The ongoing war in Iraq is worth fighting, U.S. Marine Corps Capt. A.J. Fielder told an audience of 28 students and community members in Smith-Buonanno 201 last night. In his talk, hosted by the College Republicans, Fielder drew from his own experience in two tours of duty in Iraq as commander of a heavy weapons platoon and a sniper platoon.
"Tonight, we have the opportunity to hear the unfiltered version of the goings-on in Iraq," said Zack Drew '07, president of the Brown Republicans, in introducing Fielder.
Fielder's presentation included a discussion of the pitfalls of apathy and its remedy through military service, as well as a profile of the Marine Corps. He then chronicled his tours in Iraq with a slideshow that featured photographs from the 2003 invasion and his later postings in Ramadi.
Fielder - now the Marines' head officer selection officer for Rhode Island - said in his speech that he enjoys any opportunity to come share his stories on campus.
"It used to surprise me that we'd get so many applicants from Brown. It doesn't anymore," he said. "When I come up to Brown, the people that I talk to are engaging, they're caring more about what's going on in the world. These are the kind of people the Marine Corps wants."
Discussing his two tours of duty, Fielder described the initial invasion of Iraq as "conventional warfare," as opposed to the more complex present situation. He also highlighted the changing nature of the enemy the U.S. military faces in Iraq.
"The difference between these insurgents now and those insurgents then was that their tactics were terrible" on his first tour, he said, citing an example of combatants trying to attack U.S. tanks by hand. Now, Fielder said, insurgents mow down groups of Sunni and Shiite children playing soccer to incite sectarian violence among their parents.
Fielder recounted the personal toll the war takes on the lives of Marines, describing the difficult yet vital task of thinking logically when fighting on the ground.
"We're looking to shoot people. That's our job," he said of the sniper platoon he led in Ramadi. "We tell ourselves what we're doing is good, what we're doing is required. The way I deal with this - I tell myself that for every person we kill, we're saving a Marine's life. And I believe that."
Fielder drew chuckles from the audience when describing the inadequacies of Iraqi security forces, recalling an instance in which a member of the Iraqi "special special forces," as he said they called themselves, shot one of his subordinates in the leg.
"The Iraqi police and the Iraqi army have nowhere to go but up," he noted, adding that Iraqis are increasingly willing to work with American forces as they grow more frustrated with conditions under the insurgency.
Drew said Fielder's down-to-earth perspective is what attracted the Brown Republicans to bring him to speak on campus. "He presents a very realistic point of view, a reasonable point of view - typical of a soldier, I guess, or a Marine. Not overly pessimistic, not overly optimistic, just very realistic," Drew said.
In a question-and-answer session following his presentation, Fielder addressed questions about how Marines deal with the pretexts for the Iraq war, including intelligence fallouts on the issues of Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein's link to al-Qaida.
"The hardest part is talking to Marines about this," Fielder said, "because they're not stupid." Still, he said, he believes that the invasion was initiated with good intentions.
Fielder also showed photographs from everyday life as a Marine in Iraq, pointing out amenities sent by U.S. citizens and others that Marines acquired in Iraq. He also noted pastimes and distractions from Iraqi politics, such as watching baseball games.
"I don't smoke. I never smoked. But when I was over there, I probably smoked every night. I don't know, I guess it relaxed me," he said.
Now that he's back in the United States, though, Fielder said those distractions have fallen by the wayside as he's forced to answer tough questions about the war when visiting college campuses.
Fielder said much of the information that students and citizens in the United States get about the situation in Iraq is incomplete.
"I think there's a lot of media there but not much journalism going on," he said, adding that he never actually talked to any reporters while in Iraq.
Though his sniper platoon's operations made media tagalongs difficult, one British photographer was embedded with his unit, Fielder said.
"He would come popping around the corner with his camera like it was a weapon," Fielder recalled.
Drew agreed with Fielder's opinion of press coverage of Iraq.
"The problem is not in what they present. I'm sure what they present is very accurate," he said. "The problem is the balance."
"Everybody realizes why they do it - it's for the ratings," Drew said of 24-hour news coverage of the war. "It's infotainment," he said.
Drew added that campus conservatives face difficulty promoting a balanced dialogue about the war.
"You can't expect a liberal arts institution with very liberal professors and a very liberal student body to have even an intelligent dialogue about the war. A lot of people aren't willing to concede that there's another side or another view," he said.
"This wasn't a terribly political lecture," Drew added, "but I thought it was necessary and useful for the Brown community to hear the Marines' point of view of why they're there."
