Tuesday, April 8, 2003 | 8:32 a.m.
ACCORDING TO MEDIA REPORTS there is a tug-of-war going on between the Pentagon and State Department about the role each should play during the coming months in Iraq. The diplomats have always viewed the military as a stick to enforce State Department policies. Immediately after the stick is used and blood is shed, the diplomats want to go back and make more decisions that may eventually result in additional military intervention.
Over the years, the State Department has sold itself as the good guys who help heal the wounds of war and the rehabilitation of battered nations. Little is said about the wars and minor military actions that have resulted from diplomatic failures. Let's not forget the false impressions that our ambassador gave Saddam Hussein about the U.S. not being overly concerned if he would invade Kuwait in 1990. Maybe she had good reasons to believe this to be true because our country was doing big business with Iraq in previous months and years.
What should bother Americans is the treatment of the military as being the bad guys and not understanding the needs of people. A few of the career people in the State Department do recognize the human skills of many career military types. This message often gets lost in the battles behind the scenes, which eventually are made public through convenient leaks to the media.
Some of the finest work with people I have seen in Central America and Northern Iraq has been performed by military units. Being the only media person present in 1990 when our military medical units helped evacuate Bocay in the Honduran jungles was an uplifting experience. With their helicopters, the doctors and nurses rescued more than 900 women, babies and disabled men isolated after their Contra soldiers were required to walk back home to Nicaragua.
Two years later, with the Kurds in Iraq, I met Army Col. Richard Naab who gave me a ride back and forth across the country in his Black Hawk helicopter. The Kurds trusted and loved Naab who had his chopper, decorated with our flag, fly low so the people could wave. He continually pointed out villages and told me of the problems the people were having. He understood them and they knew he had their best interest in his heart.
Naab saw no need for famine in the Kurd-controlled part of Iraq because of available land and water. Job development would be important and possible. "They no longer should believe that being a peshmerga (guerrilla) is an occupation," he told me.
It was 11 years ago that Naab gave me reason to write: If Naab had his way, we would also help them bring back their chicken farms and feed lots for sheep; help renew their carpet and textile industry; let them drill known oil deposits; and then back off and let them live. Another democratic people who have learned to love and respect the United States!
Let's hope that men the quality of Naab are involved in the pacification and rehabilitation of Iraq. He and several other military people, who have seen both sides of combat and rehabilitation, should be brought in from retirement. Their knowledge would also be valuable in producing a foreign policy, which will reflect a realistic response to many problems we face today.
Our military people aren't the bad guys our enemies would have us believe. Nor are they the problem makers that some of our diplomats want us to believe. Our military people are much more often problem solvers than they are problem makers.
The U.S. military forces are you and me. They are people, with great people skills and understanding, who must play an important role in the pacification and rehabilitation of Iraq for the next several months.
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