180 and Teaching Iraqis to Fish

Today marks the 180 days in country. Halfway. 50%. I should be happy; but the number is a bit daunting. At least we are on the downhill now. What is hidden is the three months we spent at Fort Riley training up for this thing. I left my house in late July, so we actually crossed the nine month mark.

I used to read this book to Hailey called "If You Give a Pig A Pancake." It is about how if you give a pig a pancake, it will want some syrup, then it will want you to heat it up, put it on a plate, put butter on it, cut it up, then give you a napkin because you got syrup all over, etc. The damn pig can't just eat the pancake and be done with it.

This kid's book is a lot like advising. If you teach an Iraqi to fish in order to make him self sustaining, he will ask you for bait. And hooks. And string, and then a pole. And then he will ask for a ride to the canal, because his vehicles don't have enough gas to get there. Then you will show him how to fish. He will ask you to hold the pole, because of some religious holiday, and then blame you for the fish not biting when he does get to hold the pole.

Then he will go get a car battery, some wire, and a pole, and he will fish the way he always has done, for centuries. ZAP! and fish float to the top. (I have seen this during a clearance operation last week; we bumped into some guys fishing like this in a canal, and sure enough, they had a bucket of fish. They also had a shovel to dig up the cache of mortar rounds they had just hidden, too...)

We give them everything, and we teach them how to use everything we give them. We did a large operation a couple of weeks ago that involved moving 400 Iraqis by helicopter to an isolated area in the dark and then conducted a big clearance operation. They found some stuff and arrested some bad guys. The operation took several weeks to plan, and a lot US of coordination went into making this happen. Because we had done it before and we train for it, it was not foreign to us-- But the level of planning and coordination it took to pull off was lost on the IA. They just think we do it magically, and that when we do it, it doesn't cause that much effort; they just don't see it. We effortlessly talk over many kilometers and easily employ our radio equipment; the IA struggles to talk five kilometers, but only because they aren't trained on their equipment, and they don't do maintenance on it or ensure they have all the parts needed before they roll out. Things that seem second nature to us (rehearsals, pre-combat checks, training) are foreign concepts to them.

This is one of the many reasons why Arabs lose wars.

But then we get upset when they ask for more, mostly because we bust our butt and they get free chicken. In a way it is our own fault, because a Coalition unit that wants to do the right thing (make the IA successful) we keep on giving, and there is no incentive on the part of the IA to be self sufficient: If they wait long enough, an American will bait their hook. And we do, because we are afraid to let go of the bike seat and let them fail.

Love this job...

It is frustrating. But the struggle is still fun.

Hope you are well-- thanks for reading.
Ron