I’ve got the last shift on our holiday rotation; I’ll be shutting down the office in a few hours. We maintain communication with headquarters with a computer console linked with a voice-over-internet system. A map of Baghdad with multiple icons indicates recent incidents in our battlespace. I can call up various overlays showing unit boundaries, critical municipal infrastructure, political divisions, etc. We’ve come a long way since the grease pen. I’ve got to keep an ear open for any calls to the ‘Embassy LNO’, our new designation since our office was technically disbanded last week. Lieutenant Colonel M. has just left, leaving me the last one in the office on this Christmas Night. He’s the justice expert; he worked with all the judges here in Baghdad. He’s an army JAG, but he’s looking forward to getting back to his other job designing fuel cells at NASA. He really enjoys corny jokes – more than you think he ought to. He may have a way for me to sneak into the Saddam trial; I’ll let you know if that pans out.
The CNN television in the corner (we’re not allowed to change the channel; in my solitude I may take a risk and flip over to BBC later on) continues to show some retrospective montage of the year; it’s pretty much all about tsunamis and earthquakes and hurricanes. Then there’s the segment on famous dead people – I don’t remember King Fahd being such a headline grabber this year; they place him right before the Pope in the segment that I’ve seen repeated several times already today.
So, exactly how the heck does somebody like me end up with my job? I figured I’d attempt to come up with an answer to this question in case you were wondering. A little bit of serendipity, perhaps. It really is designed for somebody of a much higher rank, but after a couple of Civil Affairs rotations there just isn’t the manpower in the army reserves to fill it. And frankly, when you pull guys out of the reserves, personal experience usually trumps rank in many cases. My NCO counterpart, John, is actually a State Department foreign service office; he’s taking a big pay cut to be here – and since he actually outranks many of the actual State guys here, he’s had to adjust to being ‘just’ an army sergeant here. I’ve been lucky in a couple of ways; I’ve been given a lot of leeway in who I get to talk to and I’ve taken it. One of the positives of pulling in so many reservists into these Civil Affairs positions is that we’re more likely not to restrict ourselves within a job description as is somebody who’s on active duty. I make meetings with all of these guys because I actually like talking to them; I’m not worried about making the next promotion or competing with my peers to get the next plum job opening. Our division commander, as I’ve mentioned before, hasn’t been interested in dealing directly with these Iraqi political leaders (he has a much closer relationship with the police and army leadership) – that has opened up a lot of contacts for me; I’m generally the only uniformed guy they talk to – they know I can speak on behalf of the general. My relationship with the State guy with the Baghdad portfolio has helped too- he’s retired Air Force and thus hasn’t been as defensive about sharing information as I’ve found many State folks to be. He’s out of town now for the holidays and I’ve taken over running the weekly team meetings; sort of a tacit agreement we’ve made. Our team consists of State, USAID, Army Corps of Engineers and some of the division engineers and civil affairs guys. It has been a loose committee for the past several months; the big transition that we are going through (and Secretary Rice briefed to Congress recently) is that we are going to make it a unified organization, with a command structure shared between State and Defense. To be honest, it’s been a headache thus far. There are cultural divisions; there are personality differences; simple procedural methods become complicated. I’ve been told that USAID is deliberately keeping information away from the military; the intent is to maintain a certain independence (which I can understand and feel may be justified in some ways) but there are instances where the lack of communication between us has actually damaged our relationships with Iraqis (a lot of he said, she said) and in all likelihood has set back our efforts to rebuild a government.
It rained the day before yesterday. Actual raindrops. The pavement became moist before evaporation removed evidence of the event. We are still waiting for the winter rains; anticipated because they will lead to overflowing the sewer system. I was trying to find a good reason to look forward to the change in weather; alas, every silver lining here drags along its crap-clogging cloud.
We got together last night for a little Christmas get-together. Some of us are closer to the State and USAID folks, and thus get invited to their soirees. The military is under General Order Number One, which prohibits imbibing alcohol. One of the justifications for such a rule is that it offends our Muslim hosts. Our friends in the State Department are allowed to get drunk off their diplomatic asses. Go figure. The military guys are billeted here in small 6x20 trailers, two to a trailer. (And compared to many other bases, we live in luxury.) State folks get the trailer to themselves. USAID has an entire compound with single-occupancy villas for their employees and contractors. Each house has a fully-furnished kitchen, bedroom and living room with couches, a recliner, dresser, entertainment hutch, satellite TV, internet and a phone that makes outgoing international calls. Many folks here working for State or USAID are not on the GS scale, they work under contract. It is not uncommon for these contactors to make six-figure salaries; they are also entitled to a two-week vacation every 90 days they are in country. Army soldiers get two weeks for the entire year they are here.
To be honest, it’s been a challenging week. Another Iraqi friend has been assassinated. Again, someone who has worked tirelessly for the past three years to make his country a place he could be proud of. Cut down by thugs; criminals; terrorists; bastards. And a good friend of mine is in the hospital, recuperating after an IED attack on his convoy. We lost two good soldiers. They were out helping the local fire company deal with a chemical spill in the Tigris. I rushed over to the hospital; there seemed to be some unusual activity at the information desk but I wasn’t paying attention- I was asking about my friend when the specialist mentioned the fact that the Secretary of Defense was standing right behind me. I found Roger upstairs; a couple of minutes later Mr. Rumsfeld paid a visit accompanied by General Casey. They were working their way around the entire hospital, visiting injured soldiers. Roger’s not too bad off, considering his driver and gunner were killed nearly instantly. He weakly sat up to shake Rumsfeld’s hand; his leg has shrapnel damage and his left hand took a hit and needed stitches across three fingers. His face has a blast burn on the left side from his ear to his nose. Rumsfeld asked about the kind of mission he was on; Roger told the short version; then he introduced me. Rumsfeld turned to me and said, “So you’re a reservist – and you guys volunteered to come here? Thank you for your service, Captain. Thank you.” He shook my hand and the entourage moved out into the hall. The memorial service was a few days later; much like a family funeral these services are generally the only times to see friends stationed on the many bases across Baghdad, and much like family funerals, they fluctuate between being somber and bittersweet affairs.
Merry Christmas, everybody. Thanks for all the cards and calls and packages and emails – they have been very much appreciated. I’m going to shut down the office now, follow the correct procedures for turning off the equipment, securing the classified documents and making sure the coffee pot is unplugged. I’ve documented a call I received that one of the water treatment plants has lost power; a pretty regular occurrence, but still something that will require immediate attention by our team in the morning. I contemplate leaving cookies out; an aesthetic gesture evoking the season – but my concerns about rodent infestation prevent me. The TV stays on; CNN will continue to loop, unwatched, throughout the night; the memories of the past year will flicker across the walls as images of the dead and the destroyed are projected into the dark. And then the morning will come once again.
