I am happy to say that I am home and enjoying the re-integration process with my family. What a great feeling. For those who don’t know, families of individual deploying or returning military personnel are allowed to go through security and wait at the gates at the airport, so I was able to see those five friendly family faces as I was heading up the ramp from the aircraft.
This will obviously be my final post. I will just share a couple of personal observations that are separate from what I learned with regards to my Lessons Learned duties. Many of those observations were “For Official Use Only.” These observations were more “big picture” issues and are, obviously, my opinion. I have no plans to boycott your businesses or picket in front of your house if you happen to disagree with my opinions.
First topic is the Iraqi people. The Iraqis are tired of foreigners in their country, and I am not simply talking about US troops. They are tired of Iranians, Saudis, Somalis, Syrians, and the myriad other foreign terrorist who came to kill not only Americans, but Iraqi citizens as well. The Iraqis are anxious to run their own country on their own terms, but they believe that the US needs to help them for a few more years so that they are fully capable of doing just that. As I have mentioned before, the Iraqis have come to realize that the Americans are not in Iraq to dominate them for the foreseeable future. They have learned that it is these foreign Islamo-fascists elements that came to destroy and control them, and they do not approve. The Iraqis want to govern themselves, but they want to be sure that their security forces are able to provide protection so that they can govern successfully. The Iraqis taste freedom, and most of them enjoy the taste.
Second topic is the Islamic terrorists. First of all, I think that too much time is spent by “analysts” to determine which specific Islamic group is responsible for terror incidents when they occur. Obviously there is a tactical necessity for understanding the particular terror groups in different regions across a battle field. Different groups tend to have favorite methods of killing, so it is important to know what signs to look for on a battlefield when in the vicinity of certain groups. When a major terror incident occurs somewhere in the world, at that point, does it really matter which particular Islamic group committed the atrocity? The fact is that Islamo-fascists have declared war on all non-Muslims. The world at large has not quite figured out this very obvious point. These people despise freedom, and their mission is to attack freedom wherever they find it. Who cares which sect attacked India? These were Islamo-fascists, and the Islamic terror movement at large needs to be fought. If people want to believe that Islam is a peaceful religion, that is fine, but what matters is how the terrorists view their own religion. The Salifists who believe that Islam needs to be a universal religion do not believe that their religion is one of peace. While the world bravely stands up to such threats as allowing people to utter the word “Christmas” in public, it seems to be unwilling to believe that a group of people who regularly commit mass murder (and who vow to commit further terror acts) are actually a serious threat.
The Islamic terrorists are barbarians. They kill without regard to age or sex or nationality. They use the most painful and medieval methods of torture and death possible to kill their victims. They are cowards who literally hide behind the skirts of women and they don’t hesitate to sacrifice children to advance their cause. The best way to handle a barbarian is to kill him or her, and we are fortunate that tens of thousands of them have died at American hands in Iraq alone. The world is a safer place as a result.
Third topic is the American military. The US military is without question the most professional, courageous, and skilled in the world. They are fighting in two wars where the enemy deserves no respect, yet they are treating them with respect, anyway, when they capture enemy fighters. Americans go out of their way to avoid collateral damage when they conduct combat operations while the enemy continues to kill anyone in his path. One of the reasons for the turning of the tide in Iraq is because the Iraqi people see the difference between the Americans and the Islamo-fascists who want to enslave them. A small number of individual service members have committed crimes during the wars, and unlike most militaries, ours takes action to punish those who do wrong. This shows the strength of our Armed Forces, and people like John Murtha who use individual incidents of wrong-doing to condemn the entire military are simply fools. No other military in the world goes out of its way to train its forces to minimize death and destruction while conducting war like the US military does, and no other military goes out of its way to rebuild its opponents after a war like the US has always done. In my opinion, the Army was never meant to be in the business of conducting governance and economic operations, but that is the mission that our Army was given in Iraq. Due to the innovation of our soldiers, the Army has managed to perform remarkably well even in these very non-traditional missions.
There are obviously very strong opinions on whether or not we should even be in Iraq. I personally support the war. Were weapons of mass destruction ever discovered in Iraq? Of course they were. Chemical weapons were found by the ton since 2003, and chemical weapons were discovered in the northern region of Iraq on several different occasions while I was there. I already wrote about the more than 500 tons of Yellowcake that was discovered in Iraq by the US and secretly removed this past summer to prevent the terror groups from obtaining it. Yellowcake is the base ingredient for nuclear weapons. Saddam Hussein continued to prevent international inspections of his weapons programs right up until the invasion, and the US Congress voted overwhelmingly twice to support US action in Iraq. Sure, the political winds changed when things began to go bad in Iraq in 2005 and 2006, but the changing of the political winds doesn’t change the facts as they existed in 2003. Iraq is now a Democracy and an ally, and it is no longer a threat to the US or its neighbors in the region. Saddam Hussein supported terrorists and he ran training camps for terrorists within Iraq. Terrorists are trained to commit acts of terror, not to play soccer. Those training camps no longer exist.
My time in Iraq gave me the opportunity to take another look at our own country from afar. When I see the Iraqis and their hunger for freedom, it strikes me how we in the US are so unaware of tyranny that we are lacking that very hunger that the Iraqis now have. The Iraqis have lived for years under a system where the government was to provide for every need. The economy was a command economy, and businesses existed and performed under the dictates of a central planner. Freedom of speech existed as long as the opinion was approved by the central government. The challenge to the Iraqi people is that they still do not know how to take the initiative. They are unsure of how to start or run their own businesses, and they are afraid to step up to try to solve problems in their communities because in the past, the people have always waited on the government to take care of every problem or issue. We are teaching the Iraqis to reach out to others in their own communities because the whole concept is foreign to them; why worry about the orphans when that is the government’s job? Socialism sucks the soul out of people. They don’t live; they just exist from day to day as they wait for the government to take care of their needs. My obvious point is that it is astounding to me that so many people in the US can somehow believe that the US will be a better place as big government is given more control over our lives, as if some career politician has the answer to our everyday problems. The common thread between every Socialist society is that those who dictate to the masses how they should live always seem to live under a very different set of rules themselves – rules that tend to place them in the very lifestyle that they criticize if obtained in the private sector. I think that it is well past time for those in the US who value freedom to push back hard against the onslaught of a government that doesn’t remotely resemble the limited government authorized by our founding document. Tyranny comes in many forms, and a government that dictates to its citizens rather than serves its citizens is not the government that US Armed Forces have fought for over the years. If freedom is worth fighting for over seas, then it is certainly worth fighting for at home, and that is a fight in which everyone has a responsibility to participate.
The final attached picture is unintentionally symbolic with regards to Iraq. Note the teen on the left giving a harsh look to the teen on the right. The Iraqi people, in general, have learned to respect and trust the Americans, but they still have a ways to go to learn to respect and trust each other across tribal and religious boundaries, and I think the picture captures that reality very well.
This about wraps up the account of this trip to Iraq. I would like to wish everyone a great Christmas season and I look forward to seeing many of you in the near future.
Take care.
