Tell My Sons: A Father's Last Letters (21 page)
Read Tell My Sons: A Father's Last Letters Online
Authors: Lt Col Mark Weber,Robin Williams
Of course, I learned other things about politics, but accepting that policies and laws will always fall short of ideals helped me sort through the chaos of it all.
I found that politics wasn’t too much different from marriage: to get through it, it’s necessary to lower voices, carefully pick your battles, avoid insults and declarations of absolutes, voice soft lies, and
compromise, compromise, compromise
.
Like divorce, perpetual fighting and paralysis are unacceptable results for a diverse population that wants solutions.
* * *
In March 2005, word was passed along the grapevine that then–Lieutenant General Petraeus was on the hunt for an army major
working on the joint staff. The Iraqi government had selected their chief of defense and most senior military officer. His name was General Babakir Zibari, and Petraeus wanted to provide a U.S. military assistant to help in the transition.
Not
volunteering for such an assignment may seem like an option, but no one I knew in the army saw it that way. Our personnel and performance files were sent to Petraeus’s headquarters in Iraq, and then we waited. About a month later, my boss called me into his office to show me an email he had received from Petraeus:
… [Mark] will have a tremendous vantage point, a very non-standard mission with lots of ambiguities and drama, and an incredible opportunity to contribute. Please tell him to check in with me upon arrival
.
As exciting as this was, I was more focused on the details that would affect my family. When was I leaving? What would I be doing? Where would I be working?
It took another week before I was officially notified, and even then there were few details.
When I finally met Petraeus in Iraq, I realized his earlier note about “ambiguities and drama” was an understatement. In less than five minutes, he acknowledged he wasn’t quite sure how my assignment would work. He knew what he wanted, but it hadn’t really been done before. He gave me some very basic guidance but told me he was leaving it to me to build a personal relationship with Babakir.
My job was to provide Babakir with perspective on how the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff was organized and run, provide 24/7 liaison to the coalition forces (and Petraeus), help coordinate travel (since most of it was provided by the coalition), and serve as an aide-de-camp (personal assistant).
As part of the coalition, it seemed odd to me that Babakir
would require such hands-on assistance, but I quickly learned he had great difficulty traveling in and out of coalition checkpoints, landing zones, and airstrips. A big part of my job was to serve as the “grease” that got things done.
My duties meant I would spend 90 percent of every day living and working where he and his staff lived and worked. I would see and hear everything they did.
The explanation and the looming unknowns had me excited but also anxious. There were infinite chances to fail, and little or no control over the things that could prevent failures. No shared culture. No shared organizational values. No common language. Few shared life experiences. No shared training practices. Little agreement on how the world turns. And not a single U.S. soldier to my left or right when I performed my work.
Nothing I had ever done in the army had prepared me for such an experience—not even my deployment to Saudi Arabia. The only way to gain the necessary skills was by doing the job and adapting as I went. The best thing I had going for me was my deep knowledge of civil and military world history—and my curiosity.
The close quarters I kept with my Iraqi partners built a level of trust that soon began to cut both ways. Sometimes my attempts to improve my U.S. peers’ understanding about coalition operations would produce heckles: “Don’t go native, man. Don’t let them get inside your head.” I was expected to help the Iraqis understand the coalition’s methods and plans—not the other way around.
Iraqis were equally frustrated. “Can’t you make the coalition understand why we can’t do it that way?”
And when it came to addressing the inevitable failings and fatalities that come with combat, Iraqi partners would frequently take out their frustrations on the closest American they could find—an advisor whose job included listening.
Not surprisingly, the most meaningful things I saw and heard came from Babakir himself. Whether meeting with U.S. congressmen
or chiefs of defense from dozens of other countries, visiting his family or fellow leaders around the world, discussing topics like Baghdad security planning or his many thoughts on the U.S. effort in Iraq, or just watching
Oprah
in his living room while drinking tea and discussing life, there seemed to be no limits to our interaction with each other.
In that one year, I saw more of the world and learned more about human dynamics than at any other time in my life. The experience could just as accurately be described as “my adventures with Babakir” as “my combat tour to Iraq.”
Some of my experiences were better rendered at the time in journal entries and letters than they can be rendered now. In my journal, I wrote about the day I met the general:
I sat down with Babakir today in his ministry of defense office for our introductions. Babakir is a small man in stature. He is a Kurdish Sunni, which is the same as saying he is just a Kurd, as most Kurds seem to place ethnicity over religion. Like many Iraqis, Babakir uses his first name with his title, so he goes by “General Babakir.”
We sat on couches, and the setting was casual, but the conversation was awkward—my first with a translator. Plus, Babakir’s son Arjeng (twenty years old) sat directly across from me in an office chair and stared at me like I was a rare zoo animal. I didn’t mind. I figured I might be staring at him and his father the same way
.
I felt a lot of pressure to present a good first impression as we fumbled through polite small talk like we were on a forced blind date. Groping for things to talk about, Babakir’s chief of staff, Jamal, brought up my experience working for our own chief of defense (General Myers) in the Pentagon. That felt even more awkward, as well as overstated. I asked if we could switch to a subject that we both knew a lot about—family
.
“I am the father of three boys, which includes a set of
twins,” I said as I pulled pictures of Kristin and the boys from my wallet. Then I added, “I am also a twin.”
I could tell that really impressed him. “God smiles upon you,” he said
.
He told me he had nine children and explained that Kurds liked having large families. I excitedly replied that my mom was from a family of fifteen children, which seemed to impress him even more
.
I noted that Babakir was a thin man and offered that my grandpa had a theory about why fathers of so many children could remain so fit
.
“Tell me,” Babakir said as he nodded
.
“Well, have you ever seen a fat rooster?” I asked
.
He paused for a moment, then laughed. Mating chickens, not work, seemed to have helped us break the ice and bridge the cultural divide
.
Babakir explained that he heard many good things about me and that he was very eager to have my help. My predecessor had been gone for more than a month, and Babakir was already feeling the pain
.
Sensing an appropriate close to the conversation, I asked to return to work. “No,” he said, “join me for lunch.” I politely declined, but he insisted, and he immediately called for his driver
.
En route to Babakir’s house, the realization set in that we had no translator. In our very first day together, I felt like trading in my nine-millimeter pistol and a couple months’ pay for language training. Arjeng was a reluctant English speaker, but once I convinced him that he spoke very well (and he did), he was like a godsend. Babakir and I spoke about our backgrounds in the army. He liked that I had been a soldier before becoming an officer, then offered that it was important to personally visit soldiers, talk to them where they worked, or to shake their hands or to kiss them. The kissing part threw me,
but I later learned its importance. Kissing on the cheek is a sign of friendship and family in the Middle East (and other parts of the world)
.
At Babakir’s house, he insisted I keep my boots on, but I took them off like everyone else. (Just like at our house.) Babakir left the room and returned a few minutes later dressed in his traditional Kurdish Peshmerga uniform, which looked like formal pajamas
.
When lunch was served, Babakir ate fast, leaving a spotless plate in front of him long before I was done. “You eat slow,” he said
.
“My grandpa, the one with fifteen kids, says I eat like a bird,” I replied. And that gave him another good laugh
.
One of the first things I reviewed was Babakir’s personal security detail, which consisted of seventy soldiers. That’s when I met Ali Yousef, the chief of Babakir’s personal security. Ali had a larger-than-life personality. His movie collection consisted almost entirely of James Bond films, which appeared to serve as his only training.
Ali was loud, bighearted, and looked like the miniature version of the Buddha, which accounts for the first Kurdish words I learned in Iraq:
Az berseema
(“I am hungry”). The only English he could speak was “Not a problem,” words I would gain enough confidence to make fun of occasionally by replying, “No, Ali.
Big
problem.”
As funny as this was to me at the time, I realized that “Not a problem” and “I am hungry” would not suffice in a security crisis. We needed to be able to communicate with more than smiles and grunts.
Within the first week of meeting Babakir, I decided I needed to learn Kurdish. Arabic was an option, but Kurdish was Babakir’s native tongue, and I was always surrounded by family and friends ready to teach me.
Within three months, they said I could carry on a conversation with relative competence, but I always felt just as apprehensive as Arjeng during our first week together.
About three months into my assignment with Babakir, I sent an email home that showed a growing sense of comfort with my discomfort.
Kristin—
Well, considering my dilemma with the “runs” this week, one would think the flu was in season. But it must be the Iraqi food. In any case, my digestive system is in chaos
.
Babakir and the gang heard about it and had a grand time busting my chops and laughing at my expense. (I laughed right along with them.) Intestinal problems are a pretty common thing among the Iraqis. And since they don’t use toilet paper, I’ve learned to carry it the same way I carry my weapon and ammo
.
Speaking of food, we had lunch the other day with the soldiers of the Iraqi Sixth Division. When we arrived, the tables were already filled with huge beds of rice, sprinkled with almonds, chickpeas, and what looked like raisins. Huge chunks of lamb (still on the bone) were buried in the rice. Suddenly I was aware that the raisins were not raisins. They were dead flies that had apparently been “captured” during preparation
.
Aside from the flies, the food actually looked and smelled pretty darn good. Too bad my face didn’t communicate that message. The Iraqi sitting next to me said, “What the matter, my friend, why you are not eating?”
“There aren’t enough flies on this food.”
“The flies, they make you strong … from the inside,” he replied
.
“You mean from getting sick so often that your immune system gets stronger?” I said with a smile
.
“Yes, yes. Come on now, eat,” he said without even looking up from his plate. “Just pick them out.” He spoke about it like we were talking about picking out mushrooms
.
Still, as disgusting as it was to me, this was their life, and they weren’t exactly asking me to eat poison. I grabbed a spoon and dug right
in (minding the flies). Wasn’t too bad, and the meat was actually delicious. Still, the flies
.
Afterward we enjoyed some mouth-watering baklava and a nice warm Pepsi to wash it all down. Mmm. Ain’t nothin’ like a warm refreshing Pepsi in 120-degree heat
.
Speaking of the heat. You know it’s bad when you start wishing for a return to the low 100s. The temp is sure to climb to above 120 degrees this summer. This stuff just takes your breath away. Every time I breathe it in, I think back to our days in Minnesota and recall the days when it was so cold you could feel your lungs freeze as you breathed in the air—but at least you could breathe it. The heat here is suffocating. May sound stupid, but now I know how SpongeBob and Patrick feel in that movie (the one the boys watch all the time) when they’re being dried out under that sun lamp
.
Love
,
Me
And it wasn’t just the physical discomfort I was getting used to. It was moral discomfort, too, as I told Kristin in another letter.
Just like my deployment to Saudi Arabia, it is hard—really hard—to manage the personal biases I have as an American. You know how much I read and how much I try to stay plugged in, and yet I realize I don’t have a clue. I can’t help but imagine what it might be like among soldiers who don’t make any effort to understand these surroundings
.
Every day I am subjected to the blunt distinction of these two worlds in a dozen little ways:
In the morning, I make my way through the embassy to a breakfast that reminds me of royal dining halls. Of course, this has much more to do with the fact that the army contracts out its food service, which requires strict cleanliness and preparation standards. But still. It’s a sight. The amount of food that is thrown away every day is grotesque when I think about the starvation occurring in some of the surrounding neighborhoods
.
That starvation is NOT our problem, but it still bothers me. Then I make my way out to the parking lot, which is full of brand-new Ford
Explorers and dozens of armored Ford Expeditions and Chevy Suburbans armed to the teeth
.
