Chasing Ghosts
A Soldier's Fight for America from Baghdad to Washington
By Paul Rieckhoff
NAL Caliber
New York, 2006
326 pages
I developed a methodical, pragmatic callousness in Iraq. It is not something I am proud of now, but it is not something I am ashamed of either. And I feel grateful to the Army for giving it to me .... Most Americans who've never served in combat will never understand that reasoning. The best-trained soldiers are not designed to be humanitarians. That is not what they are built for.
... I saw lots of grown men cry in Iraq. It seemed like every day some man begged, pleaded, and sobbed. It turned my stomach a bit in the beginning. Then, I just stopped caring entirely. I just went numb. Sometimes I was more than unfeeling of their pain - I hated them for it. I hated them for not having the dignity, or pride, to suck it up. I hated them for not caring how weak it made them look. I hated them for giving my soldiers an opportunity to mock them and brand them an inferior culture....
And I have to admit, I thought the same thing at times. There were so many reasons for us to be angry: the heat, the shooting, the outdated flak jackets, the lack of information, the shitty chow, the IEDs, the sight of our wounded buddies, the lack of sex, the holidays missed, the boredom, the uncertainty, the complete and total lack of control over our own lives. So many reasons to be pissed. And only one group of people to take it out on - the Iraqis.
For millennia, young men have taken to the battlefield to test their individual mettle and to take part in the historic movements that shape world civilizations for centuries to come. Out of those experiences, countless books and stories have been spawned; indeed, one of the earliest oral stories ever told, The Iliad, is one bloody battle episode after another, strung together by heroics, meddlesome gods and eye-glazing lists of materiel. The Iraq invasion doubtless will provide fodder for many more. We are lucky that one such account of the current conflict has already been penned, and it sets the bar high for those that inevitably will follow, both in quality of prose and its fortuitous timing, in that it can help shape current national dialogue about America's intent, goals and effectiveness in the war-torn region.
Paul Rieckhoff's first-hand reporting of his self-initiated journey from Amherst College graduate to lieutenant in the National Guard patrolling the streets of Baghdad is painful, raw and unsparing, both as glimpses of his hardening self are revealed and as he rubs up against the conflicting agendas and dictums of various authorities operating in the region. What gives Rieckhoff's observations their power - above and beyond his command of the language - is his ability to tie his immediate experiences to a larger view of history, current foreign policy and popular culture than can be expected from the average recruit in this volunteer army. Most of the men he commands in his National Guard unit are from Florida, and many have never set foot outside of their native states. While having a "Little Ivy" graduate lieutenant tell their story seems a recipe for elitist judgment, Rieckhoff's admiration for the hope, camaraderie and motivations of his band of brothers sings through and precludes any such easy categorizations, as in the following passage, in which the author remarks upon some of the astounding sacrifices he witnessed as his unit - after several postponements - draws closer to coming home:
The guys determined among themselves a rotation to minimize the exposure of anyone with kids. It was an enlisted man's code that I had no place interfering with. Some of my soldiers told their buddies to stay behind while they went outside the wire, walking in their place. That's a level of love I had never seen before in my life.
As his personal story unfolds, the title, Chasing Ghosts, takes on new meanings at several different levels. First used as a description of the frustrating "melting away" of the enemy in the alleys and apartment buildings of Baghdad, the ghosts that Rieckhoff chases begin to apply to the muddled goals of civilian leadership; the incompetent coordination of what the author terms a "patchwork" of overlapping bureaucratic military forces assigned to the region, often with different goals and different intended outcomes; and ultimately, to his return to the United States, where he seeks out - and cannot find - politicians (from either party) willing to answer questions and hear the views of the soldier on the ground.
Written with the story-telling skills ordinarily found in a novel, Chasing Ghosts is gripping, full of personality and bursting with vivid narrative, as the author wrestles with the realities of "liberating" Iraq and leading a National Guard platoon. An undercurrent of absolute frustration runs throughout it all, from not receiving urban battle training before shipping over (and being reprimanded for arranging some unofficially), to the constant lack of decent equipment, to the ridiculous requirements in Baghdad for clearing communications with higher-ups to coordinate with peers two hundred yards away, leaving soldiers to resort to mirrors and Morse Code to communicate across a river about the whereabouts of a current sniper.
Some of the gripes Rieckhoff expresses on behalf of his unit are as old as war: those on the front line resenting those safer and removed from the reality of the streets who hand down unrealistic policies of behavior, for example, or the endless "hurry up and wait" assignments at the beginning of deployment ... and the boredom ... and the lousy food ... and the lack of sex. Other objections are particular to modern conflict: urban guerilla warfare, being subject to public relations spin from both sides, the inability to distinguish friend from foe in a foreign, insurgency-fed environment. But some are particular to this fiasco: poor planning, lack of decent equipment and - in scathing passages like the following denouncement of Bush's "Bring it on!" statement - an utter disbelief in the cluelessness of the current commander in chief:
Who the hell did he think he was? He had finally taken the cowboy act too far. Iraq was not a movie, and he was not Clint Eastwood. The armchair bravado and arrogance of our commander in chief affected our lives directly and immediately. If I had seen this news story, so had the Iraqis. I just could not fathom what would motivate him to say such a thing. Iraq was in a very fragile state, and we needed our president to be a statesman, not a bully.
The enemy was already "bringing it on" all over Baghdad.
Rieckhoff's articulate outrage extends from the wider views of flawed foreign policy and the ignorance displayed by America assuming Sunni and Shia, at each other's throats from century upon century, will simply "get along" on our imperialistic say-so (he compares their historical enmity to that of blacks and whites in America, only worse) to the seemingly minor minutiae of discovering his soldiers, upon return to the states, are not given medical examinations upon release ("We had been exposed to year of death and disease, and the Army didn't require us to see a doctor? Nice to know that the military cared about our condition when we deployed, but not after we came home.").
The mixed bag of conflicting expectations forced upon American soldiers in Iraq is one of the most flawed, and frustrating, sources of failure of policy, according to Rieckhoff, and one seemingly without easy remedy. Aware as they are of serving as some form of unofficial ambassadors of goodwill to the civilian population (perhaps the only Americans most Iraqis will ever encounter), the author's unit attempts to provide security to a local school, or apologizes after a badly targeted raid of the house of an innocent, or pools together financial resources to get medical treatment for an Iraqi janitor or shoes for an oversized translator. Yet these wisps of connection are quickly blown away as roadside bombs go off, or as his unit is used as human bait stationed in front of the Turkish embassy when Turkey declares support for the coalition, or as his platoon is ordered to "clear out" a slum of Baghdad in the dead of night (a fiasco in which our own helicopters create havoc with our ground troops as they storm a sniper-infested building).
Informed paranoia and the individual human instinct for survival are constantly pitted against the professed American goal of liberating the civilian population of Iraq. In one poignant passage, Rieckhoff bemoans how even those who try to help are destroyed by our presence:
Toward the end of May family with two kids was assassinated just south of our sector. They had just given us information on a weapons cache two days before. The killings sent intimidating shock waves throughout the neighborhood and left us feeling horrible and guilty. We demanded intelligence from Iraqis, but could not guarantee them any degree of protection in exchange. Giving us info became the kiss of death. We had incredible power, but not enough of the right kind ....
We had destroyed Iraq's political and social infrastructure and failed to provide its people with another one to replace it... Both sides were frustrated. But in today's Iraq, just as under Saddam, might made right. ... The most powerful person in Iraq was often a nineteen-year-old machine gunner from Florida. Or Kansas. Or California .... I write in a letter to [girlfriend] Bama that I would never again have this much unadulterated power in my life. I could detain, harass, question, and beat anyone I liked, at any time. It felt good. And I felt guilty that it felt good.
We were taking out our anger, frustration, and fear on the very people we had come to help.
The author's admission of reveling in power - and the resultant guilt for the reveling - is one of the most powerful virtues of this book. There is little bullshit in these pages, and there is a lot to afflict the comfortable, including liberals who call for immediate withdrawal. As neither a registered Republican nor a Democrat, Rieckhoff views both "staying the course" and "bring the troops NOW" as simplistic and unrealistic. Rather, he urges a national dialogue to begin, based on the experiences and voices of veterans, on seeking some sort of middle way, which is one of the reasons he founded Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and its Operation Truth:
It is important for veterans to know that there is nothing unpatriotic about speaking up about their experiences in the military. They had served their country as soldiers. To continue to serve their country as civilians, it is imperative that veterans demand attention and inform the government of their opinions so that problems can be addressed and solved. So I believed I had not only a right, but an obligation to talk about my experiences in Iraq.... America desperately needed to hear the "ground truth." I was not speaking out against the war. It was much more complex than that. The country had to initiate a real dialogue about the Iraq war. I was speaking out about the Iraq war.
... Iraq was a new kind of war in a new geopolitical climate, and demanded new policy ideas. Right from the start, we made it crystal clear that Operation Truth was not part of the "antiwar movement." We weren't antiwar or prowar - both were outdated ways of looking at the situation.
We weren't tree-hugging peaceniks and we weren't throwing our medals at the White House. Sometimes military action is necessary - all of us understood that. We represented veterans proud to have served their nation at a time of war, but deeply concerned about the ways our leaders had mishandled that war, created more enemies, and jeopardized our national security. We argued that what America needed was a sensible war movement.
Ranging from the personal observations upon return ("I thought I'd be liberated by handing away my rifle, but instead I felt empty, weak and vulnerable - like a piece of my body had been amputated.") to the growing feeling of responsibility to speak out on behalf of fellow veterans everywhere, Rieckhoff's book is more than one man's eyewitness account of the current conflict, as is pointed out in the subtitle of the book: "A Soldier's Fight for America from Baghdad to Washington." The book's purpose is to validate the voices of the individuals among us who experience in our daily lives the fallout from failed and flawed policies. Indeed, while Chasing Ghosts is riveting writing, its larger point seems to be that real citizen input is vital to a democracy, whether it be the experience of soldiers - or teachers or nurses or parents or whatever ways we categorize ourselves in our daily as-lived lives. And if the powers-that-currently-be won't set you a place at the table, why then good Americans simply set up a different table and begin to amplify their own stories. Rieckhoff's founding of IAVA, his book, his interviews on cable TV and his recent op-ed in The New York Times are testimony to the spirit of insistence on being heard, both in traditional venues and in not-so-traditional ones.
Taking his closing of Chasing Ghosts in a wider context beyond just the issues of veterans, but to fueling a true people-powered politics in general, can create a template for our own new bottoms-up infrastructure movement and a clarion call to voice the previously "unvoiced" among us:
Iraq veterans will change the course not only of the war in Iraq, but also of America's path for the next generation.... America's next generation of leaders will be forged on the battlefields of Fallujah and Ramadi. They will lay the groundwork for a populist political movement that challenges the status quo in America and propels veterans into Congress for decades to come. Iraq vets can heal our divided country, strengthen our tattered reputation, and remind us what is important.
... We fought for America in Iraq. It is time for the next fight - the fight for America back home.
Bring it on.
Paul Rieckhoff is the executive director and found of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) (formerly Operation Truth). For more information on Chasing Ghosts, visit the book's website, or visit IAVA. Our own DarkSyde interviewed Rieckhoff recently here.