Captain Brian Freeman was not your stereotypical military hero. He didn't sigle handedly destroy a rifle platoon while saving three comrades' lives and losing his left leg and right arm. He will not recieve the medal of honor. All he got was kidnapped and executed. But that is not where his heroism lies. His actions, which were tragically cut short in Karbala, will continue to have an impact long after his death.
This story on MSNBC's news site via the WaPo shows us a man struggling to make right in a situation he knew was wrong. While my actions do not compare to this Captain's, the conflict of serving in a war you don't support politically is one I can relate to. We also shared a job, civil affairs, and chances are I saluted this man in passing while we were at Fort Bragg getting mobilized.
The essence of CPT Freeman's story is that, while not happy with the state of the war, he was by no means in a postition to sit on the sidelines. As a civil affairs officer he was right in the thick of things, in some cases even more so than your average infantry soldier. Whereas a grunt (unless he's the squad leader or above) typically won't converse with civilian Iraqis beyond hand gestures and whatever broken English an Iraqi may know, civil affairs soldiers, along with psy ops and intel soldiers, will talk with civilians all the time as part of their jobs. There have been several occasions when my team has been approached by fathers with sick children to see if we could help. Usually we can just ask the unit's medic to take a look at the child and he can help them. But sometimes the problem is too much for our capabilities.
This was the case with CPT Freeman. He had taken an interest in helping one particularly difficult case, a boy named Ali Abdulameer, who was in need of heart surgery. Ali was born with a heart problem that doctors in Iraq either couldn't or wouldn't be able to treat. Getting out of Iraq, at least officially, is not an easy thing to do and if you are indigent, pretty much impossible. The article doesn't say what the family's income status is, but likely its not high enough to be arranging travel to the United States. Long story short, CPT Freeman made saving this boy's life one of his personal priorities. Working with a Staff Sergeant Marikay Satryano (from NY, baby!), he was able wade through the red tape necessary to secure passports and visas needed for travel. You'd be amazed how much free time there is in a war zone, so he probably didn't detract from his officil duties by doing this sort of thing. Just as the final pieces came together, his compound was raided last month. He and along with three other soldiers were kidnapped and executed. A fifth soldier was killed during the raid.
In conjuction with a comment I made on a recent Olds88 diary this is the approach needed if and when we face a counterinsurgency situation in the future. We cannot measure success by the number of "combatants" killed. It must be measured by the number of civilians who see our soldiers as working in their best interest. If we stay cloistered, that is impossible. The only way to win over the civilian populace is by personal contact, creating bonds of friendship and community that eat away at the support of our advesaries. When one of our soldiers is killed, there need to be local civilians who knew him or her and will mourn with us in his/her passing. We cannot match the ability of local groups to instill fear in the nonaligned population, unless we betray our values. We can only truly fight them with our ability to assist civilians to create a viable, functioning civil society.
The risks to that approach are violently demonstrated in the case of CPT Freeman. Working away from the heavily protected garrisons exposes us to a higher possiblity of infiltration, ambush, and kidnapping. But no strategy in war is without risk. While the potential dangers inherent in working closly with locals is much more personal and, personally speaking, frightening (ie targeted kidnapping and torture vs more ramdom and impersonal explosions), it is the only way we can make an action like this work in the future.
So for those of us angry with the course of events during the last four years, I say look to CPT Freeman for inspiration. It may be too late to salvage much from the Iraq war, but we as a military and as a society must be prepared to engage in all types of conflicts. Grooming an officer corps that is prepared to address the diverse needs of local civilians as a high priority in planning and executing a war should be the most important result, in terms of military culture, of our experience in Iraq.