discussions on the Iraq war.
Andy
No One Asked Us
By Major Stan Coerr, USMCR
George Bush coalesced American support behind invading Iraq, I am told,using
two arguments: Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and the capability to
deliver them, and Iraq was a supporter of Al-Qaeda terrorism, and may have
been involved in the attacks of 9/11. Vicious words and gratuitous
finger-pointing keep falling back on these points,as
people insist that "we" were misled into what started as a dynamic liberation
and has become a bloody counterinsurgency.
Watching politicians declaim and hearing television experts expound on why we
went to war and on their opinions of those running the White House and Defense
Department,I have one question. When is someone going to ask the guys who were
there?
What about the opinions of those whose lives were on the line, massed on the
Iraq-Kuwait border beginning in February of last year? I don't know how
President Bush got the country behind him, because at the time I was living in
a hole in the dirt in northern Kuwait. Why have I not heard a word from
anyone who actually carried a rifle or flew a plane into bad guy
country last year, and who has since had to deal with the ugly aftermath of a
violent liberation? What about the guys who had the most to lose...what do
they think about all this?
I was there. I am one of those guys who fought the war and helped keep the
peace. I am a Major in the Marine Reserves, and during the war I was the
senior American attached to the 1 Royal Irish Battlegroup, a rifle battalion
of the British Army. I was commander of five U.S. Marine air/naval gunfire
liaison teams, as well as the liaison officer between U.S. Marines and British
Army forces. I was activated on January 14, 2003, and 17 days later I and my
Marines were standing in Kuwait with all of our gear, ready to go to war.
I majored in Political Science at Duke, and I graduated with a Masters degree
in government from the Kennedy School at Harvard. I understand realpolitik,
geopolitical jujitsu, economics and the reality of the Arab world. I know the
tension between the White House, the UN, Langley and Foggy Bottom. One of my
grandfathers was a two-star Navy admiral; my other
grandfather was an ambassador. I am not a pushover, blindly following whoever
is in charge, and I don't kid myself that I live in a perfect world But the
war made sense then, and the occupation makes sense now.
As dawn broke on March 22, 2003, I became part of one of the largest and
fastest land movements in the history of war. I went across the border
alongside my brothers in the Royal Irish, following the 5th Marine Regiment
from Camp Pendleton as they swept through the Ramaylah oil fields. I was one
those guys you saw on TV every night- filthy, hot, exhausted. I
think the NRA and their right-to-bear-arms mantra is a joke, but by God I was
carrying a loaded rifle, a loaded pistol and a knife on my body at all times.
My boots rested on sandbags on the floor of my Humvee, there to protect me
from the blast of a land mines or IED. I killed many Iraqi soldiers, as they
tried to kill me and my Marines. I did it with a radio,
directing airstrikes and artillery, in concert with my British artillery
officer counterpart, in combat along the Hamar Canal in southern Iraq.
I saw, up close, everything the rest of you see in the newspapers: dead
bodies, parts of dead bodies, helmets with bullet holes through them,
handcuffed POWs sitting in the sand, oil well fires with flames reaching 100
feet into the air and a roar you could hear from over a mile away.
I stood on the bloody sand where Marine Second Lieutenant Therrel Childers was
the first American killed on the ground. I pointed a loaded weapon at another
man for the first time in my life. I did what I had spent 14 years training
to do, and my Marines - your Marines - performed so well it still brings tears
to my eyes to think about it. I was proud of what we
did then, and I am proud of it now.
Along with the violence, I saw many things that lifted my heart. I saw
thousands of Iraqis in cities like Qurnah and Medinah - men, women, children,
grandparents carrying babies - running into the streets at the sight of us,
the first Western army to arrive. I saw them screaming, crying, waving,
cheering. They ran from their homes at the sound of our
Humvee tires roaring in from the south, bringing bread and tea and cigarettes
and photos of their children. They chattered at us in Arabic, we spoke to
them in English, and neither understood the other. The entire time I was in
Iraq, I had one impression from the civilians I met: Thank God, finally
someone has arrived with bigger men and bigger guns to be, at
last, on our side.
Let there be no mistake, those of you who don't believe in this war: the
Ba'ath regime were the Nazis of the second half of the 20th century. I saw
what the murderous, brutal regime of Saddam Hussein wrought on that country
through his party and their Fedayeen henchmen. They raped, murdered, tortured,
extorted and terrorized those in that country for 35 years. There are mass
graves throughout Iraq only now being discovered. 1st Battalion, 5th Marines,
out of Camp Pendleton, liberated a prison in Iraq populated entirely by
children The Ba'athists brutalized the weakest among them, and killed the
strongest.
I saw in the eyes of the people how a generation of fear reflects in the human
soul.
The Ba'ath Party, like the Nazis before them, kept power by spreading out,
placing their officials in every city and every village to keep the people
under their boot. Everywhere we went we found rifles, ammunition, RPG rounds,
mortar shells, rocket launchers, and artillery. When we took over the southern
city of Ramaylah, our battalion commander tore down the
Ba'ath signs and commandeered the former regime headquarters in town (which,
by the way, was 20 feet from the local school.) My commander himself took
over the office of the local Ba'ath leader, and in opening the desk of that
thug found a set of brass knuckles and a gun. These are the people who are
now in prison, and that is where they deserve to be.
The analogy is simple. For years, you have watched the same large, violent
man come home every night, and you have listened to his yelling and the crying
and the screams of children and the noise of breaking glass, and you have
always known that he was beating his wife and his children. Everyone on the
block has known it. You ask, cajole, threaten and beg him to stop, on behalf
of the rest of the neighborhood. Nothing works. After listening to it for 13
years, you finally gather up the biggest, meanest guys you can find, you go
over to his house, and you kick the door down. You punch
Him in the face and drag him away. The house is a mess, the family poor and
abused...but now there is hope. You did the right thing.
I can speak with authority on the opinions of both British and American
infantry in that place and at that time. Let me make this clear: at no time
did anyone say or imply to any of us that we were invading Iraq to rid the
country of weapons of mass destruction, nor were we there to avenge 9/11. We
knew we were there for one reason: to rid the world of a
tyrant, and to give Iraq back to Iraqis.
None of us had even heard those arguments for going to war until we returned,
and we still don't understand the confusion. To us, it was simple. The world
needed to be rid of a man who committed mass murder of an entire people, and
our country was the only one that could project that much power that far and
with that kind of precision. We don't make policy decisions: we carry them
out. And none of us had the slightest doubt about how right and good our
actions were.
The war was the right thing to do then, and in hindsight it was still the
right thing to do. We can't overthrow every murderous tyrant in the world,
but when we can, we should. Take it from someone who was there, and who stood
to lose everything. We must, and will, stay the course. We owe it to the
Iraqis, and to the world.
Stan Coerr is a SuperCobra attack helicopter pilot and Forward Air Controller,
who was recently selected for Lieutenant Colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve.
He lives in San Diego
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