potrero view

April 2009

Going to War

By Dave Matsuda

Like most large bureaucracies, the US military consists of two very different emotional and intellectual spaces.   One space is occupied by people.  In this kinder, friendlier army individuals offer help, and are helped, based on good will and personal relationships.  In this “small army” people work together to get things done.  Then there’s the “big army,” which consists of a complex web of rules and institutional behavior.  There are no personal relationships.  

Traveling between these two spaces is like swimming in a pool composed of water and tar.  Unsuspecting swimmers glide effortlessly through the small army space until they pass the big army’s unmarked boundary, when, without warning, they confront a dense sea filled with a million tiny regulations.  

Preparation for deployment is squarely in big army territory.  To be deployed a series of online training courses must be passed, with a certificate printed out as proof that each requirement has been fulfilled.  These certificates are the big army’s coin of the realm; without them there’s no forward movement.  But obtaining them is continually foiled by ill-conceived programs that won’t print out certificates of completion, even after hours of stepping through the required modules.  And there’s no ability to save finished tests so that you can pickup where you left off after the glitches have been repaired, or to prove that you, in good faith, have “tried but were denied.”

Once all of the certificates have been wrested out of their metaphorical and real machines, they must be taken to a processing facility, where the lines to the counter make the Department of Motor Vehicles look like first class service, to stand before a clerk,  who, without a hint of empathy, states:  new rules and regulations have determined that you completed an un-updated version of the course, or, that you must take the test again because a new calendar now holds precedent and no longer recognizes the time frame within which you were certificated.  Please restart the process and complete all online courses at your earliest convenience or you will be denied deployment.  

I made it past this bureaucratic spanking machine, and will return to an Iraq much changed.  A newly elected U.S. Administration has established a withdrawal deadline, and promised to abide by a Status of Forces Agreement that gives the Government of Iraq and the Iraqi Security Forces jurisdiction over American diplomats, military service members, and civilian contractors.

The State Department’s civilian surge signals an end to the primacy of military operations, and ushers in a new diplomatic phase in Iraqi-American relations.  Joint Iraqi and American committees now work together to institutionalize a re’al politic somewhere between strongman rule and representative government.  The United Nations is working with the Iraqi government to create jobs, payroll protocols and a banking system.  The Iraqi government sits on a sizable cash reserve, and has demonstrated a cautious maturity in dispensing money, as it hopes to avoid the kind of external corruption and waste that plagued many American projects.      

Over the next year the U.S. military will draw down to somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 troops.  These forces will be renamed advisors and trainers, but semantics aside, they will help defend the Iraqi government, security forces and civilian population from internal and external threats.  As they are not technically combat troops, these advisors and trainers are not subject to agreed upon withdrawal timelines.

And so I return to post-conflict Iraq, an emerging nation state wrangling over power sharing, hydrocarbon revenue distribution, and ethno-sectarian ideologies.  As cultural advisor it’s my job to aid the commanding general of Multi-National Corps, Iraqs decision making process.  I work to do so in a country where cross-cultural understanding is paramount, non-lethal operational cultural knowledge is the foundation of future Iraqi-American relations, the end state is dependent on helping Iraqis achieve what they want for themselves, and where knowing your ally is now more important than knowing your enemy.

Long time Hill resident, Dave Matsuda, known as “Doc,” left for his second Iraqi deployment on Saturday March 21, 2009.  You can reach him at druncledave@comcast.net.

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