23 March 2007
More Soon
Five years into this war, most of my contemporaries are done with the business of fighting. I hung it up on September 1st, 2003, disturbed by what was happening in the Global War on Terror and following the maxim I had been taught all those years: "When it ceases to be fun, retire. You will know when."
I knew. I knew so many things, and most of them were not good. I was glad I sent the letter requesting transfer to the retired list. The time was right.
This morning marks the thirtieth anniversary of an odd moment in a shop-worn recruiting station in Detroit. I raised my hand, and a Navy Lieutenant with a wry grin asked me if I would swear to protect and defend the Constitution, and I said, "OK."
A yeoman handed me a piece of paper that authorized me to return home to await the reporting date to Aviation Officer Training School. Before I left the building, they made me watch a short film called "Pressure Point," featuring the antics of the Marine Drill Instructors who would soon attempt to convince me to abandon the whole enterprise.
It was easy enough to leave. All you had to do was raise a hand and ask to leave. Officially, they called it "Drop on Request." In keeping with the traditions of the cryptic institution I was joining, was shortened to "DOR."
The theory of the time, in a post-Vietnam environment, was that the service could afford to lose a few in the training process to assure uniform quality. The spooks were lumped in with the aviators for training. After all, if you can't handle some guy shouting at you, how could you be expected to handle a jet on a black night in back of a boat whose deck undulated with the movement of the dark waves?
I expect they were right, though in wartime there is a pressure to keep men and women in the pipeline, moving forward.
That is the case today, and there are people carrying weapons a half a world away who would not have been permitted to serve in the heyday of the All Volunteer Force. The standards have always been arbitrary, and based on need. Despite what you hear, morale remains high in the force, despite the fact that this is as ugly a conflict as has ever existed.
Public Law in the form of the Officer Personnel Management Act would have obligated me to be retiring now anyway, thirty and done, up or out all over. Nowhere further up to go, as judged by a panel of officers, and thus the only way was out.
I don't know if I could have accomplished anything worthwhile in the last couple years. A last hurrah in the combat zone could have been possible. An officer I admire greatly did just that, and he is on an airplane out of Baghdad today, headed for a reunion with his family in a safer place in South Asia, and then home.
General Petraeus gave him a medal a couple days ago, and the Ambassador honored him with a State Department award. An unusual two-fer, as ceremonies go, and a demonstration of just how valuable he has been.
The bad guys appear to be disconcerted by the new strategy on seize-and-hold. Some of the Sunnis Sheikhs are aligning with the elected government against the insurgents. There is the possibility that the situation could be turning around, just at the moment that the Congress is ready to pull the fiscal plug.
There is no question that the situation remains dire, though hope dies hard. Thirty years of experiences tells me that it is the people who make the difference. The list of might-have-beens in this sad affair haunt me.
The decision to invade was made, according to someone in a position to know, based on a late-night solitary prayer. The fighting went well enough, once begun, due to the courage and resources afforded the people who were directed to do it.
I heard General Jay Garner on the radio this morning. He is the tough and pragmatic military man who had been put in charge of the reconstruction, and might have tough and pragmatic enough to stabilize the situation. He was abruptly relieved by effete Paul Bremer in May of 2003, just about the time I was contemplating pulling my own plug.
If there was a spectacular moment of mis-management, his appointment represents it. You can look through the report of the Iraq Study group for his contributions, but you will find nothing.
The Bad Guys are still potent, and agile in their way. They put a Hizballah-style Katyusha rocket within fifty yards of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's press conference the other day. This morning an attempt was made on the life of the deputy Prime Minister, a Sunni. It was a demonstration of resolve on their part, just like the suicide bomber who hit the gate in Afghanistan when the vice President was there last month.
I got a note from another pal who is safe at the moment, but going back. She is a government civilian, and she is working somewhere in al-Anbar, doing her best to put things back together. She travels to work in an H-46 helicopter and is optimistic. She wears body armor like the people who protect her, and has cropped her hair short for easier maintenance now that the heat is rising and wearing the helmet make grooming a challenge
She has a while to go on her assignment, and I will not be able to fully exhale until she too is safe. That is an exercise in self-delusion, since there will only be more good people in place, facing the same danger. I will just have the luxury of not knowing them.
She said that the best advice she had received to accomplish her mission was to find the people she could trust, with the proviso that she should not trust anyone.
Her note closed with her traditional admonition that there will be "more soon." I expect that she is absolutely right.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com