Category: Iraq

War movies

The Holocaust was such a shocking atrocity—effecting far more Jews than the 6 million murdered in Nazi ovens—that it is almost impossible to communicate it meaningfully to new generations. Many outstanding movies have done their best to do so. The pictures of thousands of rotting bodies do not have the same impact as the personal stories of individuals and holocaust films have done an outstanding job of telling them. The Diary of Ann Frank introduced most of us to the Holocaust’s horrors in 1959. But “Europa Europa,” “Schindler’s List,”  “Life is Beautiful,” “The Pianist,” “Son of Saul,” among others each present poignant and original examinations of the ugliness and heart wrenching harm of antisemitism. Just this last week I was moved again by yet another approach to the story in the recent film “White Bird.”

It is important to confront such ugliness in the hopes of reducing the prospect of repeating them. Hitler convinced his countrymen (to the extent that they even knew what he was doing) that the best way to get rid of the “Jewish problem” was to get rid of the Jews. Sadly, Israel itself is propagating yet another genocide this time in Gaza, and West Bank and possible beyond, by convincing many Israelis that the only way to get rid of the “Palestinian problem” (and to have a “democratic Jewish state”) is to get rid of the Palestinians.

War presents a tougher challenge because many believe they might find glory in war. But the reality of war is ugly and tragic. Every country must defend itself against attack, but the United State has not fought a war on its own territory for over one hundred and sixty years. None the less we have been at war somewhere most of the time. Most movies about war have faithfully reflected its ugliness—not only for those killed by them but for their surviving loved ones and the wounded survivors who live on without limbs or with other impairments. But we continue to wage them most of the time.

Movies like “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (the film site of which I visited in Sri Lanka), “Lawrence of Arabia”, “Dunkirk”, and “1917”, depict the heroism in war that might seem attractive but also its ugliness. “All Quiet on the Western Front,” Paths of Glory,” “The Deer Hunter,” and “Grave of the Fireflies,” explore in greater depth the horror of war. Last night I watched the heart wrenching story of a WWII Irish solder’s return to Dunkirk many years later, which wonderfully depicts the absurdity of most wars.

So why do we fight so many of them and in far away places? Much of my work has been in war zones such as Bosnia, Afghanistan, Israel, Iraq, and Kosovo. While I have never been in the tranches, I have certainly heard gun fire. But more importantly, I have witnessed the aftermath of war and embarrassingly the bumbling incompetence of attempted American rule of conquered territories. “Warren’s travels to Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, Israel, Kosovo and beyond”

But why do we so readily go to war? Perhaps because they are “over there” it is too easy to send our youth off wherever and “thank them for their service.” Unfortunately, there are also too many people who think we must flatten our enemies, ala Adolf Hitler, rather than diplomatically cultivate peaceful, get along relations with them. If American’s understood more clearly the ugliness of war, and the futility of taming neighbors via suppression or even eradication, we could have a more peaceful and prosperous world.  

U.S. occupation of Iraq

The following blog is 100% true. I did meet with Erik Prince in his Tyson’s Corner office and the U.S. Army’s killing of an old Iraqi man in Baghdad and the related events are 100% true. Unfortunately, my confrontation of Prince with his security teams damaging behavior in Iraq only occurred in my dreams last night.

In the late 2000s (probably 07 or 08) I met with Erik Prince in his Blackwater headquarters at Tyson’s Corner Virginia to discuss a prospective project in Jordan. At the end of our meeting I confronting him with the bad reputation of his Blackwater team in Bagdad (sadly this was only in my dream but the events are 100% true).

Following the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq, Blackwater provided security in Bagdad to US Embassy staff and foreign contractors such as me. While reporting to the U.S. Treasury, I was paid by USAID and housed and protected as part of the BearingPoint team under the USAID contract. Because of Blackwater’s reputation for a high profile, roughshod approach to security (driving their armored cars wherever—including sidewalks and wrong way streets), BearingPoint had hired a British security firm.

Even when countries are “liberated” their citizens never like the invading army to hang around long. Iraq was no exception. And the U.S. has proved no better (to say the least) than other colonial powers at administering the lands they conquered. The following story from early 2004 of an illustrative incident in Bagdad was told to me by a US Embassy friend, Michael Cole, who was in the middle of it:

“On a residential street between the Green Zone and our destination in Kadhimiya – possibly Mansour, Karkh, or Hurriyah – I heard the young soldier in the gun turret above me yell extremely loudly at someone in the street. I often spent rides like this reading notes or emails I’d printed to prepare for meetings, glancing up frequently to become familiar with routes and landmarks in case I needed to return to the Green Zone alone. I saw the old man the soldier was yelling at as he walked directly into the road. The Humvee was going extremely fast, driving in formation with 2 or 3 others, swerving across the road in formation to prevent civilian vehicles from riding alongside us where they could block our route or gain a clear line of fire to assassinate me. The driver never could have stopped once the man walked into the road. Just as I saw him and realized why the soldier was yelling, I heard and felt each tire on the passenger side where I sat roll over him. I’ve never run over a deer, but I expect the sound is similar. The vehicle was too fast, loud, and heavy for me to hear a scream or bones break, but I heard a crowd behind us scream, and cars honk. I looked around for landmarks so I could file a report and return to the site someday to make amends. The man appeared to have left a small yellow house with a date palm beside a four-lane road.

“I remember the soldiers cussed loudly when we hit the man. Most had Southern accents and sunburned faces. They started the mornings clean except for their gloves, but ended every day covered in dust, with black outlines left by tinted blast goggles. We talked about the incident when we arrived in Kadhimiya and were safe in a walled parking lot. Most of the soldiers were as distressed as I was. We all knew the man was dead, and we believed it was too dangerous to stop and try to help.

“One of the soldiers, possibly a young lieutenant who was my liaison with the security details, explained that the local Forward Operating Base had a process to compensate families of civilians killed by Coalition Forces. He explained that Iraqi tradition permitted compensation in lieu of prosecution even among local persons, and that this was an accepted form of justice. My later study of Arab tribal culture led me to believe Baghdadis could follow the same practice. I submitted my own brief statement to a local colonel or lieutenant colonel, who knew the case and assured me the family was well-compensated for the man’s death. I remember doubting anyone could be satisfied by this, but I was pleased I was not the only person who had submitted a statement. The soldiers did so before me. I tried to estimate what the man’s life could be worth between a Shiite Baghdadi family and the US military, but the normal actuarial items never equaled what I imagined anyone could call justice. 

“I asked Iraqi colleagues what to do. They shared my grief. Some shared my anger. Others were dismissive – possibly because I described the man as poor. Most advised me not to go back because there was nothing I could do to help. One lady said I could help in a small way by visiting the family, and that was the advice I decided to accept. 

“My interpreter thought it was a terrible, dangerous idea to visit the old man’s family. He said they would kill me. However, he drove me to the site I described to him. He parked a block away, and I walked to the yellow house. One of the man’s relatives spoke English and translated for me. They knew why I was there, and they invited me to sit at a table in their front yard where they drank tea and watched the traffic pass. I told them I did not drive the humvee, but I was a passenger, and that I saw their grandfather, and that I was sorry. One man yelled at me in Arabic about his anger about the conditions in the city during the occupation, of which his relative’s death was just one event among many injustices. I listened, and I agreed. I asked for the man’s name, and they told me. Maybe I wrote it in a notebook that’s now in a box somewhere. I apologized again and held the hands of two men for a moment. The lady who translated told me the man was old, and his death was quick, and it was good of me to come. She said “the officer” had already visited, and her gesture suggested everything was resolved. I was glad they didn’t kill me, but I didn’t believe everything was resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. However, I thanked them for talking to me, and I walked back to my interpreter’s car. I walked up a block and he followed me until we were out of the family’s eyesight from their yard.

“That was that. It was another week in Baghdad, and I didn’t think much of it until I returned home that summer. Sometimes I remember that day when I see a thin, old Arab man, or a man in a grey dishdash, or a deer eyeing the road, or a sandbag beside the road, or plaid cotton with yellow in it, or olive-colored hands, or the shade of a palm over a blacktop, or smell hot tar or dust caked in sweat, which is to say, I think of it often and at unexpected moments. I’m no longer consumed by rage and sadness like I was in 2005, the year following my return home, which I barely remember. Now I remember it as an example of what happens in war, which should be avoided at almost all costs, and with an exhalation of sadness few who I’ve ever met might understand. We all have instances and threads of sadness woven through our memories and consciousnesses, and this is one of mine.”

You can read more of my own experiences there in “Iraq-An American Tragedy-My Travels to Baghdad”

War

My many visits to Sarajevo, Mostar, and Banja Luka in 1996-7 exposed me to the devastation of war, as did my multiple visits to Pristina in 1999-2000, and my 23 visits to Kabul between 2002-13.  My two months in Bagdad as part of the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2004 and five, two week follow up visits added live fire to my “post” war experiences that left me jumpy for many months after returning home.  None of these came close to the front-line experiences of reporter Robert Fisk, whose accounts are reproduced in his thick book “The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East,” though he reported from the same countries I had worked in.

Fisk’s reports on his interviews with actual people and his viewing of their butchered bodies and mass graves in the dessert confronts his readers with the real victims of war. To characterize his accounts as heart wrenching doesn’t come close to the true tragedies he reports. The deceptions and lies of all sides, add to the immense tragedies of our post WW wars, which have accomplished nothing but death and destruction.

The current Middle East wars (Israel’s slaughter of men, women and child in Gaza, West Bank, and Lebanon), following decades of Israel’s abusive rule over Palestinian territories, is beyond belief and too many Americans remain silent.  But no side has been “pure.” Our illegal and lie filled invasion of Iraq in 2003 followed years of American and British bombing of Iraq following the Gulf War in 1991 (Desert Storm). Our sanctions of Iraq over that period staved to death 1.5 million Iraqi’s, mainly children (despite the Food for Oil program), and the U.S. military’s use of depleted uranium munitions in that war dramatically increased Iraqi cancer cases and birth defects in the years that followed. Fisk reports on these and US and UK efforts to keep it all quiet.

Some of Iraq’s health problems were also aggravated by Iraq’s use of chemical warfare agents such as mustard gas and sarin during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88. The United States, being on Iraq’s side at that time, ignored its use of these chemicals, which remain in the soil today.  American leadership, which is desired by much of the world, is undermined by such double standards. Our government lies to its own citizens about its illegal behavior as well. Edward Snowden is paying a very high price for exposing some of it. We owe him a lot.

American interference in other countries’ affairs (other than by being the beacon on the hill) has rarely served our national interest. While we have blindly assumed that we would be welcomed as liberators in Panama (1989-90), Iraq (1991, and 2003), Somalia (1993, 2007, and 2010), Haiti (1994), Bosnia (1994), Afghanistan (1998, and 2001), Serbia (1999), Libya (1986, and 2011) and Syria (2014)–(need I mention Vietnam?), we failed to understand that peoples of most every country hate invaders no mater who they are. Moreover, our ignorance and arrogance made us very inept occupiers.

In Ukraine and Israel our interference stops short of sending our solders (almost). But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could have easily and sensibly been avoided if the U.S. had encouraged the negotiations Russia sought in December 2021 “Ukraine’s and  dead and  war”.  Following Russia’s invasion, we tragically threw cold water on the agreement almost reached between Ukraine and Russia in the March 2022 negotiations in Turkey. ‘Peace negotiations in the Russian invasion of Ukraine”  So onward to the last Ukrainian. The final outcome is very likely to be identical to the March 2022, Istanbul Communiqué but with 120,000 dead and 600,000 wounded Russians and 70,000 dead soldiers and 10,000 dead civilians and 140,000 wounded Ukrainians and 500 billions of dollars’ worth of property destruction. In other words, Russia and Ukraine paid a huge price (with our help) for nothing.

Fisk gives human faces to the real people who pay the price for our aggressions. This horrible cost in lives and property has contributed nothing to our national security. America has much to offer the world and has contributed much to the quality of life around the world. But it has done so with its example, trade, and diplomacy, not its army. The principles and institutions on which American was founded and has flourished have served us well when we have remained faithful to them.

President elect Trump has nominated Tulsi Gabbard to become his Director of National Intelligence. When she left the Democratic party two years ago and endorsed Trump for President this August she praised Trump for “having the courage to meet with adversaries, dictators, allies and partners alike in the pursuit of peace, seeing war as a last resort” and condemned the Biden administration for the U.S. “facing multiple wars on multiple fronts in regions around the world and closer to the brink of nuclear war than we ever have been before.”

“In 2022, she also faulted the Biden administration for failing to address Russian concerns as it invaded Ukraine.

“’This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO, which would mean US/NATO forces right on Russia’s border,’

Following a 2017 trip to visit Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, Gabbard defended meeting with an American enemy by saying:

“I think we should be ready to meet with anyone if there’s a chance it can help bring about an end to this war, which is causing the Syrian people so much suffering,”  “The Hill–Tulsi Gabbard-Trump Nomination — 11/14/24”

 I hope that she still thinks this way.

Trust but Verify

Trust in our institutions and each other is a hugely important factor in a society’s wellbeing. The lack of it can cost billions of dollars and inconveniences in airports and other security measures and in the extreme can lead to physical attacks on our government such as the January 6 attack on the U.S. Congress.

Russia has produced and helped disseminate fake news about U.S. government responses to recent hurricanes (“Russia amplified hurricane disinformation to drive Americans apart”,  “Covert war on American minds”) and destruction of mail-in ballets for next week’s elections (“Pennsylvania ballots video by Russia”). Donald Trump continues to deny that he lost the 2000 elections despite knowing otherwise according to his staff. “Indictment claims Trump knew he lost”  

Responding to government incentives, pharmaceutical companies developed COVID vaccines in amazingly quick time during Trump’s administration, which then lost public trust as a result of Anthony Fauci’s lie about the lack of need for face masks (“Noble lies-covid-Fauci-CDC-masks”) and mixed messages from the American public health establishment. While the government’s understanding of the COVID virus and how best to protect ourselves from it evolved as more information was analyzed, their communications with the public did not give confidence that they were sharing what they knew and what they didn’t. Temporary lock downs might have been justified as the government geared up to respond, but each of us should have been given more freedom thereafter to make our own risk assessments based on the best available information. School closings have done permanent harm to a generation of children.

America has flourished because we are free and relatively unrestrained to live and innovate as we please within public institutions we trust. These facts—President Reagan’s “Beacon on the Hill”—have attracted the admiration of much of the world. But our record is not pure and the more we depart from these principles the more the world will come to distrust us. The current example is America’s complicity with Israel’s genocidal wars in Gaza, West Bank, and Lebanon.  “Warnings of Israel’s UNRWA ban will collapse aid efforts in Gaza”   The UN has condemned Israel’s attacks and blocking of food and medical aid to Gaza, and bombing schools and hospitals. “List of United Nations resolutions concerning Israel and the annexation of Jerusalem”. U.S. law forbids providing aid to countries guilty of such acts, but we continue providing it none the less.  “Two governments linked by lies and bloodshed”

But our complicity with Israeli atrocities is not the first or only example of such behavior. Our ally, then enemy, Iraq used chemical weapons (nerve gas and mustard gas) during the Iran-Iraq War, starting in 1983 and continuing until the war ended in 1988. We closed our eyes and said nothing.

Even the Reagan administration, whose détente with the Soviet Union helped end the cold war, violated its principles and public trust with the Iran-Contra Affair. “Iran Contra Affair”

Such violations of our principles damage public trust at home and abroad. Beyond being despicable in their own right, they undermine trust in our institutions at home and abroad and threaten the life we have always expected to enjoy. This is not something Russia is doing to us, we are doing it to ourselves.

Be sure to vote next week and happily or graciously accept the outcome.

Should the US Still Police the World?

This was a debate between Bret Stephens and Jamie Kirchick for the affirmative and Matt Taibbi (without his baseball cap) and Lee Fang for the negative. You can and should watch it here: https://open.substack.com/pub/bariweiss/p/a-free-press-live-debate-on-foreign?r=1n8osb&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

The affirmative side (Jamie and Bret) only seemed to understand policing in military terms. The idea that there might be good and bad policing never seemed to cross their minds. Bearing in mind that I was a member of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq for its final two months and made 22 visits to Afghanistan from 2002-2013 (not to mention my years of work with the IMF in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Serbia, and South Sudan), my experience has been that when led by our military, which is quite good at fighting, our policing is generally inept (to understate it considerably). Warren Coats life and travels

Jamie and Bret’s blindness sadly reflects the single-minded understanding of neocons of what our leadership role in the world should look like (military involvement and wars).  This blindness is shockingly visible in the debate. America must and should be involve in the world we are part of. We should promote the values of peace and freedom that have America the envy of the world. That means actively working to be a good neighbor and to help fashion the rules and norms of cross border cooperation (for the cross-border movement of goods, people, digital messages and value, etc.). We potentially have a lot to offer in such a role in our own self-interest and for the betterment of the world.

But when we have led with our Army, our “leadership” has been rotten for the world and for us. We are bad colonial rulers as I have seen first hand. These points were made by Matt and Lee who mopped the floor with Bret and Jamie. By the vote of those listening, Matt and Lee won the debate but were still supported by a minority of those voting. God help us.

More recently, our unconscionable support of Israel’s vicious slaughter of its neighbors in Gaza and the West Bank and now its invasion of Lebanon, has destroyed any remaining respect we had as a world leader.  https://wcoats.blog/2024/10/05/score-card/

Playing by the rules

This morning’s NYTimes proclaimed that:“The Biden administration, responding to the death of Aleksei A. Navalny, unveiled its largest sanctions package to date as the war in Ukraine enters its third year.”

On November 30, 2023, Phillip Dean Hancock was executed in Oklahoma. As the death penalty has been eliminated in most countries and such killing is considered immoral by millions of people around the world, what sanctions would be appropriate for them to impose on the U.S.?

A quite different case arises from killing an enemy in someone else’s country (aside from in war, where anything seems to be “allowed.”)  On February 13 of this year, Maxim Kuzminov, a former Russian military pilot who defected to Ukraine, was found dead with multiple bullet wounds in Villajoyosa, a city on Spain’s Mediterranean coast. The murder is suspected to have been organized by Moscow. What measures should Spain take against Russia in response (hopefully the U.S. will keep its nose out of other people’s business—fat chance)?

On January 3, 2020, the U.S. assassinated Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general and the commander of the Iranian Quds Force, in Baghdad. More recently, on February 7, 2024, Abu Baqir al-Saadi, a senior commander in Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Iraqi militia, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad. What measures should Iraq (and Iran) take against the U.S.?

The rule of law is a fundamental aspect of our freedoms and the prosperity it has made possible. The international rules based order is an extension of those principals internationally and has served, though imperfectly, the same purposes globally. The U.S. has become an Imperial power who doesn’t obey the rules it tries to impose on others. Thus, American influence in the world is declining rapidly. We will all suffer as a result.

The World on Fire

We just watched the first season of Masterpiece Theater’s production of “The World on Fire”. Masterpiece Theater remains the best of the best. The list of outstanding shows is long but at the top of my list is “The Jewel in the Crown.” I have watched its 18 hours of the very best of drama three times, once in an all day party. My love of Masterpiece Theater started in 1981 with “Brideshead Revisited.”  The only American show that tops them is “The Wire.”

Part of what I like about “The World on Fire” is that the horror and tragedy of war is shown as it impacts individual people and families. While I know that the little old ladies on the street thanking solders for their service have their hearts in the right place, their good wishes to the young men and women to go off and die for our country sickens me. Aside from Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and al-Qaeda’s attack on New York and the Pentagon on 9/11, we have fought our many more recent wars (of choice) in far off places most of you have never been to.

I was never in the military nor fought in any war, but I have worked in many post conflict countries (Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kosovo) and lost colleagues to assassinations while there. We need to understand what war is really like, and the thousands upon thousands of individuals and their families who suffer losses of limbs or lives and property and ways of life for what very often could have and should have been avoided. Why do we encourage Ukraine to fight to the last Ukrainian rather than agree to terms with Russia that could have prevented the invasion in the first place? There are those who profit from these far off wars but many more who suffer greatly. Unfortunately, the former buy more influence than the latter. Movies like “The World on Fire,” can help us better understand the ugly horror of generally unnecessary wars.  https://wcoats.blog/2014/06/19/war-bosnia-kosovo-afghanistan-iraq-libya/    https://wcoats.blog/2021/07/05/the-iraq-war/  https://wcoats.blog/2009/09/03/iraq-kidnapping-update/ 

More on constructive competition

In contrasting our treatment of others as competitors or enemies in my blog on “What to do About China”  I am reminded of the 120 days I spent in Baghdad as an advisor to the Central Bank of Iraq paid for by the USAID and supervised by the US Treasury. Our occupation of Iraq included staff from the US Treasury, USAID, Commerce Dept, State Department, and, of course, the Dept. of Defense. Competition by each of them to do a better job than the others would clearly be win-win making our overall occupation more successful. But too often one agency treated the others as enemies diminishing and undermining their efforts rather than supporting them. My biggest fear with my dual association with USAID and Treasury was that each would see me as on the other side, which would have undermined my effectiveness. Luckily the each saw me as on their own side.  “Iraq-An American Tragedy-My Travels to Baghdad”

Never Again

On this 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attack on America, many of us are saying “NEVER AGAIN”. What those saying it mean will determine the future of our country.

If “never again” means to you that we will never allow attacks on our homeland again, you are saying that out of your fear you chose safety over liberty. You support the authoritarian, repressive measures of the so-called Patriot Act and the related government intrusions in our privacy and liberties in the name of greater security. This is not the spirit of those Americans who continue to get into their cars to drive to work or wherever despite automobile accidents killing ten times more Americans every year as American soldiers who have died in Afghanistan in the past 20 years.

For me and thankfully for many other Americans, it means that we will never again surrender to the fear that blinded us to the tragic mistakes of American aggression in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Uganda. Lawrence Wilkerson explains our self-destructive behavior in the following interview. COL Wilkerson was a senior official in the Bush administration when it launched the Iraq invasion. Now he calls it a mistake born of rage and fear. https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2021/09/10/amanpour-wilkerson-9-11.cnn

We have the most powerful military in the world. No military force could protect us at home (to the extent that our safety depends on military force) better. When it comes to its effectiveness in offensive attacks on other countries, its effectiveness is less clear and its effectiveness in efforts to rebuild the countries it has occupied…… well this fantastic three hour discussion reveals it as worse than zero https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkjsjBknWfo

We once revered and defended our liberty above all else and we were respected and envied around the world. We prospered. Over the last twenty years we have gradually, year by year, squandered our cherished traditions and our standing and respect in the world has declined as a result. Former President Trump signed an agreement with the Taliban promising to remove all American troops from Afghanistan by May 1 of this year. It was a bad agreement, but our departure was many years overdue. President Biden extended our stay for a few more months but has now honored Trump’s commitment. Why our military was unable to prepare properly for our withdrawal from Afghanistan with this two-year notice is a mystery we need to investigate.  

Never again should mean that we never again act out of fear. https://wcoats.blog/2021/09/05/nation-building-in-afghanistan-2/