“Complacency Kills” is the GI mantra in Iraq. It’s posted in every office, every briefing room, every mess hall. There’s simply no escaping it. It soon becomes part of your consciousness, whether you’re safe behind the razor-wire and berms of an encampment or out in harm’s way.
Admittedly, “Complacency Kills” is an odd admonition for a war zone. But this is Iraq at the butt end of 2007, an Iraq where kinetic combat is – at least for the time being – waning and the daily focus is increasingly on the more pacific nuts and bolts of counter-insurgency and transitioning. Daily U.S. military patrols in western Anbar province are, in the main, “presence” and meet-and-greet operations that show that we’re still very much around, and to help people gain a sense of added security. They’re coordinated with Iraqi Police, or IPs, who are sometimes integrated in the patrols, with them in the lead, so ordinary Iraqis see their forces at work.
Others patrols by Marines and soldiers, weapons at the ready, include tasks that reinforce the benefits of non-violence and cooperation, such as taking away non-essential road barriers along thoroughfares large and small. At night, census activities are conducted by troops and IPs who knock on doors, identify and take information on residents, listen to their problems and, of course collect information on suspicious activities or persons. When warranted late night/early morning detention raids are sprung to roll up terrorists and their suspected collaborators.
Combat engineers, meanwhile, continue to go out looking for possible IEDs (improvised explosive devices), civil affairs units meet with city councils on infrastructure and governance projects and local officials are mentored.
All this isn’t to say that Iraq isn’t a very dangerous place. It is, but less so than before, which means an adjustment in thinking. A sign on the wall in one command post pretty much sums up the twilight zone our troops now operate in many areas: Be nice to every Iraqi you meet, but be ready to kill him if necessary. In essence, it’s a best friend, worst enemy kind of being.
Full body armor and lock and load (the weapon) when you go out the wire from a FOB (forward operating base) and it’s smaller, satellite encampments is the order of the day and will remain so, no matter how quiet the town or area the GI is in. Complacency kills, and the troops know it although many speak of the “night and day” change in western Anbar.
The upside to this new phase of the war in Iraq, of course, is the relative calm. Helping bring it about is the much-argued tactic of engaging and reaching working accommodations with tribal sheikhs, much as the British did during their protectorate period and much like the Turks did during the Ottoman Empire. You can argue the pros and cons of it all you like but the fact is, it’s so far helping defeat or push al-Qaida out of many areas of the province, co-opting nationalist insurgents and establishing security conditions so Iraqis, long cowed into a fence-sitting, head-down posture to avoid punishment to them and their families, can step forward to rebuild their country.
China’s Chairman Mao Zedong once wrote that revolutionaries must be like fish in the sea. So, too, terrorists, and they are seeing their sea of support dry up.
This is the Iraq Sen. Reid, Speaker Pelosi, Rep. Murtha and other sky-is-falling defeatists should see for themselves and acknowledge. This is the Iraq TV talking heads should see and acknowledge. This is the Iraq America should see – an Iraq of increasing calm and promise, brought about by U.S. and coalition forces. Yes, there are IEDS; yes, many can die in an explosion and do. But life, with an increasing semblance of normality, is being established. The Iraq to be may not measure up to the expectations of impatient Western democracies and their instant-gratification societies, but it will be much better than what would result from a too rapid departure.
The downside is the mental and emotional stress on our troops as they maneuver between the two postures of action, and their dismay that America doesn’t seem to know or appreciate what they are achieving. And then there is the uncertainty. As the saying goes: the best made plans … Are the insurgents and terrorists biding their time for a Tet-like offensive that thoroughly rattles even the strongest supporters of the war and pushes the United States into withdrawal? Will the alliances with the tribal sheikhs hold? Can cooperating sheikhs overcome decades-long rivalries with each other to work together? Can sheikhs keep clans and sub-clans in line? And the big one: How will go the more volatile Shiite Muslim areas of the country go?
No predictions. But to assume a rapid, premature withdrawal from Iraq wouldn’t have dangerous consequences for the United States would be naïve given Iran’s quest for regional dominance. To assume withdrawal from Iraq with our tail tucked between our legs would make us safer from terrorists (keeping in mind Iran’s state support for it), is complacent thinking. Assumption and complacency are the mothers of disasters. And as the troops in Iraq know, assumption and its sense of complacency, kills.
