The past decade has been revolutionary for the U.S. military. It has adapted to a very old kind of warfare for which it was unprepared, developed new tools to defeat terrorists, and—most of all—seen extraordinary determination and courage from a new generation. As the wars begin to wind down and the country struggles to pay the bills it has accumulated, we must ensure that those who have borne the burden are not forgotten and that the nation remembers and cares for our veterans and their families, as they deserve and have earned.
In the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the victory over Saddam Hussein’s Iraq known as Desert Storm, the U.S. military focused on improving its capability to fight conventional war against conventional enemies—although there were few to be found.
When the attacks of 11 September 2001 found three of their four targets, America rightly attacked an Afghan government that shielded al Qaeda, toppling the Taliban in an innovative campaign that relied upon Special Forces soldiers, some on horseback, calling in the support of the Air Force, the world’s most powerful.
That campaign failed to capture al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who escaped into Pakistan; it also failed to provide stability to a shattered country that was still reeling after a generation of war—first with the Soviet Union, then a brutal civil war followed by the horror of the Taliban. Over the next few years, that régime regained strength across the border in Pakistan and soon began to reinfiltrate Afghanistan, but by then America was focused elsewhere.
Post-9/11: Rushing In
Within hours of the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, senior members of the Bush administration were already planning an attack on Iraq, despite the lack of any connection between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda. The invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was a replay of the Afghan campaign on a much larger scale, but a tremendously successful operation proved inconclusive in stabilizing the country.
In Iraq, U.S. decisions to disband that country’s army, prevent members of the Ba’ath party from serving in government, and postpose local rule added fuel to a nascent uprising that burst into flame during the hot summer of 2003. My U.S. Army tank unit was preparing for conventional combat against another as-yet-unspecified armored force when we suddenly received orders to deploy to Iraq—and use of the word “insurgency” to describe the challenge we faced was forbidden.
We soon arrived in a town named Khalidiyah in Iraq’s wild west, in a huge desert province named al Anbar that was populated almost exclusively by Sunnis. They hated the Shia-dominated government that had assumed power in the wake of Saddam’s departure. The day we arrived the town’s police chief was assassinated, the second to fall in the six months since the U.S. invasion.
We struggled to build a police force that would protect the people, a local government that would translate their needs into words we could understand, and programs we could fund. We fought hard against enemies we could rarely see and whose language we did not speak. Our town was situated between the provincial capital and insurgent hotbed of Ramadi and the city of Fallujah, where four private security contractors took a wrong turn to their deaths in spring 2004. The American reaction was swift, powerful, and poorly informed, spurring a national uprising that unified the Sunnis and Shia against us. Bridges were blown and supply convoys ambushed. We went on half rations as all that we had worked to build went up in flames.
My unit’s experience was a suitable metaphor for the next two years of the war in Iraq. The destruction of the Golden Mosque in Samarra in February 2006 was the final straw, as a rebellion metastasized into a full-scale civil war. America no longer believed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s claims that we were fighting a few “dead-enders.” The midterm elections of November 2006 resulted in Democrats taking control of both houses of Congress, and in President George W. Bush replacing both his Secretary of Defense and his commander in Iraq.
Learning What Works
The new commander, General David Petraeus, had been preparing for this day. He implemented a new counterinsurgency doctrine that focused on understanding and protecting the population, taking advantage of an American Army and Marine Corps that had learned painful lessons about what worked and what didn’t during previous tours in Iraq. The results were dramatic. Violence dropped rapidly, with progress accelerated by the decision of Sunnis to join with, rather than fight against, American forces in what became known as the Sawa, or “awakening.” Although Washington was about six months behind Baghdad in grasping what was happening, by summer 2008 it was clear to those on the ground that something fundamental had changed.
The timing was fortuitous, as the situation in America’s other war was moving rapidly in the wrong direction. Senator Barack Obama campaigned on a promise to shift attention from Iraq to Afghanistan, but when he took office, even he was surprised by how dire the situation had become. During his first year in office President Obama tripled U.S. forces committed to that fight, and intense fighting swiftly resulted as soldiers and Marines struggled to implement the clear, hold, and build counterinsurgency doctrine that had been battle-tested in Iraq.
America poured resources into building and training an Afghan army and police force that had been sadly neglected for eight years, an effort hampered more by the recruits’ inability to read than by their willingness to fight. U.S. soldiers and Marines, already serving as aid workers and local political advisers, now found themselves teachers in a campaign against illiteracy while they fought against an elusive Taliban army.
They were helped by an improved intelligence system. Designed to understand enemy tank armies, it had evolved into one that worked hard to comprehend local power structures and political relationships. U.S. combatants were also helped by a new weapon that put Taliban leaders at constant risk: armed drones. These unmanned aircraft provided phenomenal loiter times, real-time intelligence on enemy operations, and precise firepower that did grave damage to enemy chains of command. Drones were part of the intelligence apparatus that located Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in spring 2011, although it was Special Forces operators who used the information, along with that provided by other sources, to kill him, marking a critical date in the by-then decade-long war against al Qaeda.
Volunteers on Multiple Tours
These accomplishments are impressive: a learning Army and Marine Corps, an Air Force that increasingly relies on unmanned aircraft to rule the skies, Navy SEALs and other Special Operations Forces who conduct dozens of kill-and-capture operations nightly. But the most remarkable aspect of the past decade of war has been that every soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine who has served has been a volunteer.
When the United States created the all-volunteer force at the end of the Vietnam conflict, it could not have imagined that within a generation, volunteers would fight for ten years in two protracted irregular wars. And yet recruiting and retention remain strong, with all services regularly meeting their goals.
We have asked a great deal of our service members. Many have served multiple combat tours, putting strain on their families and on their own mental well-being. Suicide and unemployment among military veterans both exceed the rates among the general population. But we have an obligation to these people who have volunteered to put themselves in harm’s way, and to their families who also carry the scars of a decade of war.
Many are stronger for the times of trial they have endured, but all have been forever changed—often with visible wounds, more often with damage that is unseen but sometimes no less traumatic. As we draw down our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, handing over control to increasingly capable local governments and security forces, and as we continue to pursue a diminished but still dangerous al Qaeda, we must hold in our hearts those who have paid a heavy price so that the rest of us can live in freedom. They have borne the cost of war, and we cannot adequately repay them. But we can, and must, do all in our power to ease their burdens and thank them.