‘Waiting to Get Blown Up’: Some Troops in Baghdad Express Frustration With the War and Their Mission
BAGHDAD, July 26 Army Staff Sgt. Jose Sixtos considered the simple question about morale for more than an hour. But not until his convoy of armored Humvees had finally rumbled back into the Baghdad military base, and the soldiers emptied the ammunition from their machine guns, and passed off the bomb-detecting robot to another patrol, did he turn around in his seat and give his answer. “Think of what you hate most about your job. Then think of doing what you hate most for five straight hours, every single day, sometimes twice a day, in 120-degree heat,” he said. “Then ask how morale is.”
Imagine showing up for work every morning and wondering if that day is the day when you’ll be blown to bits by a roadside bomb, an “improvised explosive device” with your name on it. Yeah…and you think your jobs sucks, eh? Let me tell you, there are 130,000 American soldiers in Iraq who would trade places with you in a heartbeat.
After three-plus years of an endless, grinding war against a largely unseen enemy, is it any wonder that morale among the troops in-country is lower than a snake’s belly? You do your job, you count the days until you go home to your family. Then, just as you begin to look forward to leaving, your tour gets extended. A few more weeks, a few more months of feeling as if you have a target on your back, wondering if you’ll evenually go home intact or in a box.
No matter how bad your worst day at work may be, it can’t begin to approach the Hell that is every single work day in Iraq.
As President Bush plans to deploy more troops in Baghdad, U.S. soldiers who have been patrolling the capital for months describe a deadly and infuriating mission in which the enemy is elusive and success hard to find. Each day, convoys of Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles leave Forward Operating Base Falcon in southern Baghdad with the goal of stopping violence between warring Iraqi religious sects, training the Iraqi army and police to take over the duty, and reporting back on the availability of basic services for Iraqi civilians.
But some soldiers in the 2nd Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, 1st Armored Division — interviewed over four days on base and on patrols — say they have grown increasingly disillusioned about their ability to quell the violence and their reason for fighting. The battalion of more than 750 people arrived in Baghdad from Kuwait in March, and since then, six soldiers have been killed and 21 wounded.
“It sucks. Honestly, it just feels like we’re driving around waiting to get blown up. That’s the most honest answer I could give you,” said Spec. Tim Ivey, 28, of San Antonio, a muscular former backup fullback for Baylor University. “You lose a couple friends and it gets hard.”
“No one wants to be here, you know, no one is truly enthused about what we do,” said Sgt. Christopher Dugger, the squad leader. “We were excited, but then it just wears on you — there’s only so much you can take. Like me, personally, I want to fight in a war like World War II. I want to fight an enemy. And this, out here,” he said, motioning around the scorched sand-and-gravel base, the rows of Humvees and barracks, toward the trash-strewn streets of Baghdad outside, “there is no enemy, it’s a faceless enemy. He’s out there, but he’s hiding.”
“We’re trained as an Army to fight and destroy the enemy and then take over,” added Dugger, 26, of Reno, Nev. “But I don’t think we’re trained enough to push along a country, and that’s what we’re actually doing out here.”
Add to that frustration the creeping reality that you’re fighting to support a policy with no direction, no goal, and no hope of success given the current political environment in Iraq, and you don’t exactly have a recipe for sky-high morale. It would be nice to say that at least some of the 2,500+ soldiers who have died in Iraq died for a noble cause. It would be nice, but it would also be horribly wrong. The reality is that those 2,500+ brave souls have been sacrificed on the alter of neo-Conservative thugs bent on remaking the Middle East into an American playground safe for American oil companies to exploit.
Imagine going to work and having to deal with that reality every day. Combine that with temperatures hovering in the neighborhood of 120 degrees, and you might begin to understand just what American soldiers have to deal with on a daily basis. So when you’re stuck in traffic this morning and grumbling about your commute, try remembering that at least you don’t have to worry about anyone trying to blow you up as you pass by. Kinda changes your perspective, doesn’t it?
