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March 28, 2005
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Editor's Note: This is a recent letter from 1st Lt. Brian Donlon
USMC to a group of friends and supporters with whom he had stayed
in contact during his deployment to Iraq. It was provided to DefenseWatch
by a mutual friend.
To All,
This will be my final letter from Iraq.
I will be leaving the country in the next week and should be home
in the United State soon after.
Spring is now here in Iraq. The weather is pleasantly warm with
the occasional sunny day. On a recent trip, I flew in a helicopter
north of Baghdad over miles of small farms, criss-crossed by irrigation
canals, each surrounded by bright green fields. It all gave an impression
of timelessness, life unchanging but for the season. In the days
since the elections it has been very quiet here and all my Marines
remain safe. Everyone is very ready to go home. Before I give my
final impressions of Iraq, I have one final experience to relate.
Recently, I spent several days in Fallujah. As the largest battle
fought in this war and the most brutal fight for the Marine Corps
since Vietnam,
the name, "Fallujah," tends to engender visions of smoke and fire,
death in the streets. I cannot speak for the condition of the city
before and during the assault, but what I witnessed was perhaps
the most secure and peaceful urban area I have yet encountered in
Iraq, including the Green Zone.
For four days on security patrols in and around the city, I did
not even once hear the report of gunfire in anger or the echo of
an explosion. Of course, when you systematically kill or capture
every insurgent in a completely cordoned city and search, blast
or burn every single structure, you can expect resistance to become
light or nonexistent.
My hosts were the warriors of 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, who fought
along the regiment's right flank during the battle and back-cleared
the entire northern sector of the city following the operation's
conclusion. These men fought a grisly, tedious and exhausting battle
street-by-street, block-by-block for almost two months. For all
my imagination, until I walked the streets, listened to the stories,
saw the pictures and read the after-action reports, I had no concept
of what a fight it had been.
Covering enemy dead with ponchos as they went, they killed Muj (as
they nicknamed the insurgents) in the streets or toppled buildings
on top of them with mortars, artillery and aerial bombardment. They
shot dogs and cats caught feasting on the dead, found the mutilated
corpse of aid worker Margaret Hassan, discovered a torture chamber
with full suits of human skin and refrigerated body parts right
out of "Silence of the Lambs," opened a cellar with chained men
who had starved to death and broke down doors to find rooms full
of corpses, hands tied behind their backs, bullet holes in the back
of their heads. These are just in the pictures I saw.
The enemy they encountered was fanatical and often fought as if
pumped up on drugs. His ethnicity was varied and his tactics ranged
from insurgents attempting to cross the Euphrates River on inflated
beach balls to houses detonated on top of Marines as they entered
the first floor.
As I listened to the stories, I had visions of Henry V's warning
before the walls of Harfleur to "take pity of your town and of your
people, whiles yet my soldiers are in my command; whiles yet the
cool and temperate wind of grace o'erblows the filthy and contagious
clouds of heady murder, spoil and villainy."
I thought of all the times in history where invaders had systematically
destroyed a city, extinguishing the population and sowing salt in
the earth.
Yet, for the battle damage on all sides, the city of Fallujah had
more children and a more industrious citizenry than any other I
encountered here in Iraq. Almost every house had been re-occupied
following the invasion, gutters cleaned of garbage, white flags
flying over newly patched garden walls, "Family Inside" written
in large letters in both English and Arabic. Marines control access
to the city; Marines mediate civic disputes; Marines provide food,
water and are protecting those who are repairing city infrastructure;
Marines patrol the streets, policing both the citizens of Fallujah
and the Iraqi Army who sometimes abuse their authority.
Fallujah is a city on lockdown and ironically is probably the safest
and most progressive place in Iraq right now. I now understand why
the citizens in a nearby neighborhood here in Baghdad worriedly
asked the Army command we are attached to, "What have we done? Why
are Marines here?" when we began to patrol there.
With that experience, I more or less close my time here in Iraq.
I have a few more hurdles to overcome before I am home but now all
tasks are related to ensuring a safe journey there. Reflecting on
what I have seen here in Iraq, the overwhelming emotion I feel is
of pride, not in myself or even in my Marines, but in being an American.
Patriotic sentiments tend to gravitate between cliché and taboo
in the sensibilities of popular culture, but if I was not defined
before as a "patriot," I am now. I am very proud to have been a
small part of this effort and to come from a nation where not only
could such an effort be sustained but whose aim was the betterment
of another people a world away.
A few months ago, I was walking at night through a logistics yard
and as I weaved between mountainous stacks of crates stamped with
the names of a dozen nations, I was struck by how fortunate I was
to be an American. The perspective bordered on the sublime. Just
outside the wall lived people in poverty and squalor who had been
subjected to their lot by a tyrannical ethnic and political minority
who shrugged off human misery with the medieval belief that it was
the "will of Allah." Not much has changed in the Middle East in
the last few thousands of years, except for the religion and identity
of the tyrant in question. Just south of where I sit now, in the
city of Babylon in the 5th Century B.C., the Persian Xerxes planned
his doomed invasion of Greece, his logisticians collecting mountains
of supplies, compiled from the labors of subject millions.
There is no difference between that tyrant 2500 years ago and Saddam
Hussein whose palaces dot across this country like vainglorious
lesions, one built just miles away from here, complete with fresh
water dolphins in artificial lakes, observation towers with night
clubs, and irrigated tree-lined walks, built in the midst of international
sanctions levied against his country.
As I stood dwarfed by piles of water bottles and phone cable, I realized
two distinctions. The first is this: as countless millions of dollars
are spent, what American citizen can truly point to the cost that
this war has had on his quality of living? What a magnificent nation
we live in where we can wage so massive an effort without bankrupting
our citizenry in the process.
The second contrast is our motive: for all the insinuations of imperialism, corporate benefit and hawkish war-mongering, the most dramatic moments I witnessed here revolved around an election, not an exploitation. What other nation would spend such sums to give a people so far away self-determination?
I am not advocating war. Being so far from home for so long, smelling and seeing the dead and placing Marines in harm's way are not truly enjoyable experiences. Yet I agree wholeheartedly with the much-criticized statement by [Lt.] General [James N.] Mattis, it is fun to wage war against a foe who seeks only his own self-gratification, who tortures, murders and abuses the weak. You can opine all day long about Wilsonian self-determination, but without the will to do what is necessary to make such visions reality, they remain mere words.
In short, as I give my farewell to this country in the next week, I leave with overwhelming pride in being an American and an unshakable belief, based in what I have seen here, that this effort will not fail. Whatever comes in Iraq, the impact of this invasion will not be as that of every other conqueror, relegated to a wind-worn mound of stones in the desert.
I want to thank all of you who have taken the time to read these often-verbose letters. Just being able to write to this audience has been a great stress relief. I especially want to express my gratitude to those who have written to me both electronic and snail mail, sent care packages and kept me in their thoughts and prayers. This was without a doubt the best experience of my life thus far and would have not been so without the support and generosity you have shown my Marines and me.
Semper Fi!
Out.
Brian Donlon
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