The Ambassador and the Soldier

WAR Elections close to home and far away set the stage for an ending in Iraq, as local Guard troops deploy again KEVIN TAYLOR

Just as Staff Sergeant Will Seymore and about 49 more National Guard soldiers get ready to leave Spokane for a deployment to Iraq, President Obama released his timetable for major troop withdrawals next year.

Seymore, who is taking this week off to focus on family and farewells before Saturday’s departure ceremony, could be headed to Iraq for the last time. He and the 1041st Transportation Company will first stop in Indiana for some training, but the unit expects to be in Baghdad in a couple of months.

It will be a changed city, thanks in part to the efforts of a Spokane Valley native.

“Clearly, for the Guardsmen going out on Saturday, those who were there before, they will see an Iraq that is completely different in many respects,” says Ryan Crocker, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq.

Crocker, who expects to return home to Spokane Valley by April, was the State Department wingman for Gen. David Petraeus during the troop surge, which deployed increased U.S. forces into small, neighborhood outposts and is credited with calming the cycle of violence in Baghdad.

The higher troop levels, closer contact with Iraqis, plus the outreach to Sunni tribes as they turned against extremists, has reshaped Iraq, Crocker says by telephone from Washington, D.C., where he is still assisting the Obama administration.

“The provincial elections that took place at the end of January are an important reference point to get perspective on the progress that has occurred,” he says. It’s not who won the elections that is key to seeing the progress, nor is it who lost, Crocker says.

The progress is that the winners and losers changed places without gunfire.

“This is the first time people have lost elections” in Iraq since the U.S. invasion, Crocker says. “And they are showing respect for the results. The former provincial councils are leaving their offices, they are accepting the results. We take this for granted at home.”

The peaceful transition is a huge step towards a more stable Iraq, Crocker says. And, he points out, change swept through every province except in the Kurdish north, where elections are scheduled for May.

“What lies behind this peaceful transition are the Iraqis themselves. All communities — Sunnis, Shia, Kurds — said, ‘We’ve had it with violence. We’re done with al-Qaeda, and we’re done with Shia extremism and we want to get on with our lives,’” Crocker says. “Our ability to meet them on that and say we’ve got their backs is key.”

American soldiers, including local National Guard and Reserve units, have been crucial.

“Our Guard can be very proud of that. They came in the first time when it was a whole lot harder, but their service prepared the ground for what is happening today, where it is more hopeful,” Crocker says.

This will be Seymore’s second deployment, but his first with the Guard. In 2005, he deployed as port security in Kuwait with a Navy Reserve unit, the Spokane-based MIUWU 102 (Mobile Inshore Undersea Warfare Unit).

The unit title appears dashing and daredevilish. The reality was a grinding security slog at one of Kuwait’s main ports where massive quantities of war material (“everything from beans to bullets,” Seymore says) were disgorged from big ships.
The deployment careened along in a sort of Groundhog’s Day with the chaos of offloadings and convoy assemblies, the throngs of workers crowding the docks where nobody knew exactly who was who.

It was tense and exhausting, and the constant strain and hyper-vigilance affected him, Seymore says. “I came back angry.”
Seymore re-assessed his career, ultimately deciding to join the 1041st in part to reach 20 years of service. But also because he likes the National Guard.

“If you think about who is the National Guard, we are citizen-soldiers and we have our [civilian] skill sets we bring to the table. I would say the majority are older, more mature, which makes my and my soldiers’ interaction more valuable when it come to interacting with the public,” he says.

It’s the potential to have a more humanitarian mission rebuilding communities that is attractive, he says. So he stayed in, even though his wife and three sons have mixed emotions.

“I have to go over and do what I feel is my duty,” Seymore says.

There are still incredible pressures in Iraq, Crocker cautions, from Shia militias to Sunni tribes to the establishment of a national court system despite the assasination of 36 judges.

Crocker last fall also helped cool down a tense confrontation between the Iraqi Army and Kurdish peshmerga fighters in Khanaqin, a peaceful Kurd region northeast of Baghdad.

Such ongoing tensions seem ripe, Seymore suggests, for long-term American military presence akin to Korea or Germany or Japan.

Obama was criticized during the presidential campaign for his vow to quickly bring troops home. His announcement last week to withdraw combat troops by next year is more measured.

“I was very much involved with preparing recommendations for the president,” Crocker says. “On his first full day in office he video conferenced with me and Gen. Ray Odierno and said, ‘I need your thinking on different scenarios.’”

Crocker is pleased that Obama’s timetable even drew support from his rival, Sen. John McCain.

When the troops come home, Crocker was asked if he would use the word “victory.”

“I don’t,” he says. “I have trouble understanding what it means in an Iraq context. There is a tremendous amount of work to be done and, increasingly, it will have to be done by Iraqis. It will take time, it will take our support. Victory … it will be an Iraqi victory in the end.”