Ronald Of Arabia's Plan for Getting Everyone Out of Iraq

Ronald Of Arabia wacking a golf ball off of the balcony of Al Faw Palace, home of USF-I Headquarters

The problem of how to get everyone out on a decent timeline persists at another "we gotta figure this out" conference at USF-I. As referenced below, everyone wants to go, but no one wants to go home because we assess we that need everything up to the last minute. Here's my plan for how to do it by 31 December:

Start with all of the goofy headquarters by making things uncomfortable.

Make them show an honest "Troops to Task" list (the kind they always ask us for) that shows exactly who does what in their headquarters, and then painfully question why one general needs a personal staff of six Public Affairs guys, a 30-man PSD, a Secretary, a Civilian Administrative Assistant, an Aide de Camp, and a reservations Clerk at the VIP hotel (I am making this up, but I don't imagine I am too far off).

Then start making people move CHUs (Containerized housing unit- basically a mobile home that Soldiers live in).

Have them move a lot.

At a minimum, move all of the acronym headquarters people 2-3 times a month. Move them into CHUs without working air conditioners. Make the higher ups turn in their suburbans and have them ride in tactical vehicles around the Victory Base Complex. Then ration the gas. Shut off the commercial internet in the CHUs. Then get rid of the contracted restaurants- Shut down the coffee shops, pizza joints, concessions, local vendor stores, and souvenir shops.

Stock the PX with only one kind of shaving cream, one kind of razor, one kind of toothpaste, one kind of bar soap.

Then get rid of all the deoderant.

Then, each unit has a Class I account for food and drinks (seperate from the chow hall). All that is in this thing is sugary snacks and sodas anyway, so shut that down (except for the Diet Coke). Start rationing power and shut down generators randomly. Remove all the air conditioners from the CHUs. Reduce the size of available tactical bandwidth, and force units to simultaneously turn in all their non-tactical vehicles (make everybody walk) and then downsize tactical vehicles and containers.

Then ration each Soldier to five gallons of water a day for everything.

Folks should be pretty bitter by now.

Next step: Get rid of the KBR four square meals a day in the big air conditioned DFAC and serve only MREs. Send all of the contracted manual labor home-- Dudes need to start taking their own trash out.

At this point, this should disband all of the goofy big giant made up headquarters and their bloated staffs and most of these will go home. For the ones that still stick around, get rid of the Triple Canopy contracted guard force and tax every unit left to provide Soldiers to guard the walls.

Then, stop selling tobacco products.

For the hardcores that just won't leave, do away with the sanitation contracts, and get Soldiers back to disposing of human waste the old fasioned way we did it before: Pour Diesel on it and set it on fire and stir liberally. For hours.

Remember: The war cost the taxpayer $800 billion for a reason. I submit if we did this in August, most would be more than ready to go by September.

Just a thought.


Of note: 15 March is a "double post day" so be sure to see the next one below too!

See ya,
Ron

Boredom: A By-Product of Victory...

We continue to grow into our role here, and it is a sociology project to watch people adjust to their 2011 surroundings when their frame of reference is 2006 or 2007. Iraq has changed a lot, and some have a difficult time with that. The tactics have changed, and the second and third order effects of actions are now significantly greater than what they were in the past.

There just isn't a great amount to do, because of the capability of the Iraqi forces, and also because the security agreement signed between US and Iraqi forces puts the Iraqis in the lead, which is fantastic. As mentioned before, sure- stuff blows up from time to time, but it is an acceptable level of violence as the Iraqi forms of politics, law enforcement, and self expression evolve. The Iraqis handle issues in their own way and have grown into their authority. I continue to think this is good.

The by-product of this is an obsessive-compulsive Army that is bent on fixing things that aren't really broken, driven to leave a lasting impression and have a positive impact on a force that has had its share of mentoring, and quite frankly, in my assessment, ready for us to leave.

I heard a good analogy the other day: The US Army is great at fixing things and solving problems. Our problem is we don't know how to stop.

We stay because of what might happen: There are still potential for bad things to happen, still bad people here, but I am not sure the US Army is the best tool that can fix those things. And again-- we can continue to fix problems, but there has to be a GICOL (Good Idea CutOff Line) where it is time for other instruments of US and regional power (State Department, Arab League, OPEC) to step in and make Iraq what it will be. I have no idea what this will look like, and I don't think anyone else has an idea either. But I think we are close to that line for US forces, and it will be interesting -almost fun- to see it evolve.

The good thing about it is it gives Soldiers a break, it gives us a chance to take care of some guys, do some training, and catch our breath before we eventually move out of here.

Stay tuned.
Ron

My Iraq Analogy

I think I referenced this theory in a previous entry, but I think it is worth mentioning again, as it helps define what is going on in Iraq.

The United States of America is almost 236 years old. In that time we had two governments (the first one, Articles of the Confederation, failed and the founding fathers got a do-over and created the US Constitution), a Civil War where one part of the nation seceded, a civil rights movement, a women's liberation movement, a couple of world wars, a border war with Mexico, an industrial revolution, and a technology revolution. Along the way we also had a couple of recessions, a massive depression, some weather catastrophes, some social services implementations, and a Revolution started it all.

Iraq has done all that in eight years. So sure, it's not exactly going to be smooth sailing.

But to their credit, they are figuring it out. They even passed a budget, on time, something we still have yet to do. And theirs even has a surplus. Sure, stuff blows up from time to time-- that's how this part of the world expresses itself. Most of the attacks have some political ties to them, but they are fragmented. And yes, Al Qaeda is still here, but their attacks do nothing but disrupt the day for a short time, and people are so used to it they go about their business shortly after the attack. Sure, there's corruption; one need to look no further than our own political system and Government and see much of the same. Sure, they complain about civil services being inadequate... Under Saddam, no one paid anything for electric, water, medical care, education, or food, and no one paid taxes, so naturally they have high expectations for their government. Saddam pretty much created the welfare state (you could argue we are on the same road).

But every protest, violent event, or IED could be considered another form of Democracy: People holding their Government accountable, one way or another.

Call it growing pains. Iraq certainly has potential. I just hope they keep growing.

See ya.
Ron

Pretty amazing how much stuff you can accumulate in eight years

"As the combat mission in Iraq officially ended in August and U.S. forces reduced their footprint to about 50,000 troops, President Barack Obama heralded "one of the largest logistical operations we've seen in decades" with the exodus of millions of pieces of military equipment, property and supplies. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Corson, commander of the Army Reserve's 103rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command that has overseen that mission, equated it to moving the entire city of St. Joseph, Mo., with all its people, vehicles, equipment and property, to "the other side of the planet." (…) Now, with about two months left in their deployment, Corson's troops are continuing the logistical drawdown while laying critical groundwork for its follow-on unit to reduce the U.S. footprint in Iraq to zero by the year's end." (Army.mil)

I left Iraq last time in October of 2009, and while Liberty has cleared out a good bit, there are still TONS of stuff still here. My recent observation is that everybody wants to leave, everyone is personally individually ready to leave, but no one wants to do without all the nice things they have, start shutting things down, and actually pack up all the stuff that has accumulated over eight years and go.

I attended a really big conference this week on the drawdown and the plan for bringing US forces and material home. It is very complicated. For one, the headquarters is still in the very opulent Al Faw Palace. It is surrounded by lakes, palm trees, wildlife, and lots of nice smaller palaces on the lake that all of the generals live in. Nobody wants to vacate these until the last minute, for obvious reasons. But they have to leave, so we can restore them to the condition they were in when we got them. This means we have to pull out all of the CAT V cable (miles of it), take down all the wire and sandbags, and move all the T walls out. They estimate it will take FOUR months to do the palace alone. But no one can start until the headquarters moves.

The conference was all about identifying how big of a problem it is-- we all finally acknowledged that there is a 5 billion pound elephant in the room. Eight years ago it was a cute Dumbo looking thing, but it grew up.

Now we have to figure out how to get it out.

I have some pictures, I'll get them on here soon.

Ron