Iraq war vets sound off on new conflict

Area veterans of the war in Iraq say the U.S. should have kept some sort of military presence in Iraq instead of leaving in 2011, and, now, the U.S. will not be able to improve the situation in Iraq as civil war has erupted there.
Iraq war veteran Marc Distefano, 42, of Morgan City, served as a company commander in the Army from 2004 to 2005 with Alpha Company in the 20th Engineering Battalion. His company operated out of Sadr City in northeast Baghdad in a mainly Shiite Muslim area, Distefano said. Distefano retired from the Army in 2009 with the rank of major.
Distefano is disappointed that much of the area he and his fellow soldiers fought to secure has been taken over by extremists, he said.
“A tremendous amount of sacrifice and resources went into establishing some type of security in the area, and by us leaving, wholesale leaving, we left a tremendous vacuum in that part of the world,” Distefano said. “And then the fact that we haven’t done anything, in my opinion, it just emboldens the enemy to continue to do things like this.”
The U.S. should have left a small contingency of troops consisting of one or two brigades, Distefano said. “I think that would have done a lot to hold off on this surge of extremism,” Distefano said.
One Army combat brigade could have secured an area half the size of Baghdad, Distefano said.
Philip Naquin, 28, of Morgan City, served in the Marines with the 9th Engineers 4th Battalion. Naquin was stationed in Iraq from February 2006 to September 2006. “We were basically sent out there as an engineer unit to fill blast craters from IEDs in the roads of Fallujah, Ramadi and Habbaniya,” Naquin said.
“I don’t feel we should have left in 2011,” Naquin said. In 2011, President Barack Obama said the U.S. left a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, but Naquin does not believe that was true, Naquin said.
“I don’t think the U.S. was ready to pull out. And myself, along with the other Marines who I served with, knew that we would end up being back over there,” Naquin said. “It’s unfortunate that we have to go back there, but we knew it was going to happen.”
Distefano said the tribal system in Iraq and the conflict that has been existing for years between Shiite and Sunni Muslims is extremely difficult to understand.
The U.S. could never prevent all the conflict in Iraq, but U.S. troops did a lot of good to control the situation in Iraq, Distefano said. “It’s just unfortunate that we just kind of left this huge vacuum, and we’re not doing anything about it. That’s the sad part,” Distefano said.
Distefano does not know what the U.S. can do at this point to try to improve the situation in Iraq, he said. The U.S. had about a 48-hour window of opportunity last week during which the country should have offered some type of combat power through air support to at least stop the opposition’s movement toward Baghdad, he said. “Because we didn’t do that, all we’ve done is we have emboldened the enemy, which was, in my opinion, a huge mistake,” Distefano said.
Naquin’s father served in the Persian Gulf War, and the turmoil in the region has been going on for many years, Naquin said. Naquin retired from the Marines in 2008 as a sergeant.
Naquin said even though Obama is sending a couple hundred troops back to Iraq, he does not think the U.S. can do anything at this point to help the situation there. U.S. troops have to follow the Geneva Conventions, unlike the Iraqis, he said.
“We’re fighting a completely different war over there than we did in Vietnam and World War II. It cripples the troops, and it’s the reason for most of the deaths that occurred in Iraq,” Naquin said. “We’re going over there. We’re going to follow the same Geneva Conventions. And the same things are going to happen. More of our troops are going to die for a country that’s not willing to fix itself.”