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Outrage: Troops Fighting in Iraq Not Eligible For Certain Medals

Also, Tom Ricks publishes absurdist, probably fictional dialogue by conspiracy theorist (UPDATED)

Marines.
October 2, 2014

The military's role in Iraq has been much in the news over the last 24 hours. The Obama administration's confusion and ambivalence over whether or not the current bombing and advising in Iraq and Syria actually constitutes a war (I'll bet the pilots dropping bombs on people think it does) apparently extends to the Pentagon. As the Hill reported:

The troops President Obama has deployed to Iraq are not eligible for certain medals because the U.S. has not officially designated their efforts a military campaign.

The more than 1,600 troops who are serving as "advisers" cannot receive the Iraq Campaign Medal, which is reserved for troops deployed between March 19, 2003, and Dec. 31, 2011, defense officials say.

Nor are they eligible for the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary or Service medals, which are only awarded to troops supporting Operation Enduring Freedom, originating with the 2001 Afghanistan War.

This may be a bureaucratic lapse as much as an intentional or politicized move. Troops serving in Iraq generally fell under the umbrella of Operation Iraqi Freedom, which is now defunct, while those fighting terrorism elsewhere came under Operation Enduring Freedom, which is ongoing. Since whatever is going on in Iraq right now technically falls under neither operation, no one there is eligible for a campaign medal of any sort.

Now that the press and veterans groups are paying attention to this, I anticipate that the problem will be fixed--though it may be interesting to see exactly how. Will the White House sign off on extending the designation of the 'Global War on Terrorism' medals, considering that it is ideologically opposed to half of the words in the medals' name?

It also appears that the Marine Corps--ever eager to be in a fight--is forward deploying more troops to the Middle East to be on hand for a crisis. I expect that most Marines, being Marines, are pleased about this (though less so about the likelihood that this forward-deployment will consist of six months of watching pirated movies on their laptops in the desert near some notorious party town like Doha) but there are always exceptions. A truly bizarre example can be read at Tom Ricks' blog, where he has a guest post from a young Marine officer who appears to be not only a conscientious objector but also a conspiracy theorist who believes that the ISIS beheading videos might be fakes. Seriously: read it for yourself.

Yet more strangely, the post takes the form of a dialogue between the lieutenant and a sergeant who, prior to being subject to the lieutenant's withering Socratic examination, is too eager to fight:

This is a conversation that happened Thursday, Sept. 25. I don't normally have this kind of conversation with anyone at work because I know that I'll get nowhere. But this sergeant had been sitting in my office for over 15 minutes complaining about his life to his sergeant friend.

When he started talking so flippantly about going back to war in Iraq I couldn't take it. I had to challenge him; challenge his views and actually make him answer questions. I didn't lash out or yell at him, I had an even conversation. I could tell no one had ever done this to him before, and that the cookie-cutter answers he thought would placate me had worked for him in the past. I dug real deep on these and most of his answers were accompanied by uncomfortable shifts and blank stares. I know I probably shouldn't have gone off the deep end with him, but I think it was as much for his sanity as it was for mine.

I am sure the sergeant (does he exist?) is grateful. It doesn't seem worth getting into the argumentative weeds over the lieutenant's points, inasmuch as the manner he has chosen to present them--a college-educated lieutenant condescending to educate a combat veteran NCO about how things really are, then publishing the (actual?) conversation in the electronic pages of Foreign Policy, going out of his way to make the NCO seem tongue-tied and stupid--constitutes a kind of self-refutation.

However, there is one point in the exchange where another item in the news this morning is particularly relevant:

Me: Right. Did our previous engagement -- still ongoing -- make anything better over there?

Sgt: Well yeah, we're liberators.

Me: Liberators? You think we made things better over there?

Sgt: Yes sir.

Me: Who'd we liberate them from, ISIS?

Sgt: No... Saddam Hussein.

Me: Right, but after we got rid of him who showed up? Who took his place? Did things get better over there or worse?

Sgt: [Blank stare]

If only the sergeant--who, if he actually exists, was probably desperately trying to figure out the most polite way to deploy himself out of the room—had read the excerpt from Leon Panetta's new book published in Time this morning, he wouldn't have had to muster up a "blank" (!?) stare for the lieutenant.

Here's Panetta:

Privately, the various leadership factions in Iraq all confided that they wanted some U.S. forces to remain as a bulwark against sectarian violence. But none was willing to take that position publicly, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki concluded that any Status of Forces Agreement, which would give legal protection to those forces, would have to be submitted to the Iraqi parliament for approval. That made reaching agreement very difficult given the internal politics of Iraq, but representatives of the Defense and State departments, with scrutiny from the White House, tried to reach a deal.

We had leverage. We could, for instance, have threatened to withdraw reconstruction aid to Iraq if al-Maliki would not support some sort of continued U.S. military presence. My fear, as I voiced to the President and others, was that if the country split apart or slid back into the violence that we’d seen in the years immediately following the U.S. invasion, it could become a new haven for terrorists to plot attacks against the U.S. Iraq’s stability was not only in Iraq’s interest but also in ours. I privately and publicly advocated for a residual force that could provide training and security for Iraq’s military.

Under Secretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy did her best to press that position, which reflected not just my views but also those of the military commanders in the region and the Joint Chiefs. But the President’s team at the White House pushed back, and the differences occasionally became heated. Flournoy argued our case, and those on our side viewed the White House as so eager to rid itself of Iraq that it was willing to withdraw rather than lock in arrangements that would preserve our influence and interests.

We debated with al-Maliki even as we debated among ourselves, with time running out. The clock wound down in December, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter continued to argue our case, extending the deadline for the Iraqis to act, hoping that we might pull out a last-minute agreement and recognizing that once our forces left, it would be essentially impossible for them to turn around and return. To my frustration, the White House coordinated the negotiations but never really led them. Officials there seemed content to endorse an agreement if State and Defense could reach one, but without the President’s active advocacy, al-Maliki was allowed to slip away. The deal never materialized. To this day, I believe that a small U.S. troop presence in Iraq could have effectively advised the Iraqi military on how to deal with al-Qaeda’s resurgence and the sectarian violence that has engulfed the country. 

In other words, having achieved a fragile peace by 2011 that the leadership of both the State and Defense departments thought would need to be guaranteed by a residual force of American troops, the White House let it slip away.

For the record, this is not a former Bush administration official talking, but Leon Panetta. Not exactly a prominent neocon. Far from the intelligence community missing the rise of Islamic State, it appears that as early as 2011 virtually everyone in Washington, including Democrats, saw something like them coming, except the president and his closest aides. And now,  just like virtually everyone saw coming, too, we are back in Iraq.

Updated, 1:48 P.M.: This post has been updated to reflect that the author of the Tom Ricks guest blog post is more accurately described as a 'conspiracy theorist' who believes that the ISIS beheading videos might have been faked, than as a '9/11 Truther.'

Published under: Iraq , Marines