A Failure To Communicate

As you probably know, Paul Newman died recently. I mentioned in my last post that America's super soldiers give off a certain air, one that makes men want to be them and women want to be with them. But the coolest cucumber in the special forces doesn't hold a candle to Mr. Newman. Classy, clever, and adept in any role in any genre. Action, sports, drama, animation - he did it all. "Cool Hand Luke" is one of the best movies ever made, and Paul Newman managed to show up Tom Cruise in "Color of Money," a feat few actors have ever done.

I've seen "Cool Hand Luke" 20+ times. One of the most famous lines in the movie belongs to the Captain, played by Strother Martin doing his best squeaky, effete Truman Capote. In the scene, Luke, Newman's character, is brought back to the chain gang after another failed attempt at escape, and the jail Captain beats Luke with a blackjack. Standing over him, the Captain says, "What we've got here is failure to communicate." Cue cinematic gold.

What the Captain was getting at, of course, was that Luke simply wasn't receiving the message he was sending - namely do your time quietly and don't make waves. The message was clear and in no uncertain terms, and the failure in this case was Luke's unwillingness to receive the message.

Sometimes, however, the message is less clear. Sometimes the message is obtuse to the point of being meaningless. Like when I was in Iraq, and I was assigned to set up a check point and detain "any vehicle with two or more Arab males in it."


'Hmm,' I thought upon receiving this mission, 'that's going to be a lot of detainees.' You see, Iraq is practically overrun with Arab males. The place is crawling with them. They also have the annoying habit of traveling two or more to a vehicle. My mission, therefore, was basically to arrest everyone.

Now as it turned out, that should not have been my mission. The actual intelligence the mission was predicated on was that two non-Iraqi Arabs who were known IED (improvised explosive devise) manufacturers were suspected of moving through our area en route to Syria. There was only one road that ran through the desert from Haditha to the border, so they would probably be on that road. We were supposed to look for two military aged males traveling with bomb-making material and no Iraqi identification. But that didn't reach my level. "What we've got here is failure to communicate." Cue disastrous mission.

I don't know where the breakdown occurred. It could have come from the intelligence officer who received the report and left out the important details. It could have been, and I believe likely was, an intentional decision by the higher-ups to cast as wide a net as possible. However, being staff weenies that never left base, they didn't realize that hundreds if not thousands of people passed down that stretch of highway everyday, and that there was no way we could possibly arrest, handle, and interrogate so many people. Nor did they realize that if we tried to do it, it would turn into such a snarling clusterfuck that the guys we actually wanted would probably spot the checkpoint and get away. Alas, I was a lowly lieutenant, what did I know? Off to the checkpoint!

Having been out on that highway quite a bit, I knew the level of traffic to expect. So I brought all 40 guys in my platoon, every humvee and truck I could get, and as much barbed wire, MREs (pre-packaged field rations), and bottled water as we could carry. My plan, you see, was to do exactly what they told me: I would stop every vehicle. I'd have each one parked on the side of the road in one area, put all vehicle occupants in a separate barbed wire ring, and give each a bottle of water so they wouldn't die of heatstroke in the 125-degree sun. I'd wait until the staff weenies called off the mission once they realized I had several hundred detainees, then I'd free everyone that wasn't an insurgent and give them an MRE by way of apology. Couldn't fail, right? I am too big to fail.

So it was noon on a sunbaked stretch of highway. The thermometer topped out at 120, but it was probably hotter (the hottest I ever saw was 135, as measured at an aviation unit's flight control center). What we were doing was extraordinarily dangerous because checkpoints are sitting targets, and insurgents were getting good at driving car-bombs into them. [FN 1] Therefore, we were in full battle rattle: helmet, body armor, armed to the teeth. And we were more than a little tense, because there's nothing like the threat of imminent demise to jangle the nerves. To top it all off, we had 75 cars parked in lines along the highway, and just over 130 furious, innocent Iraqi men, women, and children milling around a barbed-wire holding area. Did I mention we didn't have a translator? We didn't. There weren't any to be had, so, like good Americans, we just shouted in English.

We had been at the site for two hours, and I was becoming exceedingly nervous. Not only was there the threat of car bombs, but there was also the specter of having to quell a riot. We were now outnumbered 3 to 1, and if the detainees decided to rush us and leave, we'd have to start physically restraining completely innocent people. That would likely lead to someone getting shot, and I'd be responsible for innocent loss of life.

I walked from my humvee, which was parked on a slight rise so I could get radio reception, down to my platoon sergeant, Smoke. [FN 2] He was standing near our make-shift ops center, overwatching the detainees with a small detail of guards. "Enough of this," I said. "Roger that, sir," he replied. "You've gotta us the fuck outta here." "Good," I said. "What are the current numbers so I can call them in?" "134 detainees, 77 vehicles," he told me. "Alright, I'll be back," I said, and went back to my humvee.

I radioed in a sitrep (situation report), and requested further guidance.

"Stay put," the battle captain on duty said.
"We've been here over two hours, can we relocate to improve security?" I asked.
"Negative, you are to remain in position."
"Can we release the current detainees?"
"Negative."
"How about the women and children?"
"Negative, you are to retain all detainees and remain in location."
"Could you send a tank detail to beef up security?"
"Negative, all available tank units are on border security."
"Roger, anything else?"
"Negative, send sitrep if anything changes."
"Roger, Red 1 out."

So we stayed. And stayed. And stayed. And stayed. It got dark. Where before I had 130 hot and furious Iraqis, I now had 227 irate and shivering Iraqis. You see, as the sun set, the temperature dropped dramatically, and the sweat on the detainees was now chilling them. My soldiers were about at their wits' ends too - 10 hours is a long time to stand around in battle readiness.

I called in yet another sitrep. A different voice came on the line.

"Red 1, this 6." The squadron commander? What was the colonel doing on the radio? "Are you still out there," he asked.
"Roger 6, this is Red 1. We're maintaining our position."
"What the hell are you doing? You were supposed to close that position this morning."
"Uh, 6, Red 1, I have negative knowledge of that. I've been sending sitreps and I requested that we close this position, over."
"Standby," he said.

Some time passed.

"Red 1, 6. Have you detained any potential insurgents?"

I had a farmer trying to get his produce to market. I had a truck full of very thirsty goats. I had numerous mothers and fathers with wailing children, and any number of other mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers that had been expected home hours ago. I had a one-armed man. I had two motorcycles. I had a guy who claimed to be a sheikh and had offered me several hundred U.S. dollars, in cash, to let him and everyone else go (this made me suspicious, but he was traveling with his wife, and his car was free of suspect material. Nothing to hold him on).

"6, Red 1, negative, no one I'd classify as an insurgent, over." My radio procedure got better when I talked to the SCO (squadron commander).
"Roger, Red 1, wrap it up, and come home. See me when you get back."
"6, Red 1, roger, over."
"6 out."

"Smoke, let's get out of here," I yelled from my humvee down to the detainee area. Smoke and the guards downloaded the pallet of MREs from the truck and broke open the boxes. We opened the string of barbed wire, and the soldiers made sure everyone filed out one by one and got their MREs. We smiled and kind of bowed in apology. The Iraqis were not pleased. If I had any idea what they were saying, I have no doubt I would have learned some very colorful Arabic curse-words that day. I'd have been a veritable George Carlin Ali, I'm sure.

We watched people find their cars in the darkness, and one by one the engines started. The headlights shined through the cloud of dust that skittering tires kicked up as trucks, taxis, vans, and sedans of all makes and condition bounced up onto the road and headed home. I watched the last car leave, a single finger fully extended from the driver's window. 'Well, at least he knows some English,' I thought. And we went back to base.

In talking to the SCO during my debriefing back at base, I learned something. During our radio conversation, he told me to standby, and a pause followed. Apparently, during that pause he practically melted the battle captain's face with a string of profanity, the gist of which was we should never have been left out there. Particularly because the insurgents we were supposed to be looking for had been captured in Haditha before we even set up the checkpoint. Then he got back on the radio and told me to come in.

What we had there was a failure to communicate. Cue the loss of a few more Iraqi hearts and minds. The end.

[FN 1] A good friend of mine, in a moment of gallows humor, suggested modifying Irish Car Bombs (a shot of Bailey's and Jameson dropped into a class of Guinness) into Iraqi Car Bombs. His suggestion: drop a shot of sand and armpit sweat into a glass of warm goat milk. Mm mm mm.

[FN 2] In artillery units, platoon sergeants are called Smoke. That's just the way it is.