Colorado Treasurer Mike Coffman, just back from a seven-month tour of duty with the Marines in Iraq, says the situation there is improving and the U.S. is “on the right track,” despite poor initial planning by the U.S. and unforeseen setbacks.
As a Marine Corps civil affairs officer, Coffman helped conduct elections in Iraq and, unlike many overnight experts, knows something first-hand about the subject of warfare.
Some of Coffman’s candid assessments on Iraq may not sit well with fellow Republicans. “The Bush administration had so underestimated the challenges that the U.S. military forces were confronting in Iraq,” he says. Fixing what’s wrong in Iraq is a bigger job than the U.S. imagined, and what progress is being made is slow.
Coffman, a Marine Reserve major, volunteered to go to Iraq last year with a civil affairs unit to help with national and local elections.
“The Marine Corps was desperate for former Marines who had a political background to help move the process forward,” he said in a phone interview from Camp Lejeune, N.C. So, at age 50, Coffman donned his uniform and picked up an M-16 rifle.
A infantry veteran of the Gulf War, Coffman said that although he felt “we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein” during the earlier conflict, he had been reluctant to support the 2003 invasion of Iraq. After President Bush made the case that Hussein was working to acquire nuclear weapons, Coffman changed his mind, but when none were found felt “we had made a profound mistake in invading Iraq.”
“But once in, we had no choice but to finish the job,” Coffman said in an e-mail exchange after returning to the United States.
“Prior to going to Iraq, I had concluded that the war was not winnable from a military standpoint and that a political solution was necessary,” he said. “However, I also knew that a political solution would never happen without some degree of security that the military could bring.”
Did it appear that post-war recovery hadn’t been adequately planned? “Yeah, it really does,” he said. “The average Marine will tell you that – the ones who were around in 2003. There’s still disbelief about how poor the planning was in the aftermath of the invasion.”
After two months of training in California, he joined the Marines’ 6th Civil Affairs Group in al Anbar Province (the heart of the Sunni insurgency) in August to work in Ramadi, Fallujah, Haditha, Barwanah and Haqlaniyah.
Coffman reports that the insurgents have fueled a great deal of fear among their fellow Sunnis.
Also, the highly centralized, authoritarian framework that existed in Iraq from the Ottoman Empire through Hussein’s rule persists. “It’s still based on the old structure,” he said.
When a permanent government finally is formed, that may change. “But right now, the power is all with the central government.” Such a top-heavy structure impedes day-to-day government activities: Police answer to Baghdad, not provincial officials, for example. The centralized system also interferes with economic reforms, and “their economy is such a disaster,” Coffman said.
“The Sunnis are having a rough time with the whole idea of democracy. It takes some work [to persuade] them to think that government can be a positive force in their lives.”
The Marines learned that the Sunnis have cause to fear the insurgents, even though they often are fellow Sunnis. American troops would clear an area of insurgents, establish local officials and then pull out. The insurgents would return to slaughter those who had cooperated with the Americans. So the Marines began stationing company-sized units in the towns to provide security.
Still, Iraqi officials avoid appearing too cozy with the Americans. Coffman described using a house search as a cover for a meeting with one very nervous Iraqi official.
Something that surprised Coffman was the caliber of new Iraqi soldiers. “I was very impressed with them,” he said. “Their equipment was old, but I felt they conducted themselves just as conscientiously as the Marines.”
The Marines ran the January 2005 national assembly election, but the Iraqis took over on subsequent elections. “I was surprised that they did as well as they did,” he said. “Obviously there were some problems – as in all elections – but not enough to invalidate the results.”
Coffman disputes former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s assertion that civil war has erupted. “Allawi might be doing that for his own political purposes,” Coffman said. “Nobody [in Iraq] feels it’s a civil war. We couldn’t hold the [Iraqi] military together if that were the case.”
Still, getting the Sunnis to trust that the Shiites and Kurds will let them participate in the government is critical to Iraq’s future. “I think that trust isn’t there right now,” Coffman said.
Coffman’s final experiences in Iraq were a reminder that the security situation remains precarious. His last week in the country, Coffman, riding in Humvee, escaped injury when an improvised explosive device destroyed a 7-ton truck ahead of him in a convoy outside Haqlaniyah, injuring 11 other Marines.
Coffman has returned to the office of state treasurer, but his term ends this year, and he’s seeking the Republican nomination for secretary of state.
Peter G. Chronis is a member of the Denver Post editorial board.
