News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Sisters Country veterans of the war in Iraq have been watching the unfolding events in that country with dismay and disgust.
Militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) have overrun Mosul, the second-largest city in the country and effectively control a swath of territory across eastern Syria and northern and western Iraq.
Iraqi security forces the United States armed and trained to the tune of billions of dollars have run away in vast numbers, abandoning their arms and equipment. And The Wall Street Journal reports that Iranian Quds Force and Revolutionary Guards border troops are in-country, protecting the territory and holy shrines of their Shiite co-religionists. That creates a bizarre scenario in which, if the U.S. intervenes with more arms and air strikes to shore up the Shia-led Iraqi government, we might be effectively fighting on the same side as Iran.
"The current events in Iraq reveal several things horribly disturbing to not only myself, but (to) anyone who has served in the military in the last 12 years, and it is a huge kick in the gut," said Brett Miller, who was severely wounded in an IED attack in Iraq while serving there with the Oregon National Guard.
McKibben Womack served as a U.S. Marine in Iraq. He noted that there was debate among Marines during his deployment as to whether the U.S. should be in Iraq, but everybody wanted to get the job done.
"Even the guys who were adamant, 'No we shouldn't be here,' all they wanted to do was serve our country, to do the right thing."
Since he returned to Sisters, Womack has done a lot of reading trying to get a handle on the war. The more he studies, he said, "The more I'm convinced that we just didn't have a good plan ... the whole thing wasn't executed very well ... You do wonder, well, was it all worth it?"
Miller saw benefits to the work he and his comrades did in Iraq.
"The time that I spent deployed in the country was full of good and bad, but the main premise was we were doing the 'right thing,'" Miller told The Nugget. "I have seen firsthand the devastation that the very small percentile of the population - insurgents - were doing, and we made it our point as a military to be there for those who couldn't do for themselves. We all made friends with the population, we all had memorable experiences in the small villages that relied on our strength...
"However, this came at a great cost," said Miller, who currently works with the Wounded Warrior Project to aid injured veterans. "Nearly 4,500 all-volunteer service men and women gave their lives to a country that was in dire need. More than 250,000 servicemen and women are still battling debilitating physical and psychological wounds years after returning home. Currently 22 veterans commit suicide a day, and this number is rising as we speak."
Miller may be dismayed by what he sees happening in Iraq, but he is not surprised.
"...veterans are now watching the years of their deployments and interrupted lives away from family and country seem to mean nothing, after the same hallowed ground where comrades shed blood is now becoming worse than before due to the current administration withdrawing the U.S. forces," he said. "If you were to take a poll of all the military branches about the withdrawal, they would have said the same thing: 'Not a good idea,' or 'The country will fall apart.'"
Captain Brad Shultz, U.S. Marine Corps Reserves, lives in Bend and has worked with kids at Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch. He was in Iraq for the 2007 "Surge."
"It's disappointing to see that we did not leave enough advisors on the ground for them to remain stable," he said, noting that the absence of government control - whether in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya or Iraq - "allows the jihadists to operate freely."
Womack concurred with that assessment. A swath of jihadi-controlled territory in Syria and Iraq is a security threat.
"It's great territory for training camps, for launching whatever they think they need to launch."
Captain Shultz said that if he were making the decisions, "I would send Iraq whatever support it needs to remain stable... Too many people have died over there to just let it fall apart."
Womack agrees.
"I think we need a presence in the Middle East for our own interests." That could include putting boots back on the ground "just to provide some stability."
But being in the position to need to do something like that casts doubt for Womack on the validity of the whole endeavor.
He notes that there was some value to shifting the terrorists' target from the U.S. homeland to the U.S. military in Iraq. But, on balance, he says, "It's a lot worse than when we got there. I don't think we should have gone into Iraq, I guess. Yeah... I guess I don't think so."
It took massive U.S. resources to hold a country split along religious, ethnic, and tribal lines together - a task that seems beyond the Iraqi security forces to handle themselves.
"At one point during the height of the Iraq campaign we had nearly 200,000 highly motivated ... troops on ground and it still was a stretch for our forces to conduct our jobs effectively," Miller said. "How are these local military and police going to able to stand up to these ISIS fighters? By laying down their U.S.-bought weapons and equipment in accordance with the major backers or tribes of the area, in order to regain control of their particular region. Then all that military equipment gets shipped off to Syria. Everything we actually did for Iraq is literally getting 'erased' or shipped out. It's a mess."
And there may be no real way to fix that mess. Sectarian civil war is a looming possibility.
"That situation has always been kept just below the boiling point," Captain Shultz noted.
Partition into separate Kurdish, Shiite, and Sunni zones sounds viable, but with the exception of an autonomous "Kurdistan," it may not be practical, at least not without serious disruption of peoples.
"There's not really clear dividing lines on where that would be," Captain Shultz said. "Nationalism is probably the best thing that could happen to Iraq - if they could think of themselves as Iraqis instead of as Shia and Sunnis."
Of course that kind of nationalism is not in Iran's interest, and that regional power appears likely to continue to actively support the Shiite majority in Iraq.
The Iraq war and its fallout are likely to be debated for decades to come: Whether the U.S. invasion was justified or strategically sound from the beginning; whether the timing and scale of withdrawal was wise; whether the United States should scale up or scale back its engagement in the region.
But regardless of historical verdicts, the service members who fought the war and are watching its aftermath are the Americans who have paid the most significant price for our policy.
Miller offers a plea to the Sisters community for recognition that the current events in Iraq are an ugly blow to people who bled and saw friends die there: "I pray that those who read this may understand the despair and anguish that will be in the hearts of the military community and realize this feels like a giant failure to some. Be rational about your conversations with the veteran and military community about the topic and let them know you support them emotionally - and be sure to let them know, 'it's not your fault.'"
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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