potrero view

April 2010

Going to War

By David Matsuda

As winter chill gives way to milder spring weather, and I-Corps prepares to be replaced by III Corps, I’m on the road as cultural advisor to Lieutenant General Charles Jacoby, the second highest ranking American officer in Iraq.  I’m conducting a “gauge the youth vote survey” that’s taken me to five universities in the Kurdish north, a technical college in Kirkuk, and to Mosul, where I had to meet students outside the university because of threats that they’d be targeted by al Qa’eda for talking to me.

Working with Iraqi students who plan to vote in the upcoming elections has been an amazing experience.   There’s a strong division between Arabs and Kurds, which has split the Kurdish vote between elders who want to compromise with Arabs and youth who want a fully independent Kurdistan.   Will Kurdish youth voters obey their elders and vote for incremental progress, or will they opt for changing the old guard and pushing for their country?

Farther south, Sunni and Shi’a Arab youth feel that the Government of Iraq has made too many compromises with the Kurds, and that these ambitions should be curtailed.  Shi’a youth are split between nationalists who’ll vote against what they see as religious extremism and foreign influence, and those who found sanctuary from Saddam Hussein in Iran and who share with their Persian neighbors a religious ideology that emboldens them to influence Iraqi politics, attempt to control oil revenues, and extend the Islamic revolution throughout the region.

I travel at the mercy of the Responsible Draw Down of Forces plan, which has remove troops and equipment from the war theatre.  There’s less of everything, including helicopters.  I was conducting an independent assessment of an intensive course on Iraqi language and culture.  From there I have to travel far north to make another youth vote study, and then make my way back towards Baghdad, stopping at selected bases to study the organizational context in which suicides occur.  In the middle of this journey the air operations officer confronted me with bad news.  My AMR, that’s military for reservation, was bumped.  I had to scramble to find transport.  

I was up late into the night getting conflicting information from multiple air wings.  “Yes we have a flight, no there is not a flight, yes there is but it was cancelled.”  Finally I reached an air wing that was going my way, but they couldn’t reserve a spot for me.  I’d have to take my chances and wait to see if there was a seat.  Military air is great; until you have to depend on it, making it next to impossible to keep an appointment.       

Dave Matsuda returned from his second tour of duty in Iraq to his Potrero Hill home last month.

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