Reflections on Iraq and One Family's Sacrifice
By Brantley Smith
Posted On December 27, 2005
My wife and I just returned from Cullman, Alabama where we attended the funeral of Marine Corporal Adam Fales. Corporal Fales was killed on December 17th in a tragic accident in Fallujah, Iraq. He was 21. We did not really know Adam Fales until yesterday, except for a brief meeting in August as he prepared to deploy to Iraq. (His unit, 4th Platoon, 2nd Military Police Battalion, Camp Lejeune, is also our daughter’s unit. She is still in Fallujah serving along with Corporal Fales’ other comrades.)
Adam is missed, but the missions do not stop. Grieving comes as time permits, and in western Iraq, time to grieve is precious. The tough work of establishing democracy in a country where a generation of people have known only brutal despotism is dangerous, complicated, and challenging.
After two days of listening to Corporal Fales wonderful family and friends in this small, rural town in north Alabama, we now truly know Adam Fales, as his fellow Marines did and as his family always has. The term I heard most the past two days to describe him is “peacemaker.” It was a role he was apparently quite good at. Of all his accomplishments as a Marine, his proudest, he said, was delivering ballots to the people of Anbar Province during the October Constitutional Referendum. He spent his last days supporting the first election of a permanent democratic government in Iraq in decades.
The selfless sacrifice of the Fales’ family gives cause to reflect on Iraq. Especially with a resurgent Iran in search of nuclear weapons and led by a regime more and more hostile to world peace and stability, it seems like the time to revisit the advantages of having a democratic ally strategically located between Iran and what we traditionally think of as the volatile Middle East.
One only need look at a map to see Iraq's strategic significance. It makes the Bush Administration look like the Reagan Administration. When President Reagan demanded that Mikhail Gorbachev “tear down this wall” in June of 1987, did many outside the Administration really believe the Wall would come down two years later? Long-term, strategic thinking in the Executive Branch is apparently alive and well, polls notwithstanding.
The most bizarre and irrational approach to ending US involvement in Iraq is the call for a timetable for withdrawal based not on an analysis of events but an arbitrary schedule that ignores the end state, the mission, and the criteria for success. Any experienced military planner will tell you that a campaign is phased, with each phase having a distinct end state and a clear transition into the next phase. Such operations are rarely time driven but rather event driven. The beginning of a subsequent phase is predicated on the successful completion of a clearly articulated end state of the previous phase. Time is rarely the transition criteria beyond the first phase of an operation. War is too complicated and a thinking and unpredictable enemy never sticks to your schedule. Can anyone imagine General George Patton’s Third Army dashing across France in 1944 on a strict time schedule, or Admiral Chester Nimitz giving Japan’s Chief of the Navy General Staff, Admiral Nagano, a schedule for his island hopping campaign across the Central Pacific? The complicated tasks we face in Iraq, simultaneously fighting terrorists, fighting an insurgency, rebuilding infrastructure, and establishing a viable democratic government (and an Army to protect it) from the ashes of a ruthless dictatorship, do not lend themselves to a neat timeline. We have never tackled an endeavor like this in our history. How do you reduce it to a wall calendar? Anyone that proposes such an approach to US withdrawal is either oblivious to reality or grandstanding on a monumental scale.
How do we justify, as a nation, the sacrifices made by the family of Adam Fales and the families of over 2,100 other American warriors who have made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq? The clear answer is by finishing the noble work they have begun, by staying the course, by steeling our resolve to honor our commitment to ourselves and to our Iraqi allies. Adam Fales is remembered in his small hometown of Fairview Alabama as a tough, determined, resolute team player who once gained over 300 yards in a single football game for his beloved Fairview High School Aggies. This young American hero was no quitter. Neither is his older brother, Jacob, also a Marine Corporal, or his younger brother James who is clearly cut from the same mold. Neither are his parents, Glenda and Joe. These are inspiring and patriotic people and as I talked to them and listened to friends and family, I had the clear impression they taught their children about the virtues of honor, integrity, and the importance of uncompromising principle. They are not apt to check which way the political winds are blowing. These are people you want in your corner when the going gets tough. As a nation, this is an example we need to see, and be, on main street, in Washington, and in Iraq.
Brantley Smith lives in Tullahoma, Tennessee and can be reached at usmcengr@aol.com.
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