Been consumed by family related errands in Alabama this week so in addition to having to deal with 100 plus degree heat, have not had time to blog. The heat gave me flash backs to my times in the Mideast desert during my military active duty days which in turn reminded me I have one more Department of Defense sponsored Bloggers roundtable to report on, this one on Iraq. I bought a brand new lap top for this trip and have yet to figure out how to do things like spell check and formatting so bear with me.
Before I begin I’d like to make a few comments about my recent blogs on Afghanistan. I understand some are wondering whether the Generals I’ve interviewed during the Department of Defense sponsored forums are being totally forthcoming or are only presenting part of the data. I’ve done a number of these forums and never have I gotten the sense that any topics were off the table or that the information provided was faulty, made up or incomplete. The focus has been on the efforts of the military and police forces so not much was discussed about other efforts. Nor was all of the news they provided good; the military participants have always covered the good, the bad and the ugly and have frequently cited corruption and literacy as major problems to overall success in Afghanistan.
It’s been my experience that the military mindset is not just to focus on problems but also solutions. In that vein during the interviews, they also discuss what efforts they’re working on to counter these problems. It’s not “bragging” if it’s the truth. As to some who interpret me as overly optimistic, I would call myself “cautiously optimistic” on the chances of success in Afghanistan. It can still go south, that’s why I’m not in favor of a military drawdown next month. I do believe in civilian oversight of the military but also believe if you have someone in charge of the military operations and they are successful why not continue to accept their recommendations? I believe in General Petraeus, both Presidents Bush and Obama have found their General Grant. Hopefully his successor can continue the trend.
By way of contrast, after I retired from the military, my midlife crisis was to become a DJ on a Colorado radio station and play some awesome R&B. Because of that I’ve had the opportunity to do celebrity interviews and during the process have been told by PR folks that certain topics were off limits. As mentioned that has never happened to me with the Department of Defense interviews. Participants are never given any restrictions and if any of the bloggers ask a question the DoD can’t answer, they always research it and get back to you. If any reader finds the information in my reports of the Bloggers Roundtables incomplete, I take full responsibility.
If any reader wants more data than I have provided, ask me and I’ll either track it down or direct you to where you can find it. The military and intelligence community do classify a lot of information; primarily for operational and security reasons but are a lot more open than some books and Hollywood movies would have you believe. I like the classic line “You can’t handle the truth” uttered by Jack Nicholas in the movie A Few Good Men. It’s been my experience as I travel around giving talks that some people don’t believe the truth because it doesn’t match preconceived views and expectations. I never tell people what to believe only that they make sure they’ve researched their views and not base them only on media sound bites.
To better illustrate this point, it took me seven years to find someone willing to publish my memoir on my military career (A Woman’s War). I figured with all of the news and talk about intelligence, people would be interested in hearing an insider’s view about how intelligence support is provided to military operations. Instead my manuscript was turned down countless times by publishers and agents. During my career, I had my ups and downs and talk about them in the book but apparently the powers that be thought there was no interest in a book that wasn’t totally negative or filled with sex and/or anti-military stories. The truth was in spite of some people questioning whether or not woman belonged in the military, most of the guys I worked for and with accepted me. That was not a truth most publishers thought the public was interested in. I knew it wasn’t true because I was out on the speaking circuit telling stories from the book to a highly interested public.
That said, on to the task at hand. On May 27, 2011, I participated in a Bloggers roundtable with Major General Jeffrey Buchanan, USA. The topic was an update on Operation New Dawn. General Buchanan opened up by saying the “security environment is complex and there’s still a lot of work to be done” but significant progress has been made but the Iraqi Security Forces “have had the lead for security since last summer”.
Since September 2010 when the operation changed from Operation Iraqi Freedom to Operation New Dawn the mission for U.S. Forces switched from security to stability operations. The General explained that the military side of the operations there were “three major tasks for stability operations. The first one is to advise, train, assist and equip the Iraqi Security forces; our second task is to conduct, partner, in counterterrorism operations, and our third task is to support and protect the civilian workers that come from the U.S. Mission Iraq or the embassy as they work to build civil capacity throughout the country.”
General Buchanan spoke about the threats they still faced: al-Qaida and other terrorist groups, illegal arms and militias, basic criminality. I’ll go more in depth on what he said about these threats in my next blog but will conclude with this statement he made: “I’d like to take these threats and talk about them in a little broader context. First of all, we do still have violent actions or violent activities through the country, and sometimes they’re very heinous. But overall, when you look at them in the context of where we’ve been in recent years, the trends are very, very positive. In 2007, we averaged 145 attacks per day throughout the country; in 2008, that was down to 49 per day; in 2009, 20 attacks per day; 15 for 2010; and for the first four months of 2011, we’re averaging 13 attacks per day.”
Curious I checked out crime statistics in the U.S. According to 2009 stats from the FBI there were an estimated 1,318, 398 violent crimes in the U.S. According to the CIA Factbook, Iraq has a population of 30,399,572. I decided to look at California, which has a population of about 36 million. The FBI stats for violent crime in that state for 2009 were 174,459. That breaks down to about an average of 478 a day. Think I’ll end here. As always my views are my own. Will finish Major General Buchanan’s interview on Monday.
