Panels examine effects of Iraq War nine years later
Soldiers no longer occupy Iraq the way they did for nine years during a war that journalism professor Matthew LaPlante said most Americans don’t understand and many want to forget.
A two-part panel discussion held Monday in the TSC Auditorium, “Out of Iraq,” targeted feelings of confusion and ambivalence that many USU students and Cache Valley community members may experience, LaPlante said.
“Honestly, I wanted a good starter discussion about a war that I think a lot of people are very happy to forget, put aside and to say ‘That’s in the past,'” he said. “It’s not in the past. It stays with us, it continues with us – the legacy continues and it even grows. I wanted to foment that discussion on this campus.”
Monday marked the ninth anniversary of the Iraq War and U.S. military presence in Iraq. Former and current USU students – who have each served at least one tour of duty in Iraq – along with Army ROTC recruiting officer Greg Stewart, met to form the first of two panels that would answer questions and discuss various viewpoints about the war.
The audience comprised students, faculty and other community members, some of whom also served in Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East. LaPlante asked one audience member, sociology major and Iraq veteran Tara Earl, what she felt veterans need now that the war is over.
“I think every veteran – coming home – needs help,” Earl said. “Because we get trained up, at minimum, three months on how to be a soldier, how to go over there and how to almost learn to hate their culture and … know that they’re an enemy. When you come home … they don’t train you how to be a civilian again.”
Panel member Marshall Thompson, a USU alumnus, said when he returned home from Iraq family and friends threw a welcome-home party, and he didn’t know how to act – his mind couldn’t process a life outside of the war.
“I ran a newspaper as a public affairs soldier, as a sergeant in Iraq,” Thompson said. “We actually did some polling of (soldiers), and we asked them if people back home understood what they were going through, and 99 percent said, ‘No way.’ I think that’s pretty accurate and pretty consistent for most soldiers who go over.”
Philosophy major and Iraq veteran William Holloway said when he got home he wanted to walk on grass and carpet without having to wear his boots all the time. He also talked about his time in Iraq.
“We talked to people who had met Saddam Hussein and had been shot,” Holloway said. “They had the bullet holes to prove it and said ‘We’re glad he’s gone, but we want to run our own country.'”
There were differing opinions among panel members regarding whether U.S. involvement in Iraq and the Middle East was and still would be a good thing. Stewart said he met several Iraqi citizens who he became friends with and were glad American troops were there to help.
Journalism student Dale Nicholas, a panel member who has served in the Marines and as a private defense contractor, said he feels a lot of the negative actions of the U.S. military are covered in the news and the good things it has done are forgotten.
“They don’t show the good things they’re doing,” Nicholas said. “They don’t show a marine out on patrol giving his water to somebody who’s thirsty, or giving his MRE out to a little kid. Because that doesn’t sell news.”
Panelist and mechanical engineering major David Reynolds agreed. He said he thinks sensationalism in the news is what sells – that the public responds to tragic and graphic stories, which ends up defining the public’s view on the war and the military.
Audience member and doctoral student Brooke Robertshaw said she is a dissenter of the Iraq War, and she added that U.S. military occupation in any county is a form of “cultural colonialism” and should be put to an end.
“One thing we’ve been talking about is it’s going to take 15 years or so to find out if this is a success or not,” Thompson said. “The decision to go to war in Iraq, I think we can judge now. It was unlawful – clearly unlawful – by international law.
“It resulted in conservative estimates of over 100,000 civilian deaths. It’s important that we pay attention and judge that decision now, because we’re facing the same decision right now with Iran.”
The idea that the Iraq war was unlawful also resonated during the second panel discussion, which comprised mostly members of the USU political science department.
Visiting assistant professor of political science Selin Guner, a native of Turkey, shared her unique perspective as a former resident of the Middle East.
“I think historians will name this war in 20 years as an example of unjust war,” Guner said. “I’m really hoping that things will be better there (in 20 years), but I’m also hoping that the United States is going to learn something from this and (does) not involve (itself) in Middle Eastern politics too much, because in the long term things will be really, really hostile against United States.”
Current foreign policy with Iran is another concept panelists focused on. Guner said the Arab Spring movements were not pro-American movements – they were anti-government, but not pro-American, she said. As a result, U.S. leaders need to realize they should let Middle Eastern governments work things out on their own, she added.
Panelist and 30-year veteran of the CIA, Larry Boothe, somewhat agreed with Guner’s sentiments that the Iraq War was unjust and had his own input regarding Iran, the Middle East and the future involvement of the U.S.
“It was a war that was pre-emptive,” Boothe said. “The war did not end the way we thought it would end, it wasn’t supplied sufficiently to bring that country to an end, which we could’ve done had we decided to. Instead of that, we moved along with a very poor strategic approach.”
The Iraq War is history, Boothe said, and the current problem is that now Iraq is dysfunctional, and he doesn’t believe the U.S. has the knowledge or the resources to manage the centuries-old religious, political and cultural milieu that Middle Eastern countries comprise.
“The Iranians would dearly love to move in and just take over command and run the place,” he said of Iraq.
He also said Iraq has been populated by three distinctly different groups, each with their own cultures.
“There are three provinces of people who do not like each other – period,” he said.
Echoing the differing opinions expressed during the earlier panel discussion, panelist and Extension agent Lyle Holmgren shared a more positive angle regarding his experiences in Iraq.
“This is my opinion: I think that trade is the best thing that could possibly ever happen between two countries,” Holmgren said. “What we found was there were lots of people who came to us and wanted to explore the idea of getting beef animals over there and any other sort of agricultural trade.”
In 2008, Holmgren visited with members of the animal science department from Baghdad University to research options for stemming agricultural and economic growth in Iraq. Unfortunately, he said, the war stifled further progress and put everything on hold, indefinitely.
“When you engage in unjust war, it’s going to haunt you in the long term afterwards,” Guner said.
Former U.S. diplomat for the Middle East during the 80s and 90s and lecturer in the political science department Steve Sharp said he believes most Americans were left out of U.S. involvement in the Iraq War, which underscores the earlier panelists’ affirmation that most Americans are completely detached from what has occurred in the Middle East for at least the past nine years.
“The Iraq War is one of the most colossal blunders we’ve ever made,” Sharp said. “If you look at the impact of the war regionally. We spent a trillion dollars and, if anything, our position is worse than it was when we went in. In the long term, it damaged our standing in the world. People no longer look to us to follow international norms or to be a leader in international norms.”
Military science department head, Maj. Matthew Badell, a co-organizer for the panels, said he knows there are mixed feelings regarding the Iraq War and he’s glad to work with the journalism department to organize these kinds of events to air people’s concerns.
Veterans program coordinator for the Access and Diversity center Tony Flores also assisted LaPlante in organizing the panels for Monday’s events. USU student and Iraq veteran Kurt Nantz sat on the 1 p.m. panel, as well.
At the end of the second panel discussion, LaPlante said he was happy with the way things turned out. He said if he could’ve done anything differently he would have had a more diverse group of veterans, because the six who were there were all white males. Marshall said people should realize the importance of women in the armed forces.
“There are some glimmers of hope, if you look hard enough in Iraq, but they are hard to find,” Sharp said. “I look at Iraq as arrogance wrapped in deception, packaged in lies, delivered by incompetence. It was ill conceived from beginning to end, and if we have something positive out of it, it will be in spite of what we did, not because of
what we did.”
– dan.whitney.smith@aggiemail.usu.edu
