Those Who Have Borne the Battle (38 page)

Establishing democracy meant working to advance the political institutions and leadership that would be required. This was a complicated task in Iraq, given the totalitarian culture that Saddam Hussein had imposed, and given the major sectarian, regional, and ethnic tensions that marked the country. Establishing democracy is not an assignment customarily given to military forces. The second complication was that the military would have even greater problems than nurturing civic institutions. American forces had to deal with distractions and nuisances, often lethal ones, and ongoing engagement with an ill-defined enemy.

By the late spring of 2003, there was an increase in insurgent attacks in Iraq, many directed at Americans. Military leaders insisted in late May, “It's a very small group—one or two people—in isolated attacks against our soldiers.” Secretary Rumsfeld at the end of June said that “I guess the reason I don't use the phrase ‘guerilla war' is because there isn't one, and it
would be a misunderstanding and a miscommunication to you and to the people of the country and the world.” His top deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, had in fact called it a guerrilla war but was fully confident that “we can win it.” General Tommy Franks and Secretary Rumsfeld publicly corrected his description. Nonetheless, by mid-July of 2003, shortly after he had replaced Franks as commander of the US Central Command, General John Abizaid said that Iraqi groups had organized “a classical guerilla-type campaign against us.”
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No one would dispute the description again.

If it was to be a continuation of resistance, it would not be as a “classical” guerrilla war. President Bush assured the country that American forces were prepared for anything. “There are some who feel like—that conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring them on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.” The president would later acknowledge that the “bring 'em on” comment was subject to criticism. He insisted that he sought to “show confidence in our troops and signal that the enemy would never shake our will.”
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By the summer the conditions on the ground had changed. Nathaniel Fick, a marine officer who had led his platoon from Kuwait to Baghdad, had been a classics major at Dartmouth. He took his platoon on an outing to Babylon in April to see this remarkable place. He later acknowledged that by summer, he would not have gone there without a fully armed group. Iraq had quickly become a dangerous place.
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Two months after President Bush proclaimed that we were ready to take on the insurgents, General Ricardo Sanchez acknowledged that “we're still at war.” And on one early July day, ten American soldiers were wounded in three separate attacks: gunfire ambushed a patrol in the Baghdad neighborhood of Kadhimiya, a rocket-propelled grenade fired into a military convoy on busy Haifa street, and in Ramadi an improvised explosive device (IED) detonated as two army vehicles passed over it. When the Humvee was disabled, wounding three soldiers on Haifa Street, other American troops moved in, according to some Iraqis, firing “indiscriminately.” One Iraqi driving a car was allegedly killed. Local residents looted the disabled vehicle, climbed on top, and chanted “God bless Muhammad,” and then set the Humvee on fire. It was a preview of the tragic scenes that would be repeated many times over the next several years.
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Retired Marine Corps general Anthony Zinni wrote about his frustration that among senior military leaders, only army general Eric Shinseki publicly challenged the plans for the Iraq engagement:

At the declared end of major combat operations on April 30, 2003, 139 American servicemen and -women (1 woman) had died in Iraq, 106 of them as a result of hostile actions. By this date, 551 had been wounded in action. There would be 347 more deaths by the end of 2003. There would never be fewer than 800 deaths in any of the years 2004 through 2007. In the eight years between the declared end of hostilities in 2003 and May 2, 2011, 4,269 more American service personnel died in Iraq, 109 of whom were women. Another 31,380 would be wounded in Iraq in the eight-year period.
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And, of course, the numbers continued to grow after May 2, 2011, although at a much slower pace. (I admit to finding the use of adjectives like
smaller
or
slower
in reference to casualties to be near-obscene. Talk to one family who lost one loved one and you realize that for each individual, this is about absolute rather than relative loss.)

By 2005 there was a growing recognition within the ranks of the military that the old overwhelming-force approach was not productive in these wars. A key individual in this process of rethinking concepts of counterinsurgency warfare was David Petraeus, now General Petraeus. He took advantage of a posting as commander at Fort Leavenworth to utilize the experience and the resources of that facility, and he
worked closely with two marine generals: James Mattis, and then James Amos. They oversaw the production of a new field manual for counterinsurgency operations.

Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl was a student of the history of counterinsurgency. His book
Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife
critically looked at the army's failure to learn from Vietnam. He wrote that in 2003 it would not have been unfair to observe that most army officers knew more about the American Civil War than they knew about counterinsurgency. His own tour of duty in Iraq in 2003–2004 resulted in some greater confidence in army adaptability, but that confidence was not sustained. The December 2006 publication of the new
Counter-Insurgency Field Manual
would lead to renewed confidence and energy.

It was, auspiciously, a joint manual for the US Army and the Marine Corps. The marines, led by General Mattis and future commandant James Conway, had already begun in al-Anbar to work with the civilians rather than overwhelming them with firepower. This had followed some of the same patterns as those in Vietnam, when the marines had deviated from the early Westmoreland tactics. And, as in Vietnam, it increased some tensions between the two services.
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The new manual eased a rivalry that dated back to Belleau Woods and had seldom been productive.

Lieutenant Colonel Nagl wrote the foreword to the manual in which he applauded the cooperation between the marines and the army. He wrote of the manual's “Zen-like” discussion about the “paradoxes” of counterinsurgencies, about the importance of nonmilitary activity, and of the essential need of the military forces to work closely with other agencies and groups. The manual insisted that good intelligence is often more important than firepower. “Population security is the first requirement of success in counterinsurgency, but it is not sufficient. Economic development, good governance, and the provision of essential services . . . must all improve simultaneously and steadily over a long period of time” if the operations are to be successful.
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In 2000, on the eve of the two wars of the first decade of the new century, there had been a number of analyses of the state of the military.
Few were unabashedly optimistic. There was a general recognition that there would never again be the “citizen soldier,” defined as one who “served the state as a result of mobilization for the defense of the state,” and someone who “was truly representative of all citizens, and he was a civilian at heart.” In fact, this profile did not accurately fit the profile of the military during the Vietnam War, either—and it had been an imperfect fit with Korea.
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Leading a study for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2000, Walter Ulmer, then a retired army general, observed that the military was the smallest force since the late 1950s. He concluded that the more professional army—with 56 percent of its personnel married—was “overworked, underpaid, and under-resourced at the cutting edge.” The report warned that “readiness and morale have slipped” and that the military was highly professional, but “under stress.”
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Ominously, his study group observed, “For many of today's youth, enlisting in the military is an alien thought. With the number of veterans dwindling, local advocates and role models are fading in number.”
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In 1999 the army “badly” missed its recruiting goal, and in 1998 the navy had a “disastrous” return. The air force had also missed its recruiting goal in 1999, and while the Marine Corps met its objectives, this had required a slight reduction in the quality of recruits, measured by high school completion and test scores. A 20 percent decline in the population between ages eighteen and twenty-two since 1980, and a stronger economy and the absence of significant attractions for most young people in the military had converged to squeeze recruiting success.

The profile of the military was changing. In 1999 18 percent of new enlistments were women. In 1973 women had composed 2.2 percent of the military.
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The new military was also far more likely to be married, more likely to have a high school diploma, and less likely to be from the northeastern states or from urban areas. It was also less likely to be white, with significant increases among Hispanic and Asian enlistees. Charles Moskos argues that the military had shifted from being an institution to becoming an occupation.
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In 1999 fewer than 6 percent of Americans under the age of sixty-five had any military experience.

There had been a brief increase in enlistments following the emotional impact of 9/11 and the engagement in military action in Afghanistan and then Iraq. This did not result in any sustained surge in enlistment. By 2005 the army was forced to overcome its recruiting shortfalls by lowering some of its minimum standards.

One analysis revealed that the problems were more than a decline in the size of eligible age groups. Within this dwindling pool, about 70 percent of young adults did not meet the army expectations: some 30 percent did not receive a high school diploma, about 17 percent were seriously overweight, and about one in three young people did not meet the intelligence-test floor. The army typically refuses to enlist anyone taking medication regularly, and anyone with a criminal record requires a waiver, which is not provided to those who have been convicted of sexually violent crimes or drug trafficking or anyone with more than one felony conviction. The potential enlistees were further reduced significantly because, according to a 2008 study, about two-thirds of high school graduates planned to enroll in college.
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When the United States became involved in the two wars, many expected that there would need to be a return to the draft. Dating back to the Gates Commission of 1970, military and civilian leaders assumed that any large, sustained war would likely require conscription. By the late '90s, probably fewer people expected such a significant step, and in fact, increasingly, the military was not described as an “all-volunteer” force, but was simply the American Military.

In 2004 Secretary Rumsfeld made very clear that there would be no Pentagon recommendation for a new draft. He calculated that with 295 million Americans, only 2.6 million active and reserve forces were serving. He was confident that pay and other incentives would enable the military to meet its goals. He noted that when he visited troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, he knew that “every single one of them stepped forward, raised their hand, and said, ‘I'm ready. I want to serve.' They are serving most professionally and proudly.”
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The new all-volunteer military tended to be more middle class, or lower middle class, than poor. It has not been dominated by minorities.
Whites and blacks have been overrepresented and Asian and Hispanic Americans underrepresented, based on their proportion of the population. Rural and small-town Americans have been disproportionately represented—and conversely, of course, urban Americans have not served proportionately. Southerners, white and black, have been the most overrepresented groups.
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The demographic pattern has been sharpened, as sons and daughters of veterans, or neighbors of veterans, are more likely to enlist than those who do not know any veterans.

One of the most fundamental differences in the new military is the proportion of women—and the wide range of responsibilities they now assume and the leadership they provide. It was not until 1967 that Congress eliminated the limit on women serving in the military as no more than 2 percent and the provision that women could not serve at the rank of colonel or general. Congress voted to admit women to the service academies in 1975 and abolished the separate Women's Army Corps in 1978, but restrictions on women serving in combat units continued. And they continue today.

In 2010 women were about 14.5 percent of the active-duty military, nearly 20 percent of the reserves, and 15 percent of the National Guard. Even though women are not serving in direct-combat units, there is often a less clear distinction in these wars that have no front lines. In Iraq and Afghanistan, most of the women killed (113 as of August 2011) were killed in what are called “combat situations.” One male sergeant, speaking of the death of a woman in his unit as the result of a bomb detonated on an Afghan road, said, “Out here, there is no male gender and no female gender.” He insisted that “our gender is soldier.”
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Although it may be that there is little gender distinction under hostile fire, of course differences—and prejudices and harassment—continue in the military. It remains a male culture—but one that women are increasingly challenging.