containers, and take them away to teach them rap lyrics and curse words?
Some of the soldiers open the packages, unloading stuffed animals, clothes, school supplies, and finally unrolling a long piece of butcher paper, bearing the Crayola-ed words “Sacred Heart Elementary School, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.” It’s signed by the denizens of that school, surely multiple Thibedeauxs, Simons, Delahousses, Landrys, and Beaudreauxes. My friend wants me to stand with the children so he can take a picture; I politely decline. I feel like an intruder, self-conscious of the M16 slung from my shoulder, and wonder what I would have thought had armed men come to my school when I was in kindergarten (I remember my cousins surprising me once, that was alarming enough).
Many of the children have begun to smile and chatter, and the teachers appear genuinely grateful and thankful for our arrival, and so I also wonder what it was like here three years ago, or five, or ten. The teachers serve us juice boxes and moon pies (universal diplomacy!), and then as quickly as we stormed in, we storm out.
On the way home, we (not me, specifically, I wasn’t really part of the decision making process) decide to make a quick side trip. We are looking for a bad guy. The unit has been looking for a local imam, leader of a mosque that is perhaps behind some unsavory activities in this part of the city, and this is, apparently, as good a time as any to see if he’s at home. We turn down a side street, the lead vehicle speeding to the far intersection, blocking access and pointing the .50 cal down the road. The trail vehicle does the same at the opposite end, and the three remaining vehicles, me in one, stop about three-fourths of the way down the street. Several soldiers move towards the target house, the others pointing their weapons at rooftops, pulling security. I quickly fall in line with the men going towards the house, adrenaline rising, my mother’s face but Johnny Cash’s voice in my head (“don’t take your guns to town, son, leave your guns at home. . .”), my M16 at the ready (before, during, and after, I am disturbed at my eagerness, how quickly my thirst for adventure trumped common sense, politics, safety, care for others. Something to digest; perhaps safer to just ignore). Alas, no one is home, and we return to the street where we have attracted a crowd. A few older gentlemen are talking with our translator and the company commander. They look wise and well-educated, and are wearing clean, white dishdashas, or “man dresses,” and how quickly my sense of adventure gives way to another weakness, my sense of fashion. I eye the thing enviously. “I think I could pull that look off,” I contemplate. “Maybe a nice white linen number. Matching sandals. I could wear it to my cousin’s wedding in July.”
But back to the point of the story, that of optimism. The older men continue to talk with the translator, sometimes in English, sometimes in Arabic, and it is clear that not only is the imam gone, but he won’t be back for a while. Our commander asks to pass a message to the imam, to come in to talk to us when he returns. Suddenly, quickly, the crowd around the translator grows: kids, and lots of them. School has let out, and the word has apparently gone around that some Americans are in for a visit. Some soldiers open the backs of two of the humm-v’s, and start passing out paper, pencils, pens, markers, calendars, paper clocks, and the kids are going crazy. They are clean, kempt, happy. They all wear matching white and blue uniforms. Many come up to me, ask my name, where I am from, show me their English school books. The girls hang out in the back ground, all but one, who points out that one of the boys is named “Saddam,” again and again, and the other kids, including Saddam, laugh uproariously each time. I wish I weren’t wearing a helmet, or carrying a gun, wanting instead a soccer ball, a rugby ball, a skate board, two tin cans, anything. The kids go from vehicle to vehicle, getting supplies, talking to the soldiers, everyone now laughing and smiling, soldier and child alike, white-haired gentlemen in man-dresses. We are interrupted only by two men with beards and long, skinny switches, who start their flock of sheep down our road. I expect a collision, chaos, confused children and frightened sheep. The two men ably divert the sheep back down the road, however, the herd first swallowing up the armored humm-v blocking the road, then spitting it out the other side.
For now, at least, collision avoided.
The Daily Grind
Camp Liberty, Iraq/March 28, 2005
I think me ma believes I’m in constant danger (other than, of course, the trouble I get myself into), and I realize the news media doesn’t really delve into the daily life of a soldier on a Forward Operating Base (FOB), mostly, I imagine, because it’s pretty boring. So here’s a glimpse:
Life here can be surreal. Not a dreamy, LSD-induced Sgt Pepper’s type of surreal, but a result of the bizarre juxtaposition of modern conveniences, relative civility, Play Station-at-your-fingertips life on the FOB compared with the reality of life “outside the wire.”
I live in one half of a 12’ x 40’ trailer I share with another major, our individual rooms separated by a common bathroom. I’m living about as good as one can live here in Iraq. My trailer is one of about 40 located on Lot 10; many lots are lumped together to compose an “LSA” (Logistical Support Area). There are thousands of these trailers on nothing but gravel and dirt, meticulously laid out in grids. Given the weather and dusty terrain, and but for the absence of cowboys, Mexicans (excepting me, of course), and pink plastic flamingos, it could be a west Texas trailer park. Within walking distance is my office, MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation), a gym, the dining facility, and a laundry facility, ostensibly owned by KBR/Halliburton but run solely, it appears, by Filipino labor. We have a Burger King, a Subway, a Pizza Plus, a post office, a bazaar, and a huge Post Exchange that sells everything from socks and envelopes to bicycles and 64” televisions.
I show up at my office about 7:45 each morning, start coffee, and check my email. The rest of the office trickles in between 0800 and 0900, and we see clients throughout the day, the routine broken up by frequent bullshit sessions. Topics range from current events to Larry’s shrewd decision to shave his head, thus avoiding the impending comb-over, to our client’s misconduct relative to the things they confront off the FOB. I have plenty of time to exercise, and do so almost daily. The gym is about 100 meters away, I run a 5 kilometer loop around a nearby lake, and the only hill on the FOB is behind my office, up which I can do sprints.
The dining facility is better than expected. There is good food at every meal, exceptional desserts, and all the Red Bull my enlisted soldier can fit into his pockets. Televisions line the walls, one side perpetually on ESPN, the other on FOX news (must we always be drinking the Kool Aid?). There is an outdoor patio, floored with Astroturf and roofed with a brown and yellow awning. Lights wrap around tree-trunks in the Dead Palm Tree Garden (a valiant effort by the Army, albeit an unsuccessful one), and music, invariably jazz, blares from speakers mounted on an elevated deck. Though we get the occasional mortar, it is by far the exception rather than the rule. Any “boom” is enough of an event that when we hear one, we leave our offices to see if we can see where it landed. Rarely are we successful. My biggest complaint is the lack of motivation from the contractors tasked to fix the door handle on one of the two port-a-poddies (such a funny word) outside our office. I feel safe every day, and life, but for my location and missing all of you, is pretty good. Life is almost – almost – normal.
But now the surreal:
My trailer is ringed with 6’ high concrete barriers, which given the fact my trailer is elevated about 3’, is good coverage if I’m lying down, not so good when I’m standing up. My 5 km loop goes around a lake where Uday supposedly dumped bodies. The gym is filled with soldiers working out, still in their uniforms, their weapons either leaned up against the wall or strapped to their legs. The top of the hill up which I sprint is peppered with radio antennas, camouflage tents, and special radars that detect incoming mortars and rockets and then track them back to their point of origin. Within sight of my office are three aerostat balloons, all tethered to the ground and equipped with cameras that maintain constant observation of the surrounding town. One of my attorneys, while attending a morning Battle Update Brief, watched – live via video feed – a VBIED drive into a US Army HWWMV, killing two soldiers and injuring another. Wherever I go, there is an M9 pistol on my right hip and a round-filled magazine on my left.
To enter our dining facility, you have to show your identification to two armed guards, then walk around 10′ barriers protecting the building. Inside the DFAC, M16 rifles and helmets clog the aisles. The patronage consists of American Soldiers, Airmen, and Marines, but also soldiers from Australia, Britain, Japan, South Korea, El Salvador, Poland, and Estonia, among others. There’s a bizarre mix of civilians: muscular ex-Special Forces types working as security contractors; OGA (“Other Governmental Agencies” – read CIA, DIA, etc) personnel with compact automatic weapons; overweight hairy guys sporting Ted Nugent t-shirts and mullets and too-tight jeans and working for Kellog, Brown & Root as mechanics, truck-drivers, and whatever else (Lord knows what those guys are running from); and masses of third-world nationals, who basically run the infrastructure. They work as barbers, cleaners, carpenters, food-servers, sanitation workers, check-out clerks. They come predominantly from Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, and the Philippines, all countries so poor that $20 a day is apparently enough of a windfall for them and their families at home that they’re willing to travel to Iraq and work in a dangerous and borderline oppressive environment.
These workers, like many of the military personnel, never leave the FOB. Soldiers for whom leaving the base is a daily undertaking derisively refer to us stay-behind types as “fobbits.” Hilarious. There’s an incredible amount of disparity in the soldier’s experience in Iraq. The Air Force is here for just four months, the Marines for six, and the Army for twelve. Some members of the National Guard will go 18 months before they see their homes again. Some soldiers live a solitary existence helping to train the Iraqi Army, some live on isolated FOBs and experience combat on a daily basis, some live on huge FOBs with all the conveniences of home (like me), some rub elbows with the state department & CIA spooks in the Green Zone, surreptitiously drinking beer and lounging pool side, and some live in Kuwait where they can wear civilian clothes, don’t have to carry their weapons, and neither hear nor see the bad guys, ever. One would think the disproportionate amount of danger faced between a soldier who lives on a FOB and a soldier who lives on the road would contribute to a tense situation, but the reality is that it just doesn’t matter. I read about a Marine who’s been hit by IED’s nine times, and is going home not only alive, but with all his digits and limbs as well. Last month, two soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division died when a VBIED crashed into their HMMWV – they’d been here two weeks, and were doing their “left seat/right seat” ride, where the outgoing soldier shows the incoming soldier the ropes. To the insurgency, a Joe is a Joe, whether he (or she) has been on the road two times or two hundred. The insurgency, it seems, is a fickle mistress.
But enough of that. One cool thing to end on – the CCCI. The Central Criminal Court of Iraq is a partially bombed building in Baghdad where most of the insurgents are eventually tried. The process works like this: US Army unit goes out on patrol, gathers up Bad Guys plus evidence against Bad Guys (US dollars, prohibited weapons, cell phone parts for setting of IEDs, water color portrait of Saddam and Osama in angelic embrace). US soldiers put Bad Guys in a BIF (Brigade Interrogation Facility), where they are, of course, interrogated. Some Bad Guys aren’t so bad, and they’re let go. Some Bad Guys say they aren’t really Bad Guys, but we don’t believe them, so they hang out a little bit. Some Bad Guys are the real deal (Q: “What were you doing with the wires and the cell phone?” A: “I want to kill Americans.”), and they get sent to Abu Ghraib or Bucca until they have their day in court at the CCCI.
One of my friends, an Operations Law attorney responsible for gathering the evidence against insurgents, sent me an email asking to meet him in the Green Zone so I could witness the court in action. He brought two soldiers with him (one, it turned out, was a Samoan kid with whom I used to play rugby) who were involved in a firefight with an insurgent sometime in November. The Iraqi had fired on these two soldiers, and they returned fire, one shooting him in the leg, the other then administering first aid. The unit then transported him to a field hospital for medical attention (if it weren’t so serious, it would be comical, no?), and he was eventually transferred first to Abu and then to the CCCI for his trial.
The court itself is located a few hundred yards outside the Green Zone, technically in an unsecured area. To get there, you drive from the Green Zone to an enormous metal gate cut into a huge concrete barrier. Prior to the drive, we were given a movement brief from the Air Force Security Team that was to guide us the few hundred meters from the gate to the actual court house. In the middle of the brief, upon taking in the battle-savvy appearance of the two soldiers with my friend, and giving a nod to my Ranger tab, our escort stopped – I kid you not – and said, “well, you guys look like shooters. We’ll just follow your lead.” Are you kidding me?
We opened the metal gate, with a suspense-building slow creak, and walked in. I fully expected to see Augustus Galoop gobbling down sweets and drinking from the Chocolate River. Immediately we spread out into a V formation, looking in all directions, maintaining vigilance – very Oliver Stone/Platoon type of stuff. This is bad guy land, right? As we approach the courthouse, I see nothing but Iraqi men and women in business attire, walking around like it’s a Tuesday morning at any courthouse in America.
Don’t we look silly.
Letter from Baghdad
Baghdad, Iraq/ February 24, 2005
I’m on my first convoy today, where riding shotgun once again means exactly that. I wear a ballistic helmet, ballistic eye-protection, fire-proof gloves, and a flak vest designed to defeat the exact size round the enemy fires. The vest comes with a snap on groin-protector, but I’ve already decided I’m going to sit on that thing; it seems to me that I should be more concerned about a blast coming from the bottom than one from the top. I carry a Baretta 9mm pistol, with one magazine in the well and two hooked to my vest. I also carry an M16 rifle, with one magazine in the well, but with six extra magazines. In total, I have 255 rounds of ammunition. I feel equally empowered and apprehensive at the prospect of possessing so much ability to destroy. I have a client at an outlying Forward Operating Base, or FOB, and I’ve asked the unit to come pick me up at my base, about a 40-minute round trip in light traffic. It will take them three vehicles, and they’ll have to be on the road four times, but I need to see where my guy lives, and what he does, and where his misconduct supposedly took place. Each of the three vehicles coming to get me has a three-man crew: A driver, a vehicle commander, and a gunner. I don’t like them having to take extra risks just for one man, but the alternative is to bring all the witnesses to me, which would turn it into about 10-vehicle convoy. I meet the First Sergeant and his men outside my building. I’ve been in Iraq for about a week, and all my equipment is new and clean, my glasses unscratched, my weapons unfired, all in stark contrast to the men I now look upon. To most, I suspect, they would look dirty and used. To me they do look worn, but also intense, experienced, professional. They look like guys I’d want strapped to roof-top guns when I take my first ride into a hostile city. Another obvious difference between them and me is our age. Aside from the First Sergeant, a career soldier, they all appear to be in their early twenties or late teens. The young man sticking out of the turret of my ride and manning the .50 cal machine gun – as intimidating a weapon as any in our inventory – is surely outweighed by the gun he operates. I decide he must rarely need to shave. The First Sergeant salutes me, hands me another magazine of 5.56 mm, and asks if I’m ready to go. I say I am, get into the vehicle, and we’re on our way. Using his radio, he calls his home base to let them know we’re leaving through Emerald Gate, and then says to me, over his shoulder, “sir, go red.” I lock and load around into the chambers of both my rifle and my pistol, and we’re onto the streets of Baghdad.I’m on the road today because I need to interview my client and several witnesses, all of whom are located at an outlying FOB, named Camp Headhunter, or Camp Independence, or Al Istiqlal, depending on how politically correct we’re being, or whom you’re talking to.Independence (I’m going with the most optimistic) is near the volatile Al Khark district, home of Saddam’s youth and a significant number of incredibly poor Sunni Muslims, who comprise the brunt of the Insurgency. It’s also home to Haifa Street, the most dangerous road in Baghdad, and one of the most dangerous places in all of Iraq (I find out later the soldiers have taken to calling it Grenade Alley).
Camp Independence is home to two companies of 1-9 Cavalry, a mechanized infantry unit from Ft. Hood, Texas. Their greater mission is to attain stability in the area by defeating the Insurgency. They act on intelligence from sympathetic locals, intelligence gathered on previous missions or from higher headquarters, or intelligence given to them from other units. Once they get information, which usually identifies locations of a weapons stash or a particular person the unit might be looking for – also called a High Value Target, or “HVT” – the unit commander gives an operations order to one of his subordinate units to go out and conduct a patrol of the area. It could be a show of force, a recon, a raid, or a movement to contact. In its execution, it involves anywhere from 10 – 200 men loaded for bear, getting into up-armored HMMWVs and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, driving to a pre-designated area, getting out of their vehicles, and conducting their mission on foot. In a nutshell, these men walk down the streets of a dangerous and densely populated neighborhood and try to get people to shoot at them.
I’m visiting Charlie Company, or “Crazywolf,” and they’ve had a particularly rough go of the Haifa Street area. Of the 130 men in the company, more than 80 have received Purple Hearts. All but 16 returned to duty after receiving their injuries. Of those, 13 had injuries too serious to stay in country, and 3 were killed in action. My client saw one of the thirteen lose his legs when an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) went off next to him; he saw one of the 3, a soldier who was also his roommate, take a Rocket Propelled Grenade first through the front windshield of his HMMWV, then through his head. He tells me that in the past year he’s been shot at, has had grenades thrown at him, has gone door-to-door, at night, in a huge city apartment building in search of armed men meaning to hurt him, has been near IEDs and car bombs as they exploded, and felt the collapse of air around his head that follows an RPG as it flies by. He talks the language of a soldier, acronyms in abundance – RPG, IED, VBED, CO, PL, ATL, ING, FISTER – the form so familiar and easy to me, even if some of the words are new. It’s also peppered with so many variances of “fuck” that I can’t help but smile.
We sit outside, about 150 yards from the front gate, the Bad Guys purportedly just on the other side of the wall. As I ask questions, and he answers, I hear the familiar “pop pop” of rifles, though with a rhythm and cadence I’m not used to.
“So it was about midnight when this happened?,” I ask.
“I think so,” he answers. Pop, pa-pop, I hear. The sounds are close.
“Uh hum. And you were supposed to be on guard duty?” “Roger,” he says, “me and Smith were up in the nest, when we heard the argument.” Pop pop pop pop pop.
I say, as coolly as I can muster, “Is that a gunfight?” “Roger, sir,” he says. Brrp. Pa-pop pop. Yelling. “Um hum.” I continue.
“So what did you and Smith do after you heard the arguing?” Pop pop. Brrrrrpp. Lots of yelling.
“I sent Smith down the stairs to the SOG, to see if he could find out what the fuck was going on.” Pop pa-pop. Pop pop pop. I too would like to find out what the fuck is going on. “Is that right outside the front gate?” I ask.
“Roger sir,” he says. Another soldier walks by, my client knows him, and he calls out to him. “Hey Gonzalez, you slut!” Gonzalez smiles, they exchange a touch of their closed fists, and Gonzalez continues on his way. Neither Gonzalez nor my client seem particularly concerned by the potentiality of men dying yards from where we sit, and I learn that this is, in fact, perfectly normal for the men of 1-9 Cav. Also normal are stray rounds (the camp doc was hit in the calf by a stray AK 47 round), mortars, and rockets. Less common is the occasional gate crasher-cum-suicide bomber in the form of a “VBIED”, or “Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device.” This, I realize, is a way of life for these men, and has been for the past year. They deal with it individually, but clearly share something through the commonality of their constant danger.
I spend the day conducting interviews, visiting the scene, learning what life is like for my client and his fellow soldiers. I eat in his dining facility, where lunch is a self-serve buffet of white bread, mayonnaise and mustard packets, roast beef or turkey, cheese, fruit, and bags of potato chips. I ask a soldier sitting next to me if this is what he eats everyday. “No sir,” he answers, “we get hamburgers on Tuesday and Thursday.” Shortly after lunch I’m told that a platoon of soldiers, acting on a tip that an insurgent has moved into a neighborhood friendly to American soldiers, will conduct a recon to check the veracity of the information. I want to see them when they come back, so I wait outside their living quarters. Around 1500 they return, dismounting from their vehicles once they enter the gate. I meet the NCO in charge of the patrol – the same one who told me they were going out on the mission – and I ask him about the tip.
“Roger,” he says, “the guy wasn’t there, but we talked to some neighbors. They said that there was a terrorist living there, that he wasn’t home right now, but that they were going to kill him when he got back.”
As I talk to the NCO, I watch the other soldiers as they file by. They all wear protective helmets and vests adorned with ammo pouches, flash lights, snap-links, first-aid packs – collectively known as “full battle rattle” – and dark sunglasses. Despite the relatively cool day, I can see most are sweaty as they walk by me, on their way to unwind however it is they unwind when they come back from a combat mission. Almost all are quiet, some patting my client on the shoulder as they walk by, some softly saying his name, some touching knuckles with him. Many have told me that my client, in some way or another, has saved their lives in the past year.
Time slips by quickly, and dusk is on the way. The unit is supposed to drive me back home, but they still have to turn around and come back to their own base. I remember being briefed that the roads are most dangerous early in the morning and late in the day, when insurgents have had the opportunity to emplace IEDs. I tell the First Sergeant that I’m ready to head back; he quickly and concisely gives orders to get the convoy ready. I get back into my gear and climb in the back seat of the HMMWV, but we’re momentarily held up while the First Sergeant and Platoon Leader check for a new route – two suicide bombers, both within the past 2 hours, have temporarily closed our primary and alternate routes back to my base. I get out, take off my helmet, and lean against the front hood of my HMMWV, listening to the remaining four soldiers talk as we all wait for the route check. All four of them have been here 11 months, three are from Texas, and three have had their twenty-frist birthday since they’ve been here in Iraq. The fourth is nineteen.
“Dude, I’m lead vehicle on the way back!” the rear gunner calls out to the front. “Fine,” says the front gunner, “but I get your Play Station if you die on the way home.” They all laugh. The front gunner asks me if BIAP (Baghdad International Airport) is “that way;” I say no and point the correct direction. The rear gunner, now out of his turret and sitting cross-legged on the hood of the HMMWV, asks me if I have a Leatherman. I do, and pull the utility tool from my belt and hand it to him. He proceeds to dig a piece of shrapnel out of the grill. The front gunner watches, still asking about BIAP. I live at a base near there, with a Burger King and a pizza shop, a big Post Exchange, and many other amenities in relative comfort and safety in comparison to these kids’ surroundings.
As the sun falls behind a grove of date palms, the First Sergeant returns from the Operations Center with a third route planned. He seems to be a bit more nervous than when he went in the building. I want to offer to stay the night, so they can bring me back in the morning, but the soldiers seem excited to go to the Burger King, and I don’t want to seem like I’m questioning the First Sergeant’s judgment. I remain silent and tentative.
We leave the base, going through the same ritual of “going red,” the soldiers now wearing clear-lens ballistic eyeglasses. All cars make an extra effort to give us the right of way. I ask the First Sergeant about this, and he says most of the people are used to us being here, and have learned to always give us the right of way. I suspect it’s also partly due to the placard attached to the back of the rear vehicle, proclaiming, in Iraqi-Arabic, “STAY BACK. I HAVE AUTHORITY TO KILL YOU.” From the backseat, I strain my eyes around each corner, down each alley, on each overpass, and into every vehicle we pass, looking for anything suspicious, whatever that may be.
We make it to my base without incident, though the rear gunner tells me that someone took a pot-shot at him about ten minutes after we left his FOB. For my part, I am internally frantic the entire ride home, and remain so after the convoy drops me off at my own operations center. I scramble to find them phone numbers to check the original routes, a better map, water – anything to somehow make up for getting them home so late. Despite my twelve years in the Army, I’ve made a rookie move, and I feel sick for doing so. These young men have put their lives in danger – twice – simply to get me from one base to another. I have contributed nothing except to place them at greater risk. I resolve to never do so again, and when I get back to my office I practically yell at my own attorneys to ensure they never make the same mistake.
The next morning I will email the First Sergeant and Platoon Leader my sincerest apologies, and ensure them that though it is unlikely they will need to drive me again, I will never make the same mistake with other units. I get an immediate response from both. They tell me not to worry about it, that they made it home safely, and that they are happy to do anything they can to make it easier for me to do my job, to help one of their soldiers, one of their men, one of their brothers. Despite their circumstances – away from their family and loved ones, austere living conditions, Spartan lunches, and the constant possibility of killing or being killed – despite this, it boils down to this one thing for these men: I will do my job.
For many of them, especially the young soldiers far closer to my little sister’s age than mine – kids, really – they know no politics, or global strategy, or hyper-power, or at least pretend they don’t know and don’t care. Inconsequential is the difference between Sunni and Shiite, Allawi and al Sistani, contemporary Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld circa-1983. All they know is I will do my job, and then I will go home back to Texas and so will my buddy on the .50 cal on the rear vehicle and then he can keep his own Play Station. They will do their job, and so, I promise myself, I will do mine.