Sassaman Interview

[Abu Suleyman]

I don't need two posts to say this: Nathan Sassaman is a professional embarrassment to the officer community and the United States Army because he advocated the murder of the very people he was tasked to secure.

This is my third try at a post, and hopefully my least emotional. Thank goodness for delete keys.

I knew Nate Sassaman, and was in his battalion, although not during the deployment.

He has been unfairly characterized. His quotes, as he conveyed them, have been manipulated by those who opposed the war to portray a man who was full of hatred for Iraqi's, and from there generalize to all soldiers, but nothing could be further from the truth. He was unwittingly complicit in this, aided by his sense of the dramatic (he liked to talk in absolutes), and his personal story. (The quarterback who went on to be the warrior, etc.)

He is probably the most quoted and filmed battalion commander of the whole war, and that bears remembering when passing judgement on the whole battalion. If we filmed any battalion as much as that one, and then parsed it down to a few clips I bet we could make them all out to be a bunch of hate mongers, too. Nate had great relationships with the majority of the Iraqi's he worked with. With a few notable exeptions, when we returned to the same AO a year and a half later, all the leadership asked after him, and some were even writing him in the States. What no report I have ever seen mentions is that in the City of Balad there is a monument that the Iraqi's built to him and his battalion. Another thing no report mentions is that the Samarra incident occured in an out of sector mission, where his relationships with the locals and many of the factors of COIN were not in play. Basically, Sassaman's battalion was called in to help another battalion who had been kicked out of Samarra by the insurgency, and the city was almost completely uncontrolled.

I haven't read his memoirs yet. Time does not permit, and I have already heard the story from his perspective anyway. However, he understood the way that Iraqi's worked better than anyone I knew. He read voraciously about the Middle East, with a fondness for Thomas Friedman. Moreover, as was stated earlier, war is a fundamentally stupid, and basically immoral action, even when waged for a greater higher purpose, and Nate understood that. He tried to make the best of a bad situation for everyone. Indeed, his 'crime' was that he was trying to mitigate the effects of a poor decision on the part of Jack Saville. (Also worth noting, even in Iraq it was widely believed, but especially by Nate and his staff, that neither of the two men died. Also, at the time 'alternate deterence' was preferable to detention in enforcing curfew. So that from Nate's perspective he wasn't covering a crime, he was just trying to keep Jack from being punished for overzealous, and frankly poor, implementation of a division policy.) He equally tried to mitigate the effects on the Iraqi's by instituting expansive reconstruction projects, and, frankly establishing security as quickly as possible. He believed firmly in short term pain for long term gain, which in retrospect, was the right thing to do.

It is popular to read accounts from NYT Magazine and pass judgement. But much as they would like to believe to the contrary NYT is not a reliable, nor neutral arbiter, much less the magazine. Also, knowing the players as I do, I read the account, and percieve it totally differently. The words of friends ring true, and carry different meaning to me, I guess.

My last word is this: Don't hasten to judge. Many have been unfairly tried in the court of public opinion only to be acquited by the halls of justice. If a full and true accounting is ever to be given (which is unlikely) I have no doubt that Nate Sassaman will be remembered not as a villain, but as a tragic figure who overestimated his own abilities and was caught in the machine of war. Not all of the casualties are physical.

I have just read Abu Muquwama's review (I know I should have read it first), and I have to add this bit: It seems that Nate has become a bit more strident in his views. I don't know that I would agree with him. Nevertheless, I agree with Abu Muquwama that this is a tone that one saw a great deal from officers in post-Vietnam, and more so (though less current) in post-U.S. Civil War and Gemany post-WWI. I hope that he hasn't personally engaged on the slide that destroyed Johnstons life.