That's right. Just living the dream here in Baghdad, Iraq.
This last week was really busy, hence the lack of posts. I had a lot of things to do. A lot happened last week; most notably the murder of about 500 Yezeri's up in the Tall Afar area in Northern Iraq. That is just nuts. When we were at Ft. Dix going through pre-deployment training we learned a little bit about them. Apparently, the Muslims don't like them at all because they consider them to be Satan worshippers. This goes back many hundreds of years. If I'm not mistaken, the Muslims wanted to impose Islam on these people, who didn't want it. They decided that they would worship everything that was the opposite way of Islam; if Allah was good in Islam and the devil was bad, to the Yezeris Allah was bad and the Devil was good. Or something like that. The upshot is that, though they are a very small minority and mostly keep to themselves, the Muslims really hate 'em. So I guess they blow 'em up. That was so messed up.
Going back to Ft. Dix for a minute...what a waste that training was for the most part. They trained us on Warrior Core Tasks and Warrior Core Drills and that was it. Nothing, save for a 4-day command post exercise at the end, related to what we are doing here and now in Iraq. They call themselves the premier mobilization and training post for reservists in the US. If they are, Good God. We have a soldier in the unit who used to work in their Mobilization Branch who would sit in on the briefings where the trainers would brief about how many soldiers they were training, and on what, etc. The briefings made it seem like all kinds of great stuff was going on. When he actually went through the training he was pretty stunned. He was like, "man, if this is the way it really is, the guys in charge are not getting the real deal on what's going on."
I did have one of our Public Affairs dudes, SSG Jon Soucy, capture me on film in one of the little mock Iraqi villages in the training areas. I looked like such a warrior (LOL!)
Anyway, I don't think they knew what the hell to do with us; we weren't the typical unit with the typical mission they were prepared to train, so there really was no program to train us for our jobs. We're fortunate that we have many, many people on this mission that are qualified to be doing what they are assigned to do. The learning curve for this place has been a little higher than we're comfortable with, but you suck it up and drive on through it. We have a lot of skilled people on this deployment, and it could be a lot worse. I tell my friends and family at home that the morale here is pretty high from what I can tell. That doesn't mean we're a bunch of "stay the course" block heads, though there are some of them. I think most people have a realistic sense of what the real deal is. I've had conversations with some people that are definitely conservatives who are pretty frustrated with the way this whole thing has been done. In fact, actually may have confirmed their worst fears about the way this war is being played.
First of all, it is ALL about the money, people. The contractors are here for one thing--the greenbacks. It's a little sick, really. The low-level folks, the worker bees, they work hard and do their jobs. The American ones (or maybe I should say, the native English-speakers) pretty much are here for the money, in my opinion. Why the hell else would you come here if you're not obligated to??? The others, the Asians, from India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, etc., those guys are pretty much treated like indentured servants. They get paid little, they company they work for holds their passports, and they are almost completely unable to switch jobs if they get here and the job sucks, or they can make a little money somewhere else, etc. If they want to go work for another place here on post, they can get sent home.
As an example, the guys who work in the DFACs here (Dining Facilities) are usually Indian or Pakistani. The ones that I know of make about $700.00 a MONTH. I know this because a service member who is a friend of mine is a naturalized American citizen from India and he's chatted with a few of them, and they told him. KBR, the subsidiary of Halliburton responsible for food service here, gets a lot of money to serve soldiers here. Yes, it is expensive to have six different flavors of ice cream at a given time in the DFAC. Yes, it is expensive to have 12 different kinds of cake. But Jesus, these guys are raking in the cash from us, the taxpayer. Disclosure: Okay, so here I'm paying very little if any tax, but my wife at home is, and I was a taxpayer for the three years following the "Mission Accomplished" moment, in addition to the preceding 21 years. Anyway, KBR is going to these third-world countries to hire these people, who can't leave, at next-to-nothing wages, and the Government allows it.
It would be nice if the security situation was so good here that you could actually hire local nationals who weren't thoroughly embittered toward us by what's happened over the last few years here. You know, I'm no economist, but that would definitely boost the economy in this country, instead of us having to buy poorly made Iraqi products that wear out or break and need to be replaced frequently. But unfortunately the oil was the only thing the crew in charge was focused on. In the last 4 years that bunch has been totally discredited, and with good reason. I'm getting off track--the people who work here from other countries, Third-Country Nationals (TCN's) are without a doubt being exploited. If we hadn't screwed up things by the numbers in the summer of 2003, I guarantee the war would have turned out completely different. Completely. The civilians sent here by DOD and State were political hacks and cronies who who didn't know their ass from a light socket when it came to the essential elements of running a government for people of a much different culture than ours.
This is turning into a rant and I better stop. Here's a picture of the lake around Al Faw Palace I took last night...maybe it will help me relax. I'll get back at it this week. See you later...
No comments:
Post a Comment