On May 15, 2003, Sean Metroka, a lieutenant
colonel in the United States Marine Corps, was surveying a barren tract
of desert located near al-Mahawil in the central region of Iraq.
The swath of dust-coated land showed signs of
being excavated, as dirt was piled up desultorily in places across the
site, dotted with hundreds, even thousands, of translucent trash bags
filled with human remains. “There was this one woman who was just
wailing,” Metroka said Friday from his office at the Nevada County
Courthouse, where he works as the court’s executive officer. “She had
seven or eight sons. And all but one of them were buried there.” Metroka
is talking about a mass gravesite near the Iraqi city of Hilla, situated
between the Tigres and Euphrates rivers. Hilla is adjacent to the
ancient city of Babylon, an area reputed to be the cradle of human
civilization, where writing was first developed, where the Jewish
prophet Ezekiel is believed to have been buried and where the Hanging
Gardens of Babylon, an ancient wonder of the world, once were.
For Metroka, Hilla will never evoke the wondrous dreams of human
history.
“Some say we went to war because of oil. I don’t know. Maybe we did.
Maybe we went to war for other reasons. But in that country, so many
people lived in fear; they were abused by their government. It was
tyranny at its worst, and there are thousands, maybe millions of people
who are far better off now than any day living under Saddam Hussein.”
— SEAN METROKA
Instead, it reminds him of the nightmarish reality of humans acting less
than human — to be monstrous.
As Metroka and other Marines helped members of an Iraqi Shiite community
perform an exhaustive exhumation at the desolate site, where about
15,000 individuals, mostly young and middle-aged men, lay buried,
Metroka said he grappled with the despicable wages of tyranny, with the
awful things men do to one another.
Most of the individuals interred in the massive
grave were killed in 1999, in retaliation for their suspected
cooperation with American soldiers during the first invasion of Iraq
(Aug. 2, 1990, to Feb. 28, 1991), Metroka said. The men were
systematically rounded up from surrounding villages, taken out to the
desert site, lined up in rows of 15 and unceremoniously shot and hastily
covered by desert dust.
“There were thousands of plastic bags,” Metroka said. “There were all
these people there searching for their relatives, for people who had
suddenly disappeared. “It was one of the most troubling aspects of my
service.”
On April 11, 1880, 16 years after the American Civil War had concluded,
famed Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman told a crowd of 10,000 during
a speech in Columbus, Ohio, that “there is many a boy here today who
looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.”
What Metroka knows, that many may not, is that war is not a hell
experienced and then sloughed off and forgotten, but a hell that grows
inside, that persists, that will not leave you alone.
The invasion
In November 2002, Metroka, an artillery officer in
the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, one of the three major forces to
precipitate the eventual invasion of Iraq, was stationed at Camp
Commando in north central Kuwait. Metroka and his fellow Marines, most
of whom were based in California’s Camp Pendleton, were engaged in
high-level training exercises with an eye toward the eventual invasion
of Iraq as rhetoric out of Washington, D.C., became more bellicose with
each passing day.
A sandstorm strikes a Marine military base at
Jalibah on March 23, 2003 three days into the invasion
Metroka was living in a bedouin tent, dealing with
sub-freezing temperatures endemic to the region around wintertime,
although the desert, in the summer, can host temperatures as high as 130
degrees Fahrenheit.
“I expected the invasion was going to happen,” Metroka said. “Our plans
were developed, we were building up forces in Kuwait and we knew it was
imminent. It was a foregone conclusion.” At 5:34 a.m. Baghdad time on
March 20, 2003, (it was 6:34 p.m. on March 19 in California), “Operation
Iraqi Liberation,” later renamed “Operation Iraqi Freedom” began.
While Metroka and his team organized many long-range strikes on military
targets, ground forces crossed into Iraqi territory and made their way
north, encountering sustained resistance. He remembers his encampment in
the desert taking on a constant barrage of artillery throughout much of
the initial day and night of the invasion. “That day and night, we were
constantly going back and forth into the bomb shelters,” Metroka said.
“I remember the first day of that bombardment, I saw directly overhead a
Scud missile impacted by a Patriot Missile. You could see the explosion
in the sky and we just watched as the shrapnel rained down around us.”
Metroka first stepped foot onto Iraqi soil March 22, nearly 26 hours
after Iraqi coalition forces crossed the border and started a war. While
ground forces continued to encounter resistance during their northward
march toward the capital of Baghdad, the effects of the embargo had
weakened the Iraqi to an unanticipated degree, making progress much more
rapid than anticipated, Metroka said. “The ill effects of living under a
tyrannical regime were evident, as there was not food or clean water in
large swathes of the country.”
Metroka said the involuntary conscription of many of the soldiers, who
were forced into the army under threat of bodily harm or harm to their
families, meant many had little to no qualms over surrender.
The invasion proceeded more swiftly than planned, Metroka said, as
Baghdad fell on April 9, only three weeks after the invasion began. Six
days later, coalition forces took Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown,
encountering slender resistance, which effectively marked the end of the
invasion phase of the Iraq War.
On May 1, President George Bush dramatically visited the USS Abraham
Lincoln, which was navigating waters just outside of San Diego, and
delivered the well-known and heavily derided “Mission Accomplished”
speech.
While all of this was occurring, Metroka was traveling with fellow
Marines, around April 12 or 13, heading north through the center of the
country. He remembers the throng of Iraqi citizens streaming out of
Baghdad, he remembers the gratitude of the people who had just been
freed from a brutal rule, and he remembers seven brand-new bright red
industrial tractors, fresh off the assembly line, being driven in a
procession amid the exodus of refugees marching through the dust.
“What struck me most when I got to Iraq, was the amount of looting by
the people,” Metroka said. “They were taking furniture, appliances,
building materials, mostly from the government buildings. This went on
for months and there was no way to stop it.”
All of this was minor compared to the problem of hundreds of weapon
arsenals that essentially went unsecured for months after the invasion,
Metroka said.
Pile of artillery ammunition Al Kut air force
base in Eastern Iraq left unguarded and eventually raided by residents
and used by insurgents in ongoing guerilla war still going.
The insurgency
Any government that invades another country
creates a four-phase plan, Metroka said, including preparation and
build-up; military execution; disarmament and regime change; and
stabilization and restoration of the country.
Metroka said the military architects of the Iraq War did not have a
well-rounded and complete plan for stabilization and restoration of Iraq
post-invasion, and this lack of preparation was exacerbated by the fact
that the hostile military takeover of the country happened exponentially
quicker than anyone anticipated. “We moved so fast through Iraq, we
toppled the regime in one month and a half. What we were left with is a
country without law and order, with borders we could not patrol and with
many military stockpiles we could not secure.”
Metroka said the coalition forces needed about 600,000 bodies to fully
secure the destabilized country but had only 260,000 in the months
following the takeover of Baghdad. “What we discovered, is that you
can’t do a war on the cheap.”
What unfolded in the aftermath of the invasion and in the lead up to the
insurgency was an attempt to secure cities sector by sector, rather than
follow an overarching comprehensive plan, Metroka said. Compounding the
problem, generals from the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Army engaged
in a continual battle over who was in charge in Baghdad, each growing
more concerned about public image rather than specific goals to help
secure the city. The failure to even develop, let alone implement, a
stabilization plan has had lasting impacts on Iraq, leading to criticism
regarding the ultimate effectiveness of the U.S. mission.
According to the Associated Press, insurgents carried out a wave of
bombings across the country Tuesday that killed 65 people. The nearly 20
attacks, most of which were in proximity to Baghdad, constitute the
deadliest day in Iraq this year and demonstrate how dangerously divided
Iraq remains more than a year after American troops completed a
withdrawal that began in June 2009 and that was complete by December
2011.
Violence has ebbed sharply since the peak of Sunni-Shiite fighting that
pushed the country to the brink of civil war in 2006 and 2007, the AP
reported. But insurgents are still able to stage high-profile attacks,
while sectarian and ethnic rivalries continue to tear at the fabric of
national unity.
Personal aftermath
From the moment Metroka set foot on Kuwaiti soil
on Nov. 17, 2002, he remained on high alert for the remainder of his
deployment. He engaged in gun battles with the enemy, heard the hiss of
missiles as they landed near his encampment and witnessed the remains of
a female suicide bomber scattered about a public square. “I’ve seen a
lot of bad things.”
For Metroka, the most salient picture of the hell that is war centers
around that one day in May, when he witnessed a degree of grief and
terror he never thought possible as he helped Iraqi citizens sift
through a field of their dead friends and relatives at the mass grave
near Hilla. “I was an optimist when it came to human nature,” he said.
“I thought people needed to learn how to be evil, but I don’t think that
now. I think our nature is to be selfish and by extension evil. It is
only through our parents and our society that we learn how to be good.”
Metroka said this dramatic reversal in the orientation of his
fundamental moral compass was the most difficult part of the transition
back to civilian life. When he returned from Iraq and assumed his duties
as the Court Executive Officer for Nevada County, he spent as much free
time volunteering as he possibly could. “I just wanted to focus on what
I can do to be good to other people,” he said. “I got carried away with
it.”
His voracious volunteerism created a rift between Metroka and his wife,
harming their relationship. “I was gone all the time. It was just an
unconscious attempt to keep busy — to distract myself. Also, I needed to
prove to myself that I was not naturally evil.”
Metroka, the father of three children (two sons and a daughter), said he
would sometimes get so choked up with indiscriminate anger that he would
literally find himself yelling at his teenage son, as though he just
came to.
Metroka said he recognized he was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress
Syndrome and began seeking treatment and continues to go to counseling
every week. “I know this is the kind of stuff that happens when at war.
I just find that slowly it is easier to think about. I don’t avoid the
things I’ve experienced, but I have learned not to dwell on them. To
keep it all bottled in, though, like I used to — it’s an impossible
task.”
‘The right thing to do’
Metroka said he cannot believe 10 years have
passed since the invasion of Iraq.
Many pundits will scramble to define the legacy of that military
operation over the course of the next week, but for Metroka, the
experience of meeting hundreds of grateful Iraqi people, happy to be
released from the clenches of despotism stands testament to the value of
the Iraq War.
Lt. Colonel Metroka with Iraqi family near
Salman Pac, a former military facility in proximity to Baghad.
“I have mixed feelings about the reasons we
entered the war and some of the long-term problems it may have caused
for both countries. But if you think from a humanistic perspective, it
was the right thing to do. Some say we went to war because of oil,” he
continued. “I don’t know. Maybe we did. Maybe we went to war for other
reasons. But in that country, so many people lived in fear; they were
abused by their government. It was tyranny at its worst, and there are
thousands, maybe millions of people who are far better off now than any
day living under Saddam Hussein.”
Even personally, as Metroka still deals with the psychological toll of
his involvement in the war, he perseveres that it was a positive
experience.
“I don’t regret it,” he said. “I am thankful that I was in a position to
be called, to do what I signed up to do when I was 17. I am thankful to
my country that they allowed me to serve.”
Lt. Colonel Metroka at Al Faw Palace, a
distinctive landmark in Baghdad, located near the International airport.
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