On April 29, a Delta Company patrol was responding to a tip at Al Sadr
mosque, a short distance from its base.
The soldiers saw men in the distance erecting burning barricades, and
the streets emptied out quickly.
Then a militia, believed to be the Mahdi Army, which is affiliated
with the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, began firing at them
from rooftops and windows.
Sgt. Kevin O’Flarity, a squad leader, jumped into his Humvee to join
his fellow soldiers, racing through abandoned Iraqi Army and police
checkpoints to the battle site.
He and his squad maneuvered their Humvees through alleyways and side
streets, firing back at an estimated 60 insurgents during a gun battle
that raged for two and a half hours.
A rocket-propelled grenade glanced off Sergeant O’Flarity’s Humvee,
failing to penetrate.
When the battle was over, Delta Company learned that among the enemy
dead were at least two Iraqi Army soldiers that American forces had
helped train and arm.
“The 29th was a watershed moment in a negative sense, because the
Iraqi Army would not fight with us,” Captain Rogers said, adding,
“Some actually picked up weapons and fought against us.”
The battle changed the attitude among his soldiers toward the war, he
said.
“Before that fight, there were a few true believers.” Captain Rogers
said.
“After the 29th, I don’t think you’ll find a true believer in this
unit. They’re paratroopers. There’s no question they’ll fulfill their
mission. But they’re fighting now for pride in their unit,
professionalism, loyalty to their fellow soldier and chain of
command.”
To Sergeant O’Flarity, the Iraqi security forces are militias beholden
to local leaders, not the Iraqi government.
“Half of the Iraqi security forces are insurgents,” he said.
As for his views on the war, Sergeant O’Flarity said, “I don’t believe
we should be here in the middle of a civil war.”
“We’ve all lost friends over here,” he said.
“Most of us don’t know what we’re fighting for anymore. We’re serving
our country and friends, but the only reason we go out every day is
for each other.”
“I don’t want any more of my guys to get hurt or die. If it was
something I felt righteous about, maybe. But for this country and this
conflict, no, it’s not worth it.”
From The New York Times, 5/27/07:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/world/middleeast/28cnd-delta.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Doubts Grow as G.I.’s in Iraq Find Allies in Enemy Ranks
By MICHAEL KAMBER
BAGHDAD —
Staff Sgt. David Safstrom does not regret his previous tours in Iraq,
not even a difficult second stint when two comrades were killed while
trying to capture insurgents.
“In Mosul, in 2003, it felt like we were making the city a better
place,” he said.
“There was no sectarian violence, Saddam was gone, we were tracking
down the bad guys. It felt awesome.”
But now on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in
the mission.
The pivotal moment came, he says, this past February when soldiers
killed a man setting a roadside bomb.
When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification
showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.
“I thought, ‘What are we doing here? Why are we still here?’ ” said
Sergeant Safstrom, a member of Delta Company of the First Battalion,
325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division.
“We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the
day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”
His views are echoed by most of his fellow soldiers in Delta Company,
renowned for its aggressiveness.
A small minority of Delta Company soldiers — the younger, more recent
enlistees in particular — seem to still wholeheartedly support the
war.
Others are ambivalent, torn between fear of losing more friends in
battle, longing for their families and a desire to complete their
mission.
With few reliable surveys of soldiers’ attitudes, it is impossible to
simply extrapolate from the small number of soldiers in Delta Company.
But in interviews with more than a dozen soldiers over a one-week
period with this 83-man unit, most said they were disillusioned by
repeated deployments, by what they saw as the abysmal performance of
Iraqi security forces and by a conflict that they considered a civil
war, one they had no ability to stop.
They had seen shadowy militia commanders installed as Iraqi Army
officers, they said, had come under increasing attack from roadside
bombs — planted within sight of Iraqi Army checkpoints — and had
fought against Iraqi soldiers whom they thought were their allies.
“In 2003, 2004, 100 percent of the soldiers wanted to be here, to
fight this war,” said Sgt. First Class David Moore, a self-described
“conservative Texas Republican” and platoon sergeant who strongly
advocates an American withdrawal.
“Now, 95 percent of my platoon agrees with me.”
It is not a question of loyalty, the soldiers insist.
Sergeant Safstrom, for example, comes from a thoroughly military
family.
His mother and father have served in the armed forces, as have his
three sisters, one brother and several uncles.
One week after the Sept. 11 attacks, he walked into a recruiter’s
office and joined the Army.
“You guys want to start a fight in my backyard, I got something for
you,” he recalls thinking at the time.
But in Sergeant Safstrom’s view, the American presence is futile.
“If we stayed here for 5, even 10 more years, the day we leave here
these guys will go crazy,” he said.
“It would go straight into a civil war. That’s how it feels, like
we’re putting a Band-Aid on this country until we leave here.”
Their many deployments have added to the strain.
After spending six months in Iraq, the soldiers of Delta Company had
been home for only 24 hours last December when the news came.
“Change your plans,” they recall being told.
“We’re going back to Iraq.”
Nineteen days later, just after Christmas, Capt. Douglas Rogers and
the men of Delta Company were on their way to Kadhimiya, a Shiite
enclave of about 300,000.
As part of the so-called surge of American troops, their primary
mission was to maintain stability in the area and prepare the Iraqi
Army and police to take control of the neighborhood.
“I thought it would not be long before we could just stay on our base
and act as a quick-reaction force,” said the barrel-chested Captain
Rogers of San Antonio.
“The Iraqi security forces would step up.”
It has not worked out that way.
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Harry
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