Iraq and leadership

Some quick, initial thoughts on the coming fall of Iraq to Sunni insurgents or terrorists or whatever. Especially as it relates to President Obama's actions or in-actions.

First off, many veterans of Iraq are understandably upset that what we sacrificed so much (and so many) for, is being lost back to what is essentially a terrorist group. My unit lost a Soldier while we were deployed, to an accident. However I don't have the same visceral anger over Iraq falling that many do. Maybe because I never really felt a connection to Iraq, but only to my fellow Soldiers. We serve our country and we went there to free the Iraqi people, but when it comes down to it, we fight for each other.

The current situation didn't have to happen. We could have left a residual force in Iraq, which I believe would have helped keep the peace we fought so hard to finally achieve. Obviously there was still violence when we left, but when it comes to Iraq you have to think in relative terms. President Obama decided not to leave a force. I think it's important to look at that decision.

Should we have left a military force in Iraq? It depends, in my opinion, on whether you can look at the problem objectively or not. How much distance can you get from the situation? Up close, the answer is easy: Hell no! I know I personally didn't want to go back and I didn't want any of my Soldiers to go back. (But for a completely different reason than you might think. I'll get to that.) The American people were against leaving any Soldiers in Iraq.

So the President did what the people wanted. He got everyone out of Iraq. And I think the President understands his mandate from the people when it comes to Afghanistan and other places where some have been calling for U.S. military intervention. Egypt, Syria, Nigeria, Ukraine. But Obama knows us, we don't want to get involved, and we certainly don't want to send Americans to fight and die for abstract ideals and people who show little appreciation for our sacrifices.

I don't blame Obama for making these decisions. However...

Is what the people want always what they should get? Is that leadership? Looked at from some distance, the proverbial 30,000 foot view, what is the objectively "right thing" to do?

The people who fought there, and their families, often seem to understand much better than the rest of t he American people what is really at stake. We used to say "we are fighting them in Iraq so we don't have to fight them at home". Which is a way of expressing the idea that if we pull back behind our borders and disengage with the rest of the world, eventually the world is going to come knocking anyway.

And of course, it's not just our safety and security at stake. America really is the "essential nation". No other nation can do what we can do. We have provided peace and security to most of the world for the past 70 years. The wonderful quasi-socialist states of Europe which we are told we should emulate, have only been possible because they sub-contracted their security needs out to the United States. We, and the rest of the developed world, built the modern economy and culture we enjoy in large part based on the free flowing oil from the middle east. And it only flowed freely because of the strength of the United States.

The question then is: what will the world look like when the American people decide we are no longer interested in keeping the world's peace? I think we are seeing that play out already. Russia is getting aggressive and the middle east is falling into chaos. Terrorists kidnap little girls and know that nobody is coming for them.

So this is a leadership issue. In the Army leadership training we talk about choosing the "hard right over the easy wrong". Very often your Soldiers pressure you to let them out of the dirty, tedious work, like weapon cleaning after a long field problem or cleaning the trash out of the vehicles after a long convoy. As a leader you often have to be the bad guy.

Good leaders know that not all of their decisions will be popular. Really good leaders figure out how to "bring the troops along" with them. Make them see the long term benefit of doing the hard thing. This is how you develop future leaders, by the way. The President is not a good leader. He is doing what the people want, but in my opinion, he's not doing what is best for us.

The "hard right" would have been leaving some troops in Iraq. The "easy wrong" was getting out. The easy wrong is apparently our default mode going forward. This will result in more suffering for vulnerable people around the world in the short term, and a more dangerous world in the long term. Who else is going to step into the void we create when we step back from the world? The United Nations? No.

All that said, I'm glad the President is not sending us out to police the world any more. How can I say that after I just said the world will be more dangerous if we pull back? Easy. I don't want another generation of Soldiers sent out to do the hard, dirty (and deadly) work that needs to be done in some foreign land, only to be told when they come home that their efforts were a waste.

I had that experience in 2004 coming back from Iraq and I don't want to see it happen again. Individual people have great respect and appreciation for their military, and I appreciate that. But as a country we don't have the stomach to lead any longer. So I'd rather the world descend into chaos (Sorry world!) than send kids off to war as heroes and welcome them back as victims.

Raising Awareness

What is bothering me a lot right now is this "hashtag diplomacy" as it's being called. The First Lady and a bunch of celebrities are tweeting selfies holding signs that say "#bringbackourgirls". The idea apparently being to let the terrorists of Boko Haram, who kidnapped 300 Nigerian girls, know that we want the terrorists to give the girls back.

This is after we've seen some State Department officials using their personal twitter feeds to make comments about Putin and the situation in Ukraine, among other things.

They think Putin and the terrorists in Nigeria are going to care because... well, that's not entirely clear. But it's understandable with this particular crowd (liberals) because they equate raising awareness with doing something. When liberals say, "It's the least I could do!" they mean that literally.

And it's actually gotten worse over the years. It used to be that you would run a 5K race where a part of the entry fee goes to cancer research. Then at least something goes to the researchers. If you post a selfie on twitter or instagram, no assistance goes to anyone. When you ran the 5K you got a t-shirt so everyone would know you did it, (which is really the point, right?) With twitter you get the narcissism without the effort or expense. It's a win/win!

But that's not really what bothers me about the current situation. It's the logical disconnect, the lack of awareness of cause and effect. I've written about this before, how liberals can't quite seem to connect the dots between their various positions.


'We don't want to be the world's policeman! How dare we insist our culture is superior to another culture! Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an Islamaphobe who shouldn't be allowed to speak!"

How do liberals square these positions with the #bringbackourgirls twitter campaign?

If we are not the world's policeman, no one else is going to be either. So who exactly do they think is going to step up to bring these girls back? The UN?

SOMEONE should do SOMETHING! Yeah, well, "someone" has been the U.S. military since about 1945. And no one looks eager to tag in. "Something" in this case is going to be force of some kind. No one is taking our warnings and strongly worded statements any more seriously than they ever took them from the UN.

I guess the most irritating thing about liberals at the moment is the sudden interest in what happens to little girls in the Islamic world. None of this is new. You should see how they treat them in Afghanistan, and don't ask what the little boys go through. Or maybe do ask.

But really liberals? You are just waking up to the serious mistreatment of women and children under Islam?

Maybe you should stop shouting down every guest speaker who tries to come to your college to talk about something uncomfortable. You might learn something about the world.

I suppose I should just be happy that liberals are starting to notice what goes on in parts of the world that people in private jets don't usually visit. For example, hollywood is currently boycotting a Beverly Hills hotel because the middle eastern country that owns it (!) adopted Sharia law.

Not because of how women are treated under Sharia, mind you. But over treatment of gays. Which is also not new. Iran executes gays. Just saying. Look it up. Been going on for a long time.

Anyway, back to the cause and effect I mentioned earlier. We decided with the election of Obama that we didn't want to participate in solving the world's problems anymore. He ran on that, and we elected him.

It pisses me of to see the very people who wanted the U.S. to play a smaller role in the world wringing their hands now and wishing someone would do something. The reason is a little complex, but stay with me.

There are two ways of going about "doing something". We can wait until something bad happens, like 300 little girls get kidnapped, and then try to go in and save them. The problems with this scenario are many. Like the girls are suffering from the first hour, and without bases nearby, or any previous arrangements with whatever third-world shithole country they happen to be in, the rescue would be a long time in coming. Also that most of the countries in which this might happen won't let us conduct military operations there, and just sending in some drones without permission would be a violation of international law.

The other way involves spreading democracy and trying to help these people into the current century where we don't mutilate the genitals of little girls or rape little boys as a matter of course. This is a long process that requires staying engaged with the world and, sometimes, getting dirty with the bad guys to let them know what is and isn't acceptable behavior.

This seems to me to be the better choice, but we decided we don't want to do that, didn't we liberals? So it's time to make some hard choices, isn't it?

No, lol, not really! I know how this will work for liberals. Before the glow of "raising awareness" by tweeting your hashtag selfie has faded, some evil right-winger will try to cut funding for free birth-control pills and before you can tweet "#firstworldproblems", those little girls will be forgotten.