U.S. Army Capt. Eric Coulson has seen remarkable improvement in Iraq’s security during his 14 months in the war zone. What has caused this progress?
Coulson says part of the success is due to the 30,000-troop “surge” in U.S. troops. But in a phone interview yesterday, he told me the improvement has other contributing factors, too, including al-Qaida’s brutal methods.
“Al-Qaida has been their own biggest enemy over there,” he says. “They’ve got plenty of people who would have been willing to support them against the Americans. They’ve managed to do themselves in because they were going to impose their version of Islam come heck or high water.”
Coulson says Sunni Arab Iraqis, who might have been al-Qaida’s natural allies, instead allied themselves with the Americans last year, after al-Qaida in November 2006 murdered a sheik who wouldn’t obey al-Qaida’s every command. [*See Footnote.]
But the captain laments the “hate and vengeance,” in Iraq and in the United States, that slows progress in the war.
‘Time and patience.’ A year ago, Coulson, who was based then in what was the especially dangerous Anbar province, told me in an e-mail interview that he was optimistic that Iraq’s democracy could be stabilized if the United States showed it was a reliable friend.
On Dec. 5, 2006, Coulson said:
“I have no doubts about the need to build a democracy in Iraq, and have no doubt we can be successful given the time and patience to do so.”
Now he’s seeing the fruits of the hard work and sacrifices by U.S. troops, including his old company of IED hunters who for a year took on one of the riskiest jobs of the war.
Back to Iraq in 4 days. Coulson, who has his own blog, Badgers Forward, is on an 18-day leave with his wife, Karen, in St. Louis, Missouri. He’ll be going back to Iraq in four days.
In that phone call yesterday, he and I talked about how the Iraq war is going. Again, I thank him for his service and for his thoughts.
THE INTERVIEW. DECEMBER 6, 2007:
FW: First, what is your new assignment in Iraq? I assume you could have returned to the United States with the rest of your Badgers (A Company, 321 Engineer Battalion) in September. Why didn’t you come back permanently, too?
Capt. Coulson: I am the assistant Brigade Engineer for a regular Army Brigade in Southern Iraq. I could have come home, but chose to stay because I believe the mission is important and that I still had something to contribute.
FW: Where are you based now in Iraq? How many men are in this brigade?
Capt. Coulson: I’m a little bit north of Basra. We have about 4,000 people. We’re a little robust. The Brigade provides theater security assets to logistical efforts. Those Soldiers are working throughout Iraq.
FW: Your first year in Iraq was in the Ramadi and Falluja areas. What was the most significant change you saw in Ramadi and Falluja in that time?
Capt. Coulson: Ramadi and Fallujah have started to return to a state where they could begin the return to normal. See my New Glass post from August. Iraqi’s are starting businesses and rebuilding. Americans are probably relatively safe, but of course are naturally higher priority.
[An excerpt from Capt. Coulson’s Aug. 23 post, “New Glass”:
“We pass Hurricane Point and turn east cross the trestled bridge across the Euphrates River. We descend off the bridge and that’s when you notice the change. …
“There at the first corner, I see it. New glass. Someone has put new glass in a shop. Someone only installs new glass when they think it won’t get broken. New glass is confidence.
“As we roll though Ramadi I see more stores and small shops open. And more new glass. …
“Crossing the Euphrates once again we are in the city of Al Falluja. Having read Bing West’s book, No True Glory, I identify all sorts of places where Phantom Fury played out less than three years ago. And there it is again. New glass.”]
FW: Have you had much chance to get to know Iraqis as friends? How do the Iraqis treat you?
Capt. Coulson: I have not had the chance to get to know any Iraqi’s really well, but they have all been very cordial.
FW: On February 8th of this year, your unit lost three Soldiers, Sgt. James J. Holtom, Sgt. Ross A. Clevenger and Pfc. Raymond M. Werner, when a roadside bomb blew up their RG-31 vehicle. You wrote of heartache on that day. How do you put their lives and their loss into perspective?
Capt. Coulson: They gave their lives for their fellow Soldiers and Marines. The died leading the way into a previously untraveled area. They were key to beginning taking the area of Karma back from AQI [al-Qaida in Iraq].
FW: Did that deadly incident change your approach to your mission in Iraq? In anytime in the near future, say, the next 10 years, could ground vehicles be made 100 percent safe from improvised explosive devices?
Capt. Coulson: No and No. All the MRAPs [Mine Resistant and Ambush Protected vehicles] are great, but it’s important that people realize that as long as we’re going into battle, technology is never going to make it completely safe.
With explosions, the shrapnel kills people, but the explosive force kills people, too. On Feb. 8th, they’d piled a number of pieces together. As it blew up through the ground, it concentrated a lot of energy in a relatively narrow area, and it was able to come up through the vehicle.
FW: At the time, did you have any way of knowing with any degree of certainty which group planted that February 8th bomb? Do you have a better idea today? Was it probably al Qaida? Was it more likely some local, loosely organized group? Baathists? And where would they have obtained such powerful explosives?
Capt. Coulson: Not at the time although later we learned it was al-Qaida. It was a combination of items they built into one big bomb.
FW: How did you find out later it was al-Qaida in Iraq?
Capt. Coulson: Special Operations did a raid, and they found material, linking them to the EOD Report [on the February 8 attack], that was the same type of explosive. They found night vision [an American’s goggles set]. We thought it had been destroyed in the blast, but it had been blown away from the vehicle, and the bad guys must have picked it up.
FW: What is an EOD Report?
Capt. Coulson: EOD [Explosive Ordnance Disposal] Reports are routinely done on IED attacks as part of the investigation, also called post-blast analysis.
FW: Are these bombs brought in from outside Iraq?
Capt. Coulson: Some it comes from outside of Iraq. Some of it came from stores of the previous regime. They have stuff stashed throughout the country, all across the desert. They’ve been doing some from raw materials, too.
FW: How about the February 8th bomb?
Capt. Coulson: It was a combination of homemade explosives and some high-grade military ordnance.
FW: February 8th obviously was the worst day of your first year in Iraq. What has been your happiest day in Iraq?
Capt. Coulson: Any day I gave awards to my Soldiers; and any day they all returned safely.
I was definitely glad [in September] when the last of my Soldiers cleared Iraq, and I didn’t have to worry about them anymore, not in that way. I mean, some are going through other things, divorces.
FW: How many divorces?
Capt. Coulson: I was talking with my first sergeant the other day. Five of the company’s 111 Soldiers are going through divorces. It wasn’t any of the guys who have been married a long time.
FW: Your Badgers team removed or destroyed more than 450 IEDs from Iraq’s roadsides in a year. Is there any one particular assignment carried out by you or your men that are you proudest of?
Capt. Coulson: We operated as a strategic force, as far as the unit we were supporting. The IED is a strategic weapon for the insurgency. It does more to impact public perception of the war, causing casualties, as opposed to making a real impact on the tactical level.
We were usually leading the way for maneuver forces. What I’m really proud of is that we were really able to reduce the strategic impact of the IED campaign in our sector. So we can reasonably ascertain that, if we had not cleared the IEDs, Coalition and Iraqi Forces would likely have been killed on the way to the targets and the mission would have been compromised.
FW: On February 8th, the group that was hit was on its way to where a helicopter had been shot down, right?
Capt. Coulson: Yes, the bodies of the seven Marines had been recovered from the helicopter. We were going back to get the helicopter itself. There was a whole lot of logistical stuff coming behind us.
FW: Have there been any other events in your Iraq experience that stick out in your mind as particularly significant? Perhaps something happened that didn't seem significant at the time and later it became clear it was important?
Capt. Coulson: The night in November 2006 when the al-Qaida attacked the sheik’s place in eastern Ramadi, no one realized that that night would be the night that the tribal leaders would say, We can trust the Americans and we can help them get al-Qaida out of here. No one realized then that it would be a far-reaching partnership. Why are the tribes doing now what they weren’t doing then? It has something to do with that night.
FW: I recall you writing something to the effect that each Soldier knows his part of the war, but few are likely to know the whole beast. Well, now things appear to have settled down measurably in Iraq, at least compared to a year ago. What do you believe has caused this improvement?
Capt. Coulson: It’s a combination of a lot of different pieces of the puzzle. I once thought that Iraq was a 100-piece puzzle that had to be put back together again. It’s more like a 1,000 piece puzzle that has to be put back together.
The “surge” wasn’t the only thing. It’s useless if the tribes weren’t going to work with us. No one thing can be given real credit. It’s been attitudes. Frankly, al Qaida has been their own biggest enemy over there. They’ve got plenty of people who would have been willing to support them against the Americans. They’ve managed to do themselves in because they were going to impose their version of Islam come heck or high water.
FW: It’s been fascinating monitoring your experiences in Iraq, first with last year’s interview, and since then, on your blog. Your stories have made Iraq much more understandable.
Once in a while, I’ve noticed, the people you have mentioned, or the people those people have bumped into, have been in the news. One was Army Capt. Travis Patriquin, who was killed Dec. 6, 2006, in Ramadi, along with Marine Major Megan McClung, who you knew a short time.
Before he died, Capt. Patriquin had put together a PowerPoint slideshow that explained to American Soldiers how to make friends of former enemies.
Capt. Coulson: “How to Win in al-Anbar,” by Travis Patriquin. That is excellent. You go back and look at it now, and it’s like Nostradamus. It’s prescient about what needed to happen.
FW: When you look for progress in Iraq, what do you look at first? The size of the Iraq army? Activity in the streets and schools?
Capt. Coulson: I think the thing that really shows where progress is being made is, do you go out and do you see Iraqis doing things, going grocery shopping, trying to live their lives? That’s the real telltale sign.
Americans go over, and it’s different. We know it’s usually one year and you’re out. Iraqis, that’s where they live. They have to decide how am I going to live my life today? When they decide they can do things, just like normal life, that’s an indication that we’re being successful.
FW: Is the Iraq army growing fast enough?
Capt. Coulson: Honestly I don’t have any basis for answering thay question. I’d just be speculating. I’d ask someone high ranking.
FW: What’s the most discouraging sign you see in Iraq today?
Capt. Coulson: It’s discouraging that there are some people who don’t seem to want to move past whatever they’re in now. I think a lot of people are stuck in their hate or vengeance or whatever it is.
FW: When you talk about the hate and vengeance, are you talking about Iraqis or Americans?
Capt. Coulson: Both Iraqis and Americans. I see a lot of people who say, invading Iraq was wrong. That was an argument for 2003. Here we are almost five years later. That’s not a very productive argument now.
FW: Hundreds of Iraqis still are killed each month in Iraq. Who is doing most of this killing?
Capt. Coulson: It’s mostly sectarian militias, mostly the Shia ones from my understanding. What people don’t seem to understand is when they can’t hit hard targets like the Coalition or Iraqi security forces, they attack other Muslims. They do it to instigate more violence, to make the country more unstable.
Some of them think this will get them to heaven. They may not care if you’re innocent. It’s those sort of militias that are doing it. It’s not going to be fixed overnight. It’s going to sort of peter out, and someday we’ll notice there’s no fighting. We’re never going to have that big victory moment.
FW: Are some would-be insurgents deciding against fighting in Iraq because they now see their cause failing? Are they thinking, to paraphrase John Kerry, I don’t want to be the last to die for a mistake?
Capt. Coulson: That’s right. A lot are very willing to die for their cause. However, I think they want to think they’ll be successful when they do that. They don’t want to think they’re dying in vain. The way things are going, they’re thinking this isn’t the place to go blow myself up.
FW: Besides the people you work with directly, who is the smartest American in Iraq?
Capt. Coulson: There are a lot of Americans in Iraq. I think General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are pretty gosh darn smart and savvy to what’s going on. [Army Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker.]
FW: Besides the people you work with, who is the smartest Iraqi in Iraq?
Capt. Coulson: That’s a tough question, with 25 million people. I would say [the smartest Iraqi is] the Iraqi who is choosing to go to work each day and trying to make Iraq a better place. Someone who is interested in building a peaceful and prosperous Iraq.
FW: What does your wife, Karen, think of your duty in Iraq?
Capt. Coulson: Karen is very supportive of me personally. She knows I’m doing something I always wanted to do, make an operational deployment. She’s supportive of the efforts that we’re trying to make over there, which partially has to do with the fact that I’m there, and she wants to support it.
FW: How much longer do you expect to be in Iraq? Will you ever return to law practice?
Capt. Coulson: I’m applying for a program to go back to school. I’m hoping that I’ll be out of there in January or February, but I still might stay until summer. Between January and June, is what I’m looking at. I’m trying to combine my legal and military education to be in the Army JAG program.
* * *
A chance to be free. Thanks again to Capt. Coulson. Good luck to him in his new mission in southern Iraq, and best wishes, too, for success in the JAG program. We’ll continue to follow him online.
It’s Soldiers like Capt. Coulson who have turned the tide in Iraq. We don’t know yet whether the recent progress is a long-term trend, but it has given the Iraqis a chance.
In the end, it’s the Iraqis’ democracy if they can keep it. But let’s not forget, it took a lot of brave Americans to deliver this historic opportunity for freedom.
Frank Warner
*Footnote: U.S. Army Capt. Tom Hanlon, of Task Force 1-9 Infantry “Manchus,” wrote earlier this year about al-Qaida’s November 2006 atrocities in East Ramadi, and how the local tribe reacted when U.S. forces came to the rescue:
“Al Qaeda extremists committed a tactical blunder in our area ultimately leading to their rapid demise in Ramadi. In late November 2006, they attacked a local tribe committing horrific atrocities on its members to demonstrate the consequences of contesting their influence. The tribal leader made a 9-1-1 call to our Battalion on a satellite phone previously provided to them should they ever need our help. Our Task Force quickly turned our flying cameras onto the scene and witnessed the atrocities in real time. Members of our Tactical Operations Center watched bodies being dragged behind vehicles on the display monitors.
“In rapid order, air support was rallied on station and 500 lb precision bombs quickly halted the massacres. A company of our Soldiers were subsequently dispatched to the scene by helicopter lift. They decisively removed the attackers and provided security and support to the victim tribe. The support consisted of humanitarian aid, weapons, training and a permanent presence of U.S. and Iraqi Soldiers to live in the neighborhood. In return we asked them to start a neighborhood watch force that we would help morph into a professional paid police force.
“Neighboring tribes watched this transformation happen and the influence spread rapidly through our area where allegiances formed one tribe after another. The enemy of our enemy became our friend and we all shared a similar agenda. It is no different than playing a board game with multiple opponents such as Risk or Monopoly. Quietly or overtly, alliances are formed in the interest of a shared agenda and the greater, more dangerous threat is suffocated. The cancer cells cannot further metastasize and thus remission begins.”
Now wide awake. What is known as the Anbar Awakening started in Ramadi about a year before this incident. That’s how the tribal leader happened to have a satellite phone capable of calling for U.S. emergency help. But until this particular atrocity, the Sunni Arab residents of East Ramadi had not cooperated with the Americans. In fact, many here still were helping al-Qaida to kill Americans.
It took this act of savagery to make clear to the residents of East Ramadi the kind of brutal repression al-Qaida intended for them the rest of their lives. And they said no. They’d rather be free.
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