LETTER FROM A WAR ZONE
Live from Baghdad: Messages that fall on deaf ears

By James Santiago| RAW STORY COLUMNIST

It’s easy to wake up in Baghdad.

That statement is true on many levels, in this particular case I mean physically. I’m not sure why, but the sun seems to rise sooner here than it does back home. Before your alarm clock goes off the sun is already streaming through the window blinds of your trailer onto your face. Or at least that’s how it is where I’m at, on a big military base near the Baghdad International Airport on the western edge of the city.

This place strikes me as being surreal. A person could almost forget that they were even in Iraq. The U.S. army has gone to great lengths to try and make this little corner of Mesopotamia as Americanized — and militarized — as possible. If it wasn’t for all the trips “outside the wire” and into the rest of the country that most soldiers make, they might not even notice that this isn’t just another post in Arizona. Albeit a shitty post with an overabundance of nonsensical directives being handed out by higher commands like candy, but a post none the less.

I’m one of the thousands of reservists that have been called up for this war. As a civilian I work for a geo-political think tank as a researcher and analyst.

Here, I’m a Psychological Operations Specialist, which sounds impressive and for some people, conjures up images of Manchurian Candidate-like plots or mind-bending missions. The truth isn’t nearly as sinister and/or glamorous. In reality, my job is to explain to the decision-makers inside the wire, what is going on in the minds of those outside it.

Honestly, I find the whole endeavor a bit amusing. It’s amusing because although that’s my whole reason for existing inside the army and being in this country (at great cost to the taxpayer) the people who do need to hear what I have to say aren’t really interested in hearing anything I have to say.

The older soldiers tell me it’s been that way “since Jesus had jump wings.” Yet I don’t remember it being this bad during my tour in Afghanistan. Afghanistan was a different kind of conflict though, and was fought by a different kind of soldier in a completely different style. Iraq, I’m told, is the conventional army way of fighting a war.

That being said, I have no idea how we won the wars that we did. I wouldn’t call the system broke, but it’s definitely limping along.

As you can see by now, I’ve got my gripes with the Army. Every soldier does to some degree or another. Even the ones who wrap themselves up in the American flag and practically bleed red white and blue will always have something that doesn’t sit right with them. The phenomenon has even been immortalized in one of many army proverbs: “It’s a soldiers god given right to bitch.” Not that I plan on using this column to rant off all my issues with the U.S. military and the war. I actually plan on using this space to fulfill part of my mission…In a way.

Part of my mission is to explain what is going on “out there” to decision makers. In this case, that’s going to be you.

As many are already aware, there’s quite a bit of context that gets lost by the mainstream media when it beams its reporter’s stories into your living room. Some of that can’t be helped; it’s the nature of the beast when you have to cram in something that can be as byzantine as Iraqi tribal politics into a 30-second sound byte or a blurb on CNN’s news ticker. Some of it can even be attributed to shoddy reporting; after all, there are some days that the mortars are falling a little too thickly and you really don’t feel like leaving the hotel bar to get the story. I understand that completely.

So, I’ll do what I can, to explain what I’m able so at least you’ll come back with a bit better understanding or at the very least another piece of information that perhaps you didn’t already know.

The writer is a Psychological Operations Specialist for the U.S. military. He writes under a pseudonym but can be reached by email at santiago@rawstory.com.