Tom Tomorrow has posted an excerpt from Paul Rieckhoff's new book, Chasing Ghosts. Wow, is all I can say.
In addition to buying the book, which you'll almost certainly want to do after reading the excerpt, you might enjoy watching or listening to an interview with Rieckoff, courtesy of American Microphone.
Tech notes: The AM site is a little annoying in that it has Flash on its home page. (The link I posted bypasses the first page, assuming you don't get redirected back to the real home page.) If you want to watch the interview, you'll need Flash 8 installed anyway. You probably already automatically have Flash 8 installed if you've been keeping your browser up to date.
If you're like me, you consider watching interviews between two people just sitting in chairs a fairly significant waste of bandwidth, for reasons I have ranted about elsewhere. AM, however, is nice enough to provide just the audio, via their podcast.
The podcast (link above) is hosted on the iTunes site. (It's free, don't worry.) Clicking the link will launch iTunes if you have it installed on your machine. If you don't, I'm not sure what will happen. Probably you'll get taken to a page on the iTunes site that allows you to download the program. I have it on my PC (in addition to my Mac, of course), and it runs fine. Questions? Post 'em! Also, if you have something other than iTunes for listening to podcasts, please post a comment to tell me what happened when you followed the link.
If podcasting seems like something you'd rather not get involved with right now, I'd be happy to burn you a copy of the interview onto a CD. Just ask.
TC might want to weigh in on the quality of the Paul Rieckhoff interview, whenever the USPS gets around to delivering his CD.
5 comments:
Thanks for the pressure forcing me to come up with a response, Brendan, LOL.
Both these interviews are worth listening to. My impression of PR is that he's a supporter of the war, but just thinks it should be done right. We should have the gear needed like armoured cars and bullet proof vests and things like that. The soldiers should have clear rules of engagement, Americans soldiers shouldn't be killing civilian women and children, but you can understand why they are frustrated and these things can happen. You shouldn't protest the war because it looks like you aren't supporting the troops.
What I find lacking in his comments is any sense that wars don't solve anything and ultimately if Israel is to exist side by side with Arab countries in peace there has to be a negotiated, non-military agreement.
He's against this war not because all wars are bad, but because this one isn't being pursued correctly.
If we had the right equipment, the right leaders, the right strategy and so on, the neocon strategy could work. Support our troops. He doesn't actualy say this, this is what I take from it. He heads Iraq Vets against the war because the war isn't being done right, not because the war itself is wrong.
Personally, I like Rhodes scholar, Rachel Maddow's, stance better. She's for protesting the war even on army bases so what if it has the appearance of not supporting the troops. Of course there's more to the interviews, but I chose these as illustrative of their positions.
BTW FYI what happened when I clicked on the podcast link was just what you predicted. I got offered the chance to download the software (which I passed on.)
Thanks for your comments, TC, and thanks for the report on the result of clicking on the podcast link.
I didn't remember Paul Rieckoff as sounding as gung-ho as you heard, so I went back and had another listen.
There is no doubt that he is a soldier, and as such, talks in some detail about the lower-level mistakes made in prosecuting the war, rather than the high-level debate of whether we should be there in the first place.
However, you get a sense of his attitude about the war itself from the excerpt that I mentioned in the original post. He's on the plane headed to Iraq, thinking, "And now I was off to war for reasons that I feared were bullshit."
I think Rieckoff is being realistic when he says that we can't just suddenly leave, at this point. Even if you believe the invasion was a mistake, as I do, based on lies, as I do, we have to be smart enough to leave that aside when thinking about how to get out. I think the Bush Administration should be investigated for their entire conduct, on the Iraq War and other matters, but that's a separate issue. As Colin Powell's Pottery Barn theory succinctly says, "We broke it. Now we own it."
Rieckoff's thoughts about the first Gulf War really resonated with me. He talked about GHW Bush urging the Iraqis to rise up against Saddam, promising them support, and then abandoning them to be slaughtered. While there is not a single strong man for the Iraqis to fear right now, the competing factions probably make life even scarier than before.
Regarding Rieckoff's attitude on the killing of Iraqi citizens, I heard that he quite clearly thinks it's inexcusable. Admittedly, he did start off by addressing the original question, which was along the lines of "Can you see how this could happen?" and if you listened to only that part, his judgment might have sounded less unambiguous. I think he was trying to illustrate how frustration and fear can make anyone want to lash out, but he then he segued seamlessly into two points: that soldiers are not permitted to lose control, and that killing women and children is reprehensible and should be punished, and no two ways about these things.
One of the important parts of the interview, I thought, was Rieckoff's detailed description of all of the problems associated with the private contractor aspect to the war. He pointed out that there are companies with a vested interest in the war continuing, that these companies are cherry-picking the best from the armed forces, and that there is no way to supervise or regulate the mercenaries.
I also think he has the correct sense of W being in a bubble and never getting an honest assessment of what's really happening. He is quite clear on the fact that W's contact with actual grunts has never been anything but a series of photo ops.
You're right about Rieckoff being less anti-war than Maddow. I myself am closer to Maddow's attitudes, and yours, on the Iraq War specifically, and I have a "usually-useless-or-worse" view of war in general. I have a fantasy of soldiers, en masse, having said prior to the invasion, "Are you crazy, W? We're not going to do that!" Of course, military people disobeying the civilian command structure is the death of any democracy.
The thing I liked about Rieckoff's interview is that it gives the point of view of someone who actually has to do the dirty work. Having never served myself, I can't feel completely secure in my anti-war stances. I have only in the past ten years or so admitted to myself that, like it or not, there are people in the world who will respond to nothing but force, and a military capability is thus a necessary evil.
Having said that, let me be clear: I wish the chickenhawks who themselves have never served were a lot more circumspect and restrained in the use of the military. That should go without saying.
Points well taken and I don't want to sound like I'm too much against what he says some of which I think is correct. Anybody against the war for whatever reason swells our ranks, and we don't want to beat each other up.
This don't cut and run stuff, though, makes me think of the Vietnam War. The Standard Operating Procedure if you're a hawk and want to have a war is to fake some danger and get our troops committed, then once we're in, the argument runs that we can't desert South Vietnam because we got them into it and encouraged them. Or in this case the anti-Siddam Iraqis that we encouraged. The excuse for the Vietnam War was the Gulf of Tonkin incident where North Vietnam supposedly attacked our ship and we had to respond. In this case Siddam was about to make nuclear bombs and we'd see mushroom clouds over Chicago. Both of these were later discredited, but who cares about that? Once you're in you can't desert your allies and you must suppport our troops or you're unpatriotic. And My Lai or Abu Ghraib are just unfortunate things that happen in war and are explained away as a few bad apples and they cream the lowest ranking soldiers and the high ranking ones roll on.
I suppose I'm more skeptical than you because I remember the same arguments about we can't leave now and desert our allies after our promises in the Vietnam War. For us of the Vietnam War generation it's deja vu all over again. The hawks have figured out that the same old argument still works. If you can just get us in a war one way or the other, the American mores are such that we do not like to desert our allies and so the argument to not cut and run always works.
I thought the best part of PR's interview was the part about private companies profiting from the war and civilians doing what are normally military functions but without military discipline or consequences. That perhaps is unique to this war, or at the least is more obvious and egregious in this war than previous ones.
PR seems to believe that if he and about 10 of his buddies could sit down with W and tell him what it's like as a soldier at the bottom, it would turn W around and the war could be pursued properly. He has a lot more faith in W than I do. The foot soldiers in every war cursed the officers above them. A good example is in the Tony HIllerman autobiography where he talks about his experience in Europe at the Battle of the Bulge etc.
People who choose to be profesional soldiers and become officers work and think in a different paradigm. Sitting down and talking with them isn't going to change their thinking any more that Cindy Sheehan is going to cause W to change his policy on the war by talking to him about losing her son. Sure it's tragic, but the war is a higher calling and we can't leave now even though innocent people like her son are sacrificed. You can understand a mother's grief and that's too bad, but it's for a larger cause after all because we don't want mushroom clouds over Chicago, and it's not honorable to desert those who trusted us.
Just want to throw in a word from American Microphone. I'm looking into wider distribution of the audio feed and will try to let you know when we've gotten it out to other channels. If you don't hear from me, please drop us a line at info@americanmicrophone.com.
In the meantime, I'm glad to have you as a regular viewer. We're going to be expanding our programming in coming weeks to include education issues, the politics of sex, music... but we'll remain dedicated to featuring guests with direct experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I also hope you'll take a look at the blog. We're just getting that off the ground, but hope to offer additional material and discussion there.
Thrilled to be inspiring discussion here at your blog. Hope you'll keep tuning in.
Best
- Rob Millis
PS: if you get a chance, I'd love to know what you think of the promo video I cut: www.myspace.com/docnerd
Rob -- Thanks for noticing the post. And thanks, again, for providing an audio-only option for your show. I, and my low-bandwidth brethren, appreciate it. Feel free to use this post to promote any alternate audio feeds that you come up with.
TC -- I agree with you that hearing "cut and run" makes me want to jab red-hot pokers into my ears, if not those of the speaker. It's a classic example of how the Republicans manage to take a bad position that they've created, realize that they have no good ideas and no one else to blame it on, and so look to attack anyone who might be calling them on their mess. I don't know how these guys sleep at night, but then again, I'm not entirely convinced they're human, either. Maybe they all just hang upside down from their talons in secure, undisclosed locations, grooving on the rush of blood.
I didn't hear Rieckoff saying that to leave Iraq would be cutting and running, though. I heard him say that if we just pick up and leave immediately, that would be terrible.
As I've said before, I agree with this assessment. What's done is done. We have to deal with the situation as it is. Ideally, the US government would have long ago acknowledged its mistakes and made a clear statement that we're just looking to bring stability to the region so that we can leave asap. But I think it's probably too late even for mea culpas, and the pap that W utters about "we'll stand down when they stand up" probably impresses the Iraqis about as much as it does me.
The last chance to make a strong apology, and possibly regain some support from the rest of the planet, was to have elected Kerry in 2004, and to have hoped that he would have said "we're sorry" upon inauguration.
I think Rieckoff, as a professional soldier, is no doubt is a little less enamored of finding the quickest good way out of Iraq than I am. I think you are probably even more eager than I am. (I hate being the middle of the road guy.)
I completely respect your analogies to the Vietnam War, and I think nearly all of them apply. Two quibbles. First, I guess I'm just not convinced that we can't do a little something to clean up the mess we made before we leave. As I understand Vietnam in the early '70s, we couldn't even do that. Second, also from my understanding, it wasn't like Ho Chi Minh's boys were going to wipe out everyone on the south side of the border as soon as we left. I don't know that I think that the Sunnis and Shia are killing each other only because they want us to leave.
It might turn out that there really is nothing that we can do anymore, in Iraq. The top brass seemed to admit, yesterday in front of the Senate, that pretending civil war isn't already happening is pretty much the bonehead point of view. I mean, they spun it, but it was easy to read between the lines. Maybe I am being a little unrealistic to advocate staying and wringing our hands and pleading for everyone to calm down and just get along.
I was going to try to say that the one last reason for not immediately leaving is that the US would be castigated for abandoning all of the civilians that will surely be slaughtered. But it's hard to imagine how we could look any worse in the eyes of the rest of the world, so I won't.
John McCain spoke yesterday about the US forces being reduced to playing whack-a-mole, with the redeployment of troops to Baghdad. He predicts that Fallujah, or where ever the troops will be moved from, will just get worse, as troops are shifted to the latest hot spot. He's probably right about that.
Given that no one in this country is interested in ramping up the troop strength to what it should have been in the first place (and leaving aside the obvious fact that most don't think we should have done this in the first place), I think you've convinced me. Or I've convinced myself. Or both.
Let's leave.
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