K CROSSING, Kuwait — A U.S. military convoy sliced
through the flat Iraqi desert before first light, carrying the last
troops safely into Kuwait and ending America’s costly and divisive war
in a troubled land.
When relieved soldiers got out on the other side
Sunday, shouts of “Going home!” and “It’s over!” mingled with bear hugs
and high-fives. One soldier hollered, “I’m going to Disneyland!”
Another, “A sweet, sweet Christmas.”
The final vehicle passed a fortified Kuwaiti border
police post eight years, eight months and 28 days after U.S. forces
poured across the same border, 150,000 strong, sweating inside bulky
chemical and biological protective suits, but convinced of a swift and
certain victory. Once Saddam Hussein fell, the war would end and they
would all soon return home.
Instead, two countries with little understanding of
each other collided in a long, brutal war that exacted a terrible price
from both. And as America takes its leave, they separate with very
different understandings of what happened between them — and what lies
ahead.
The United States has seen its reputation stained by a
pre-emptive invasion in the name of weapons of mass destruction that
never materialized. As of Sunday, 4,484 U.S. service members had died in
the war, and 32,200 had been wounded, according to icasualties.org. The
conflict cost hundreds of billions of dollars, even as Americans
descended into economic misery.
Iraq erupted into a nightmare of sectarian hatred
unleashed by the fall of Saddam’s suffocating dictatorship. An estimated
104,000 to 113,000 Iraqi civilians died, according to the Iraq Body
Count website, most of them killed by other Iraqis. The legacy of the
bloodletting is a deeply flawed democracy that has been unable to keep
Iraqis safe.
Returning American forces speak with pride of
eliminating a dictator and creating conditions for free elections. They
armed and trained Iraqi security forces that have grown more confident
with each passing year. If they did not eliminate raging violence, they
at least reduced it significantly during the last four years.
But the war imposed a crushing burden on American
troops and their families. Some served three, four or even five tours,
and marital strains and divorces multiplied. Children went without
mothers or fathers. Birthdays and anniversaries flew by, unattended.
The knock at the door by uniformed service members
became all too common in the homes of men and women serving in Iraq. At
the worst of it, in mid-2007, death notifications averaged four a day.
Spc. Christopher Neiberger, 22, was killed by a
roadside bomb in Baghdad on Aug. 6, 2007, one of five U.S. soldiers to
die that day. His sister, Ami Neiberger-Miller, is relieved to see the
troops finally coming home, but it also means a chapter is closing.
“It means he is really not coming home,” she says.
“While it’s been four years for us, there is a piece of it — our grief —
that is always the same, just as fresh and raw as the first day it
happened. We just get better at carrying it.”
Maj. Gen. David Perkins and Ziad Taha have never met.
But their paths certainly crossed — on April 7, 2003, when the U.S.
combat brigade that Perkins commanded opened fire on the prosperous
roadside nursery that Taha operated in Baghdad.
The nursery had been taken over by Islamic militants
from Syria and the Iraqi Republican Guard, despite Taha’s pleas for them
to set up fighting positions elsewhere. When the armored column charged
into Baghdad, the nursery was raked by tank and machine-gun fire.
Taha’s family hid in their home behind the nursery.
They saw a neighbor blown apart as he tried to retrieve his car. They
saw the Syrians and Iraqi soldiers eviscerated by tank rounds as they
fired from behind flimsy clay flower pots.
When it was over, the family had survived, but the nursery was ruined.
Perkins’ so-called thunder run into Baghdad captured
Saddam’s Republican Palace and government complex, toppling the regime.
Perkins, then an Army colonel, served two more tours in Iraq, the last
one ending in November. He rose to two-star general. He served as the
chief military spokesman in Iraq, with responsibility for Iraqi
governance, politics, oil and elections.
Over the years, he drove past the rebuilt nursery
many times. Each time his thoughts turned to the chaotic, confusing
opening act of the American experience in Iraq, and the ensuing years of
hardship.
“The Iraqis like to say we made mistakes, that we
didn’t understand Iraq, and they were right,” Perkins says now. “But
they do give us credit for learning over the years.”
He’s proud of what U.S. troops accomplished, but
worries that the Iraqis aren’t quite ready for democracy. His Iraqi
colleagues are uneasy about the American withdrawal, Perkins says, and
he fears that deep sectarian divisions might allow extremists to
prevail.
He says of Iraqis: “Can they trust themselves? Have they reached political maturity? It’s really up to them now.”
Taha, 34, has yet to recover from the U.S. invasion
and occupation. His mother died in August 2003, and his father in
December of that year, killed by “psychological stress” from the
invasion, Taha says.
He rebuilt his nursery, only to see it damaged year
after year by rocket fire and roadside bombs. He abandoned the business
in 2009, when Iraqi security forces lined the highway with massive
concrete “T-walls,” the gray, monolithic barriers that now define the
landscape of Baghdad and cut the nursery off from its customers.
Taha fled his Sunni Muslim neighborhood, Saydiya, now
considered the most dangerous in Baghdad and still a hotbed for
insurgents. He took a job as a mechanic, but longs for his prewar days
as a successful businessman.
He resents the Americans who searched his home at
night, terrifying his wife and young son. Yet Taha has mixed feelings
about the U.S. withdrawal. He worries that violence will erupt in the
security vacuum left behind.
“If their departure makes Iraq more secure, it’s a
good thing,” he says, stepping over dusty pots and overgrown plants at
his abandoned nursery. But “they invaded our city and changed everything
about our country. Nothing good can come of that.”
Sgt. 1st Class Karl Akama is slumped in a chair, eyes
half-closed, bare feet raised, boots on the floor. He’s just back from
Iraq, safely in Kuwait, and he’s exhausted. Since 2004, he’s spent 48
months — four solid years — on four Iraq deployments. Now he’s finally
going home for good.
“Go, come back. Go, come back,” he says of his life
for the last seven years. “I have a house in Texas I visit. I don’t
really live there.”
A wife and seven kids live in that house outside Fort
Hood. Akama has watched his spouse struggle without him, and his
children grow up with Dad gone half the time.
Yet for all the sacrifices he and his family have made, it was worth it, he says, for him and for his country.
“We accomplished a lot,” he says from Camp Virginia,
about an hour from the border with Iraq. “Just spreading the concept of
democracy in this part of the world, it’s worth it for that alone.”
Akama, 33, says he has witnessed enormous progress
since 2004. The changes were difficult to see during his tours, but
quite obvious each time he returned to Iraq.
The police and army became better equipped and more
professional, he says. The quality of life for ordinary Iraqis has
improved. All of that, he says, was won by American commitment and
suffering.
The war cost Akama a close friend: a fellow soldier
and the godfather to one of his children, killed by a roadside bomb at
the very end of his tour.
“That was tough,” Akama says. “I had to explain to my kids why he wasn’t coming home.”
The Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, which
counsels families of the fallen, calculates that the war left 2,468
widows or widowers, 3,141 orphans and 8,974 parents who lost a son or
daughter.
The psychological toll has also been steep. Between
2005 and 2010, military personnel who had served or were serving in Iraq
or Afghanistan committed suicide at the rate of one every 36 hours,
according to a study by the Center for a New American Security. In July
2011 alone, there were 33 suicides.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is widespread, with
170,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans having been diagnosed with the
condition, according to the Veterans Administration. More than 20,000
are homeless, and thousands more live with traumatic brain injuries.
Akama feels like a survivor. He escaped too many
close calls to count: roadside bombs, snipers, rockets and mortar
rounds. His family is strong and intact, thanks to “a very good wife.”
“Let’s just say I’m glad I’m out of there,” he says, his voice low and weary. “I’m glad it’s finally over.”
American soldiers shot an Iraqi army captain and left his body to rot in Suhad Khadim’s garden. Wild dogs feasted on the corpse.
That is Khadim’s memory of the April 2003 fall of Baghdad. And then things got worse.
The American invasion so disrupted the country that
she and her family were forced to abandon their home. Sunni Muslim
gunmen “ethnically cleansed” her Mansour neighborhood of Shiite Muslims
such as Khadim, 38, and her husband, Jalal, 42.
Their fine house, with its rose-studded garden, is
home to someone else now. The Khadim family, after fleeing to Syria,
returned to Baghdad and squatted in a drafty, two-bedroom apartment in
an abandoned doctor’s clinic.
Once, they were solidly middle class. Now they live
like vagabonds, their two boys and two girls crammed into dank, dark
rooms. They live in fear of roving gunmen. They keep the curtains closed
and the door locked.
Suhad Khadim blames it all on the Americans. She is a
woman who speaks her mind. It is rare for Iraqi men to defer to their
wives, but Jalal lets Suhad do the talking.
“We thought the Americans would bring us a better
life, but they brought us nothing but suffering,” she says, biting off
the words.
The Americans allowed terrorists to pour into Iraq,
she says. They propped up a corrupt and incompetent government. They
insulted ordinary Iraqis and sometimes killed civilians without being
held accountable.
“We greeted them with flowers, and now they laugh at
us,” she says. “They throw candy at our children, then laugh at them
when they fight over it.”
As a Shiite, she says, she expected to benefit from
the Shiite-dominated government that emerged from elections made
possible by the ouster of the Sunni-led Saddam regime. But she feels
diminished and powerless. She longs for the days of Saddam, when at
least it was safe on the streets and her husband had steady work.
She is not certain life will get better now, but she is convinced it can’t get any worse.
“Only good things can happen once they leave,” she says bitterly.
She grows angrier, waving her arms and thrusting her forefinger into the air. Her husband nods and murmurs his assent.
“Really, I feel so sorry for my country,” she says. “We have gone back 1,000 years.”
They toss their duffel bags into a waiting truck, as
happy and carefree as frat boys. They are out of Iraq at last, preparing
for a final bus ride that will take them to an airport in Kuwait for
the trip home in time for Christmas.
They are almost giddy with relief, but also earnest
and contemplative as they reflect on a war no one expected to last
nearly nine years.
Army Pfc. Joshua Jones, 22, who served two tours in Iraq, is convinced the American effort has made Iraq a better place.
“We set up a democracy,” he says. “We helped Iraq become more like America.”
He pauses to consider what might come next. “In the next 10 to 20 years, well, I could see us having to come back.”
Pfc. Royce Brunner, 21, was 13 when U.S. forces first
entered Iraq. He didn’t understand the rationale for the war then, but
he does now.
“We were there to defend our country against
terrorism,” he says. “We went in from stopping people in the Middle East
from killing us. We succeeded. Our families are safer now.”
After two grueling tours of Iraq, Spc. Jay Thomas is
getting out of the service. He carried out his mission, and so did his
country.
“It took long enough, but now it feels good,” he says. “But it was an experience I never want to experience again.”
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©2011 the Los Angeles Times
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