I am a Captain in 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, United States Army. I recently returned from a year in Iraq. I served mostly in Ar Ramadi, but was also in Baghdad, Fallujah, and other cities in the Euphrates River Valley. I am writing in response to a recent piece by Morgan Cohen '08 (The Dartmouth, "Mission Accomplished?").
Cohen expressed his belief that national leaders are out of touch with what is happening in Iraq. The reason it is called "ground truth" is that it comes from people on the ground. Having been on the ground, I can say definitively that many things you hear in the news are inaccurate or misleading.
For instance, Ar Ramadi was never ceded to any extra-governmental force. There are several thousand soldiers and Marines living in the city. I was on the streets of Ar Ramadi as recently as mid-September. Reports that Ar Ramadi fell to some band of miscreants are incorrect. The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal have recently published accurate articles that depict Ar Ramadi as it is: a city where a small group of terrorists is trying to bully the citizens into submission. The same is currently true of all of the cities Cohen listed, except for Fallujah.
I agree the Coalition Provisional Authority could have done better. However, in spite of not spending most of the $18 billion Cohen referred to, much of Iraq's infrastructure is at pre-war levels or better. Many news networks never reported it, but all coalition military units had funds to do community-based projects. These funds were largely from Saddam's stashes with some generated through oil sales. Using these funds, we went directly to community leaders and built whatever they needed built. My brigade, for example, put $23.8 million into reconstruction. We rebuilt and provisioned hundreds of schools, roads, electric projects, mosques, hospitals, and clinics. We trained over 5,000 Iraqi security force personnel. Rural areas got potable water for the first time. We built resource centers for women, providing women a place to learn to read, use computers, and start small businesses.
As is taught in Dartmouth economics courses, foreign direct investment is an excellent means of kick-starting an economy, so we facilitated meetings between investors and Iraqi businessmen. This is only a small example of the work done on a daily basis throughout Iraq. Our development techniques were similar to what I learned on my Environmental Studies FSP in Kenya: local Iraqi community leaders and citizens identified the projects and local contractors and labor built them. The economic result was a doubling of the average local income. There was a corresponding increase in the availability of goods and services to Iraqis and no inflation because the free market allowed supply to keep pace with demand. Given the ongoing violence, this was a good start toward economic recovery.
Next, I'll address the figure of 2,300 attacks in Iraq during September. First, understand that "attack" means anything from a car bombing to firing a single bullet. Secondly, we must evaluate what these statistics mean with regard to the number of Iraqis involved. I majored in engineering, so my manner of dealing with such problems is to make logical assumptions and work from there: Let's assume one attack requires 10 people. That is more people than many attacks actually require, but round up for benefit of the doubt. Let's also assume any given group averages eight attacks a month. Doing a little math, we determine that based on a rate of eight attacks a month per group, there are about 288 groups and therefore 2,880 people conducted the attacks in September. This is a tiny fraction of Iraq's population of 25 million. If we change our assumptions and say there are 30 people behind each attack and each group commits four attacks a month, we end up with 17,250 fighters. That is .07 percent of the population. Using the highest fighter estimate I ever heard, 25,000, only .1 percent of the Iraqi population is causing the trouble. This estimate range of less than 1 percent of the population is consistent with what I saw in Iraq. Knowing there are significant numbers of foreign fighters involved, the number of Iraqis involved dwindles further. Very few criminals are required to precipitate a crime spree.
Cohen asserted there is a popular uprising in Iraq. There is not. Most Iraqis simply want to live in peace. It is true Iraqis want the coalition to leave. Nobody wants foreign armies on their soil. However, Iraqis must weigh other issues against the departure of coalition forces: do I want another Saddam? Do I want to live under a Taliban-like government? Those are desired end states of the men leading the terrorist organizations.
Earlier I wrote about the success of community-based development. The terrorist reaction was to kill community leaders, bomb police stations, decapitate aid workers, and destroy anything contributing to the livelihood of Iraqis. This is in the news daily. Why would terrorists do this if they fight for the wellbeing of their countrymen? Why would they fight harder after the announcements of sovereignty and free elections? Here is the answer: the terrorists don't have popular support. They cannot win an election; therefore they fight for the dictatorship or Taliban-like government they wish to install. The truth of the matter is that the fighting right now is not about religion, nationalism, or any ideal; it is about political power. Iraqi men and women, such as Ayad Allawi, are working for a free, open, lawful society. Pitted against them are men such as Izzat Ibrahim al Duri and Abu Musa'b al Zarqawi who will destroy anything to seize power. If coalition forces left Iraq tomorrow, the various terrorist groups would destroy one another and the country to seize power. Nobody wants that. That is why we cannot leave now.
I agree with Cohen that mistakes were made in Iraq and we must continue to earn the trust of Iraqis. Abandoning them is not the best means of earning this trust, however. As you learn in Dartmouth government classes, international problems rarely have a purely military solution. Our government and others will continue to employ all the tools of national power to solve problems in Iraq. Failure in this task is not an option. Allowing Iraq to dissolve into true chaos will not win any friends in the international community.
The war is now highly political, meaning that not everything said about it is accurate. Take what you hear with a grain of salt. The Bush and Kerry plans for Iraq are more similar than you suppose and regardless of who wins the election, the victor will tell you his plan is working. This is because both candidates know we must bring stability to Iraq and the situation is not so hopeless as election-year rhetoric makes it appear.
