Journalist Thomas Ricks on the Latest from Iraq

DATE June 19, 2007 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Journalist and author Thomas Ricks discusses war in
Iraq
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest Tom Ricks is military correspondent for the Washington Post and the
author of the best seller "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq,"
which will be published in paperback at the end of July. In the book he
wrote, "The US-led invasion was launched recklessly with a flawed plan for war
and a worse approach to the occupation." Ricks' latest trip to Iraq was at the
end of May. He spent time in the green zone and at Camp Victory's Army Base
west of Baghdad. His goal was to find out what senior military leaders were
thinking. He told me that he spent most of his time in the green zone as the
result of what he describes as a cease-fire agreement with his wife. After he
was nearly killed in an ambush in Iraq in 2004, his wife asked him not to go
back. The compromise they reached was that he'd stay in the protected,
walled-in green zone.

But from what I've been reading, it sounds like even the green zone isn't safe
anymore.

Mr. THOMAS RICKS: The Green Zone is extraordinarily safe compared to the
rest of Baghdad. I was there when some mortars and rockets were landing
outside, and the mortar is an--it's not as scary as a weapon as people think.
It has a fairly small lethal blast radius. And so we were sitting inside, we
sort of continued our conversation, and all the diplomats were getting kind of
frenzied. `We're being rocketed. We're being mortared.' And the soldiers
were kind of laughing, which is sort of, `Welcome to the war, fellas.' You
know? `This is what you put up with when you're out on any base anywhere in
Iraq all the time.' So I didn't feel particularly threatened.

The thing about the green zone that really struck me this time is I used to
hate going into the green zone because it was just a sea of nonsense. People
would sit there and blather and tell you about what's going on in Iraq. And I
use to get kind of shirty, which I don't like to do as a reporter. I remember
once saying to a general, `General, please go outside the green zone and walk
a mile in civilian clothes. You won't survive.' And he didn't believe me.

The tone of the green zone really has changed from the last time I was there,
which was in early 2006. It really is much more sober, much more realistic.
I think the officials there in their understanding of Iraq much more tolerant
of ambiguity. I remember a guy telling me in some of the discussions they're
having with insurgent leaders, `You don't need to endorse the American
position. You don't need to support us. All you need to do is agree to stop
killing Iraqi civilians, Iraqi security forces and American troops. Can you
do that?' And that's much more flexible position than they use to have.

GROSS: Well, one of the things that you reported from Iraq is that one of the
guiding principles for military officials in Iraq now is that the US should
leave Iraq more intelligently than it entered Iraq. So what kind of exit
strategy is that translating into?

Mr. RICKS: There's a huge focus on that issue right now in the green zone.
And I think their starting point is a real frustration with where the debate
is in in the United States at this point, a feeling that the debate on both
sides of the equation over the war back here has become quite sterile and not
really realistic. And what they're saying on the ground is, `Look, you're not
going to get out of Iraq overnight, nor can you continue at the current force
levels. There simply aren't enough American troops to continue the current
counteroffensive, the so-called surge, beyond March of next year.' So they're
saying, `We need to think about different courses of action.' And they want to
push the debate back here a bit so when the Congress starts debating Iraq
again in September, it gets beyond the `support the war or don't support the
war,' but talk seriously, whether or not you support the war, about what the
next step is, looking at the realities of the ground in Iraq and the region.
And so that's kind of where they're at, thinking about where we go in 2008 and
trying to get beyond what they see as the false dilemma of the all-or-nothing
debate back here.

GROSS: So what is there in between the all-or-nothing debate?

Mr. RICKS: Well, their beginning point is, `Even if the US Congress and the
president told us to leave Iraq, it would take us 12 to 18 months to do so
entirely.'

GROSS: Why?

Mr. RICKS: Because you'd have thousands of convoys, and you could only put
so many convoys on that one road down to Kuwait to get US troops and to get US
equipment out. I can't remember the exact number, but it was, you know, if
you did 30 convoys a day of 200 vehicles, which are large convoys, it would
take something like 10 months to get all US equipment out. So even if you
were told tomorrow morning to leave, it would take a long time.

The second point is, when they say, `Let's leave Iraq more intelligently than
we came in,' it's let's think seriously about consequences. Let's not just
plan according to American hopes and assumptions but actually dealing with the
realities of the situation. Can you cut deals with Iraqis in such a way that
even Iraqis who are against the occupation can somehow live with a smaller
American presence. There, when they talk about that, they're especially
thinking about Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, who I think in many
ways is the big winner in post-Saddam Iraq. Now, here's a guy who, two years
ago, was a declared enemy of the United States, whose Mahdi army killed many
US troops. And they're kind of quietly reaching out and saying, `We know you
don't like the occupation, but we bet you actually would like a US presence.
We could draw down the troop level so it doesn't feel like an occupation
anymore, but there's still going to be Sunni insurgents here who want to kill
you and stop your government, so wouldn't you like to have a residual US
presence?'

And so you begin with that point. OK, maybe a small combat force to guarantee
the security of what is necessarily going to be a Shiite government in
Baghdad. Ok, well, then they're going to need logistics forces, supply
forces. They're going to need a headquarters, command and control,
intelligence, communications. OK? And then you're going to have a training
and advisory force and you're going to need to be able to protect them in case
they get in trouble, either with insurgents or with security forces that
mutiny against them. And so you start talking about maybe a force of 40,000
troops. When you start talking about that, what they're really talking about
is a force for the next American president to say--whoever becomes president
in January 2009--`Here is what we think is a long term force for Iraq.'

GROSS: How long term?

Mr. RICKS: My personal bet--and I thought this when I was writing "Fiasco,"
is we're going to have combat troops in Iraq for 10 to 15 years.

GROSS: And what do the military leaders in Iraq who you spoke to think the
consequences would be if we did a complete pullout? Say it took a year to do
it, but if we did a complete US troop pullout, what would that mean?

Mr. RICKS: Their eyes get big at the thought. There's a consensus that you
probably would trigger a full-blown civil war in Iraq, which you don't have at
this point. What you have now is sort of a low-level chronic civil war. You
would have ethnic cleansing of a quite violent sort that would probably clean
all the Sunnis out of Baghdad and result in three armed camps: a Kurdish
armed camp, a Sunni armed camp and a Shiite armed camp. And effectively you
would have a regional civil war fought out in the streets of Baghdad and
around that city.

GROSS: But, you know, the attitude of some Americans is, `Well, we gave the
Iraqis a chance. You know, we liberated them, got rid of Saddam Hussein, and,
you know, helped them write a constitution, but they just have let everything
fall apart. They're fighting among each other. Their government is
nonfunctional. At this point it's their fault, and if they can't get it
together, why should we suffer? So let's pull out all of our troops.'

Mr. RICKS: Yeah. This is what I call "freakin' Iraqis." You know, we did
everything for them and what a bunch of ingrates. My feeling about that is a
little bit like amputating a guy's legs at the knees and then saying, `Look,
we gave you a new pair of sneakers. Why aren't you running any faster?' We
did a lot to mess up Iraq through inattention, through operating on false
assumptions and through a kind of official optimism that pervaded both the
Bush administration and the US military for several years. We've abandoned
most of that official optimism, at least among American officials on the
ground in Iraq.

Part of this new sobriety, I think, among American officials is recognizing
quite what a mess we created there. And so I think they're trying to also
express some moral responsibility that we have made allies of a lot of Iraqis,
and if you just walk out of there they are likely to be slaughtered.

Another problem is, if we make it clear we're leaving altogether, people are
going to need to establish their anti-US street cred. And one way they do
that is by attacking Americans. So you might seen an avalanche of
anti-American attacks among people who now need to establish that they really
have been anti-American all along.

GROSS: Now, you write that one argument for maintaining a small US combat
force in Iraq is to deter foreign intervention. And I was wondering like who
you were thinking of?

Mr. RICKS: Well, you already have a lot of foreign intervention in Iraq. In
some ways you are seeing the outlines of this region civil war already
occurring in the streets of Baghdad. There's a strong Iranian presence in
Iraq, especially in Baghdad and in the south. Other countries are also
players: Syria, Saudi Arabia. The Turks are being very demonstrative and
noisy about their unhappiness with Kurdish terrorists operating out of Iraq
and carrying out attacks on Turkish soil. And that's especially an
interesting problem because Turkey is a member of NATO and we are committed to
defend it. We also are committed to defending Iraq. And if Turkey defends
Iraq, we essentially have one ally attacking another one, and I'm not quite
sure where we wind up in that.

Where it's tactically very worrisome is some of the best Iraqi army forces on
the streets of Baghdad are actually Kurds, Peshmerga forces. And I think if
Kurdistan were attacked by the Turks, a lot of those Kurds, probably most of
them, would leave Baghdad and go home to defend their homeland. So a Turkish
attack up north, which the Turks say could happen at any time, could really
effect what General Petraeus is trying to do on the ground in Baghdad with his
security plan.

GROSS: My guest is Tom Ricks, the military corespondent for the Washington
Post and author of the best seller "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure
in Iraq." It will be published in paperback at the end of July. More after a
break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Tom Ricks. He's the military
correspondent for the Washington Post and author of the best seller "Fiasco:
The American Military Adventure in Iraq." And it comes out in paperback at the
end of July.

American forces have started a new offensive against al-Qaeda-in-Mesopotamia,
and that's a radical group. I'm going to ask you to explain who they are.
But what gets really confusing here is that in this new offensive against
al-Qaeda-in-Mesopotamia, we're working with Sunni groups that oppose this
group, but this group is a Sunni group, so it's--why don't you explain some of
the cast of characters here, because this is the kind of civil war that gets
really confusing. It's not like there's just two sides.

Mr. RICKS: The dividing lines in a lot of the Muslim world are between
tribal loyalties and religious beliefs. And frequently what you get is the
old-line social structure of tribalism being opposed by young firebrand
religious clerics. The Taliban, for example, in Afghanistan, in many ways,
are an anti-tribal force, even though they are based in one tribe, the
Pushtuns.

Likewise in Iraq, what you're seeing now is tribes saying, `We are really sick
of getting pushed around by al-Qaeda and we want to fight them.' At least
that's what they're telling the Americans. And to some degree they are. By
making Anbar province in the west of Iraq especially inhospitable to al-Qaeda,
they're forcing al-Qaeda-in-Iraq to move to other parts of the country,
especially what they call the belt around Baghdad, especially north of
Baghdad, west of Baghdad and northeast of Baghdad.

My worry about this is it's not clear to me what the motivations of some of
those tribal sheiks really are. I suspect that what some of the tribes are
doing is saying, `You know, Uncle Sam is probably serious about leaving Iraq
in some way, or at least getting out of being in the middle of this low-level
civil war. And so we better get some of that arming and training stuff that
the Shiites are getting because we're going to be facing a hostile Shiite
government at Baghdad.' And so this is a way for the tribes to arm themselves,
and also for the tribal militias to be legitimized by dealing with Uncle Sam.
And so in some ways what we think as an unalloyed good--tribes turning against
al-Qaeda--may simply be preparatory maneuvers for the full-blown civil war
that they see happening after we reduce our presence next year.

GROSS: What exactly are we doing for them? Training them, arming them?

Mr. RICKS: First of all, we're talking to them, which we didn't used to do.
We're tolerating them. We're allowing them to operate as long as they say
they're against al-Qaeda. For a long time we've been saying no armed
militias. They're illegitimate. The state must have a monopoly on the use of
violence in this country. We've essentially abandoned that position. And we
are now saying, `Knock yourselves out, fellas. If you want to fight al-Qaeda,
we'll help you out. We might arm you. We'll give you intelligence. We have
a lot of little UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles, operating overhead that can
give you good photographs.' And sometimes these militias are saying things
like, `Yeah, if we lead you to an arms cache, can we keep the arms?' And
sometimes the commanders say sure, as long as they're not heavy weapons. And
so these guys are getting some stuff they know about and arming themselves.

GROSS: So, in some ways, haven't we armed and trained various sides in what
is now a civil war?

Mr. RICKS: Yeah, we may very well have. This is a big bet that we're
placing right now is this won't all go sour on us, the letting the tribes
operate their militias. This is another thing that I think really
characterizes the American effort in Iraq right now as very different from the
last four years. There's a new mood of risk taking. As one general said to
me, `Again and again in Iraq we failed to make the tough choices over the last
four years. What we didn't recognize is when you don't make a touch choice,
somebody else makes it for you. So we pretended that we were a neutral entity
between the Sunnis and the Shiites, when really everybody knew that we
actually were enabling Shiites to take control of the country.'

Talking to the sheiks and letting their militias operate against al-Qaeda is
another form of risk taking. But when you take a risk, there's an upside and
a downside. The downside is, we are simply creating the conditions for a
really horrible civil war after we pull out from being in the middle of all of
this sometime next year.

GROSS: Are there dissidents in the military who think that this strategy
might pose the kind of problems that you're describing?

Mr. RICKS: Yeah. There's a lot of dissidents in the military. The
so-called surge, with the, basically, troop increase of about 28,000 troops
over the course of six months, there was a lot of dissent among generals about
this surge. Top generals opposed this, some of them, including Lieutenant
General Lute, who was just appointed the new war czar at the White House to
coordinate the war effort back here, said in his confirmation testimony that
he had real doubts about this counteroffensive.

What it really does is run counter to the US military view for the last four
years held by General Abizaid, who was the head of Central Command, held by
General Casey, the top general on the ground in Iraq, that US forces were a
negative presence in Iraqi society. That the friction caused by their simply
being seen encouraged anti-Americanism and pushed people toward supporting the
insurgency. That view has now been repudiated by General Petraeus, and he's
pushing troops off the big isolated bases and out into small combat outposts
across Baghdad. Last time I looked there were about 66 of these. They're
small. They're out in the neighborhoods. And, yes, they are vulnerable. I
think the insurgents would love to attack one of those outposts and destroy
the building and wipe out all the American troops inside it.

GROSS: Well, let's talk a little bit more about this new strategy of moving
troops off the large isolated bases and into smaller and, therefore, more
vulnerable outposts. The reason for that is so that the troops kind of mix
more with the people? Like, what is the larger philosophy?

Mr. RICKS: Well, if you go back to Mao, one of the great counterinsurgency
theorists--or insurgency theorists, in his case--he said `the gorilla swims in
the sea of the people.' And our problem was we weren't out in the sea of the
people at all. We essentially did patrols off these big bases. It would take
90 minutes to do wherever they're going to do the patrol. They do the patrol
for a couple of hours and then they go back to their big base and say, `Job
well done.'

What that meant is you were present in a neighborhood for 90 minutes out of 24
hours. And the other 22 1/2 hours of the day, the neighborhood was a wholly
owned subsidiary of the insurgency. What they're saying is, `Get your troops
out there. Make it so they have a feel for the ground. They know what normal
looks like. They know who's supposed to be there.' They start picking up
intelligence, especially when they work side by side with Iraqis who speak the
language and can talk to people. And somebody can say, `You know that car
over there? That came from Fallujah last night. That's not one of us.'

That's the theory. The amazing thing is the US military operated in Iraq for
four years while ignoring this key aspect of counterinsurgency theory that the
troops must be out among the people.

GROSS: Do you have any sense of how the soldiers feel about this, because
they're the ones who are going to be more vulnerable?

Mr. RICKS: Soldiers essentially are just trying to get through this thing.
What they're focused on is keeping them and their buddies alive and not
getting bombed. I think at this point they're willing to try it. Most of
them have the feeling that, `Look it, we tried everything else. It didn't
work. We might as well try this.' But with each tour, I do think that the
cynicism about it grows somewhat. One tone I've picked up recently that has
surprised me is the feeling of some soldiers--and I think it's still a
minority feeling--of being a pawn of American politics. `What exactly are we
doing here? Why are we doing this? Why is everything we're doing seemingly
linked to the presidential election in 2008?'

GROSS: So you're getting this kind of reaction more than never before that
it's politically motivated?

Mr. RICKS: Yeah. It's still distinctly, I think, a minority feeling.
Morale, I think, continues to be surprising high, given what a long difficult
war this is. But I think there is a little bit more of a ground down feeling
I'm seeing among troops on their third tours in Iraq. And even the most
optimistic officials in Baghdad are certainly not saying this thing is going
to work. They're saying it's worth a risk. Let's take a gamble. Let's try
it. But I remember one official saying to me, `Look, Tom, you're asking a lot
of question.' He said, `I can summarize this whole thing for you in 10 words.'
And I said, `OK.' And he said, `Bottom line: right people, right strategy,
too little too late.'

GROSS: Tom Ricks is the military correspondent for the Washington Post and
the author of the best seller "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in
Iraq." He'll be back in the second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross, and
this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Tom Ricks, the military
correspondent for the Washington Post and author of the best seller "Fiasco:
The American Military Adventure in Iraq," which will be published in paperback
at the end of July. We've been talking about his latest trip to Iraq at the
end of May during which he interviewed military leaders about possible exit
strategies.

What's up with surge? This was a controversial strategy, but it was put into
effect, and now the news reports seem to be preparing us for a final report to
say, `Well, it didn't work.'

Mr. RICKS: I think what you're getting out of General Petraeus and Ryan
Crocker, the US ambassador in Iraq, is, `Look, fellas, we're not going to come
back when we're scheduled to testify before the US Congress in September.
We're not going to come back and tell you it's working or it's not working.
What we'll tell you is, "Here's what we think we've done, and now you need to
tell us where you want to go." And if you want to pull out, we can start
talking about that. If you want to design a long term presence, we can talk
about that.' But what they want to push the US Congress into doing, I think,
is debating the consequences of each of these possible courses of action.
They don't want a debate about why we're in Iraq anymore. They're willing to
concede, `Look, it was really badly done, a lot of this. But we're here now
and we're trying to figure out where we go from here. And you guys need to
think about that as well in a realistic way.' And I think they'll kind of push
the burden of the debate back onto Congress rather than try to lay down
solutions or defend the administration position.

In many ways, what they're trying to do, I think, is push this debate beyond a
President Bush popularity poll, which is where it seems to be stuck now. `I'm
pro-Bush, I'm pro-the war.' `I'm anti-Bush, I'm anti-the war.' What they want
is to say, `Look, Bush is almost becoming irrelevant to this equation. The
next president is going to have to start making decisions. Let's start
talking about those.'

GROSS: Peter Pace recently stepped down as the head of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff. What are some of the ways you've seen the military leadership change
since Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned? Like, what are some of the
differences that you see in the new leadership?

Mr. RICKS: Personally, what I've been kind of struck by is the number of
guys who sidle up to me and say, `Hey, Tom, really liked that book "Fiasco."'
You know, I was kind of persona non grata under the Rumsfeld regime.

GROSS: Uh-huh.

Mr. RICKS: It's my understanding that I was banned from his plane for
travel. When I signed up for Secretary Gates' first trip overseas when he
took office last December, the clerk said to me, `Have you ever been traveling
with the secretary of defense?' And I said, `Well, yeah, about 30 times.' And
they said, `Sir, we have no information on you in our computers,' which meant
that all the information on me--you know, date of birth and Social Security
and so on--had all been cleansed out of the official computer. I had become
like a nonperson. So I'm a person again, which is nice.

GROSS: So the way you're describing it now that Rumsfeld's out and there's a
new military leadership, a lot of these guys have not only read your book,
they like your book "Fiasco," which draws a terrible picture of how we handled
Iraq. So where is Vice President Cheney in his relationship with this new
military leadership that is critical of how we entered Iraq and wants to make
sure we do a better job when we exit?

Mr. RICKS: I wish I could do an imitation of Cheney like Jon Stewart does,
that sort of curled lip, because that's the impression I have of Cheney at
this point. You know, `What's going on with those generals over there, why
are they all so critical?' You know, `What's the problem there? Can't
somebody crack the whip here?'

I think the generals are kind of feeling at the Pentagon now like they have
adult leadership for the first time in several years. Gates is a low key man
who listens a lot to people, who asks questions carefully without showing his
hand, you know, without asking questions in such a way that it drives the
answer. I think he's very adept bureaucratically, but also can be quite cold
blooded in making decisions when he needs to.

I mean, I was struck when he made the calculation that renominating General
Pace as chairman of the Joint Chiefs for another two year term would be
difficult. He basically cut Pace loose very quickly. This was an
extraordinary thing. This had never happened before. The two top officers in
the US military were effectively fired by Secretary Gates, but he did it in
such a way, clearly, soberly, and I think fairly transparently that he made it
into a one day story, which was quite artful. I actually thought this would
be a bigger story than it was. Firing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and
the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs simultaneously, who really were the last
remnants of the Rumsfeld regime at the Pentagon. So I think Gates has shown
an ability to listen but also a strong hand, which is a combination the US
military really likes to have in civilian leaders at the top.

GROSS: Mm-hmm. Now, there was an article in the June edition of The Atlantic
magazine called "The Army We Have." This is an article about how the Army has
basically lowered its standards for enlisting and made basic training easier
because there's so few--there's relatively few people who want to join the
Army now. You've been covering the military for years and you wrote a book
all about the military, and what are your impressions? Do you think that the
military has lowered its standards in order to get more recruits in?

Mr. RICKS: I think there's no question that the Army has lowered its
standards somewhat. The standards remain fairly high. They're nothing like
they were in the late '70s when they really were taking anybody and people
they knew were going to cause problems for them. The standards have gone down
a bit.

Oddly, where I pick up a lot of concern is not about boot camp. You know,
questions about whether boot camp is hard enough will be with us always.
There's an old joke about the Marine Corps, that the first guy joined the
Marine Corps actually in Philadelphia in Tun's Tavern in 1775, and then when
the second guy joined the first guy said, `Well, it's not like the old Corps.'
So there's always those questions.

The real concern I'm picking up in the US military right now is about seasoned
sergeants, what you call NCOs, guys who have eight to 12 years in. And
especially once you've got 12 years, it's fairly easy to do the next eight and
then retire with a full pension at 20 years. Now, if you join the military
at, say, 19, that means you're on full retirement pay at 39 and you can begin
another career. A lot of guys are saying, `I'm not going to stick around for
that. I've done, say, 10 years in. My wife has said it's either the Army or
me, that I got to make a choice here. I'm on my third deployment to Iraq in
the last five years. I'm getting out.'

Likewise, I picked up a lot of concern in Iraq on this trip about captains
leaving, especially good, smart, experienced captains who have good job
prospects in the outside world. I've been struck recently by the number of
Iraq veterans I've come across who are now going to Harvard Business School.
I think Harvard Business School has a real inclination to take in these people
who have really been through a crucible of the spirit, are 29 years old, have
led troops in combat, and are now saying, `You know, I'd like to take my
leadership skills and my knowledge of my own self and apply them in the
business world.' So while that may be good for American business, and I think
it will be good to see more veterans go into politics, it's a huge concern
right now, this exodus of captains and sergeants.

GROSS: Later in our show today we're going to be hearing from Stephen
Benjamin, who was a translator in the Army translating Arabic. He was based
in the States, but translating information from Arabic and passing that on to
troops in Iraq. He was discharged from the military because he had written in
an e-mail or in a group of e-mails about being gay. And the military
leadership found that and because of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy they
discharged him. So I guess my question to you is what are your impressions of
how the military leadership feels now about don't ask, don't tell? Do they
feel that it's working? Do they feel that it's worth losing the like 58 gay
translators that have been discharged?

Mr. RICKS: Well, remember, it's a huge US military, so 58 to them is an
insignificant number. I think the military generally feels that don't ask,
don't tell is a good workable compromise that the bureaucracy especially feels
comfortable with. Clearly the people getting out, or being kicked not, do not
feel comfortable with it, feel that there's no reason why they should not be
allowed to express themselves, especially if they follow military discipline
in all other respects, like not fraternizing and so on.

My concern is this: The best way to counter a roadside bomb--and that's the
thing that causes most of our casualties in Iraq--the best way to counter a
roadside bomb is not some high technology electronic jammer or overhead
aircraft. The best way to counter a bomb is to speak Arabic, to be able to
listen to people. Maybe they say it directly to you, maybe they say it to
each other as you're walking by. Maybe they say, `Boy, those troops are
headed straight for that bomb that guy just planted.' It would be nice to be
able to hear that. Well, American troops don't speak Arabic. By kicking out
people who speak Arabic, I think that some American casualties have directly
resulted from that action. If we have more people on the ground who speak
Arabic, you are going to save more American lives.

The second thing that really bothers me about this is, you hear people say,
`Well, maybe we should change the policy. But it's the wrong time to change
the policy. You don't change the policy in the middle of a war.' Well, that's
just historically ignorant. The times when US policies change tend to be in
the middle of the war when manpower is most needed. So, for example, it was
during the Korean War under Harry Truman when you had large scale integration
of black troops out of segregated units in across the Army. And everybody now
agrees that was the right thing to do. It's war time when policies tend to
change, when you tend to get the most radical shifts in how we view gender,
sexuality and racial issues in the military.

GROSS: When the United States went into Iraq, we were prepared--you know, our
government prepared us for democracy in Iraq, we'd be liberators, democracy
would spread. And clearly, I mean, everybody agrees that scenario hasn't
happened. You know, we've been talking during this interview about what the
military thinks the strategy should be, what the kinds of things they're
thinking of for the next few years. And they're thinking of an American
military presence that would remain in Iraq for the next few years. What do
you think is the best outcome we can hope for now in Iraq?

Mr. RICKS: Iraq right now is essentially a failed state, and one we helped
create. Arguably, a failed state under Saddam Hussein, but I think unarguably
more of a failed state now. So what you can hope for, probably, is a lower
level of violence. You're not going to get rid of it altogether. And Iraqis
not reconciling, because I don't think that's going to happen, but at least
accommodating each other, learning to live with each other.

But this goes back to the risk taking I was talking about earlier. We are
preaching to Iraqis that you must somehow find a way of living with each
other. But when I ask American generals about amnesties for insurgents who
have killed American troops, their eyes get big and they say, `No, I'd have a
very hard time with that.' Well, the fact of history is that insurgencies
usually end with some sort of amnesty declaration. And so we're probably
going to have to start practicing what we've been preaching to the Iraqis,
which is swallowing hard and saying, `Yes, insurgents who have killed American
troops are going to be covered by this amnesty declaration.' And that's going
to be a very tough hurdle for Americans, the American public to jump, but
especially for American commanders who feel a sense of responsibility for
their troops.

GROSS: Tom Ricks, thanks so much for talking with us. It's really always
good to talk with you. I really appreciate it, thanks.

Mr. RICKS: Thank you. I love your show.

GROSS: Tom Ricks is the military correspondent for the Washington Post and
the author of the best seller "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in
Iraq." It will be published in paperback at the end of July.

Coming up, Stephen Benjamin, an Arabic translator for the Navy who was
discharged because he's gay. This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Stephen Benjamin talks about being discharged from
the Navy because he's gay
TERRY GROSS, host:

There's a shortage of military translators who know Arabic. One of the
translators who is fluent in Arabic was discharged from the military in March
because he's gay. Stephen Benjamin was a petty officer second class in the
Navy, stationed in Fort Gordon, Georgia. He attended the Defense Language
Institute, graduated in the top 10 percent of his class, and spent two years
in the Navy as an Arabic translator. He violated "don't ask, don't tell" by
instant messaging his former roommate who is also gay and was stationed in
Iraq. The message, which made reference to their sexual orientation, was on
the military's chat system. The system is monitored on government computers
and randomly checked. After their message was read by inspectors, Benjamin
was given an honorable discharge. His former roommate was allowed to finish
his tour in Iraq before getting his honorable discharge.

Now, you were an interpreter of Arabic. You know, I've read that there's a
shortage of Arabic interpreters. What could you say about that shortage from
your perspective as a former interpreter?

Mr. STEPHEN BENJAMIN: There's definitely a huge shortage of Arabic
linguists. I mean, pretty much everywhere in the military it's incredibly
useful to have someone who speaks Arabic out with units in Iraq. But
generally they don't have someone. If they do, a lot of times it's a civilian
contractor--who, incidentally, are allowed to be gay, even though they're in a
combat zone because they're civilians. The military contracts out a lot of
that, also to Iraqi natives. But it's really hard finding people that they
can trust, people that can hold a security clearance. And there are people
that can do the language work they need to. For Americans, it's really hard
to learn a language. The Defense Language Institute has a pretty high
attrition rate in the more difficult languages like Korean, Chinese, Arabic.

And then a lot of people just, you know, barely make the minimum scores, so
when they go out to their jobs they might not be as effective as people who
have higher language scores and higher language abilities. Condoleezza Rice
came out a few months ago and was saying how much of a shortage the State
Department has for Arabic linguists. It's government-wide. We don't have
enough people to speak the language.

GROSS: Do you think the military felt forced to discharge you because once
your message was read and once you'd kind of outed yourself, do you think they
felt like they had no choice?

Mr. BENJAMIN: I do think that. I know that at least, at the local level
with my immediate superiors, nobody really wanted to lose me. And I know that
at even higher levels of my command, I really don't think that, you know, this
was the kind of thing that they wanted to be spending their time on. They
didn't want to lose a sailor for a reason that's just, you know, not really
legitimate. You have people that kicked out of the military for doing drugs
or get DUIs or can't meet the physical fitness standards. And then here they
are kicking out two perfectly good Arabic translators without any disciplinary
problems in the past, they meet all the standards and, you know, they're
forced to kick us out.

GROSS: I'm wondering why you even joined the military knowing that you were
expected to be closeted and that the military didn't really want gay people,
if you interpret this policy at face value?

Mr. BENJAMIN: I already spoke languages. I took Spanish for six years. And
after I graduated high school, I really didn't know what I wanted to do with
my life, and, you know, I knew that the military had just a huge shortage of
translators so it seemed like a pretty good deal. I get to serve my country,
they pay for me to go to school, and I get to learn something that I probably
wouldn't be able to learn as fluently or as well in the civilian world. So
the don't ask, don't tell didn't really play into my decision. I didn't
understand the policy completely when I joined. I thought it was, `Hey,
you're not going to tell us and we're not going to ask, and we'll just leave
it at that.' We're not going to teach you unless you come up to us and write a
letter that says, `Hey, I'm gay, kick me out.' And that's kind of...

GROSS: You kind of did write a letter saying, `Hey, I'm gay.' You wrote an
e-mail.

Mr. BENJAMIN: Effectively, but not with the intention of getting kicked out.

GROSS: I see. Uh-huh.

Mr. BENJAMIN: It's really hard to hide a personal life to people you spend
your entire work day with and then you go out to drink with. Everyone ends up
finding out eventually. It's just unfortunate that the wrong people found
out.

GROSS: So in terms of don't ask, don't tell, how "don't tell" were you?

Mr. BENJAMIN: As far as don't tell, when I first joined, I was pretty
paranoid. I just didn't tell anyone, I kept to myself. And then once I
finally got to Georgia, which was my duty station after my training, I met a
lot more gay people and I met a lot--just a lot of friends. And, you know, we
all hung out together, and it's kind of hard to hide that. And it was never a
big deal. No one ever cared. So I guess I kind of just fell into that and
just got lax with, you know, which people I told or which people--I didn't
guard myself as much.

GROSS: Obviously you want to get the don't ask, don't tell policy changed,
and you'd like to see gays accepted on an equal footing in the military. What
do you think it would take to change the policy?

Mr. BENJAMIN: I think there's plenty of support in Congress right now.
There's 126 co-sponsors on a bill that's pretty much sat untouched for two
years, basically because the chairman of the Armed Services Committee won't
bring it to hearing. But a lot of that is because Congress defers to the
military on military matters, I mean, which makes sense. A Harvard Law
graduate isn't really going to know too much about the actual logistics of
running a war.

So I think it's going to take people like Admiral Mullen, when he takes over
as chairman of the Joint Chiefs and other chiefs of the services to come out
and say, `Hey, we can make this work.' And I think then they need to talk to
the troops actually on the ground, because the vast majority of them are
comfortable serving with gays. And things are a lot different than they were
in 1994. Once that happens, I think Congress will be a lot more open to
passing law to repeal don't ask, don't tell.

GROSS: If you weren't discharged because the military discovered you were
gay, would you have wanted to continued to serve?

Mr. BENJAMIN: I would have finished my enlistment. I was getting ready to
re-enlist as well for another four years. I'm not sure if I would have stayed
in past that. I think that if the policy stayed in effect, it's really taxing
to be gay for many, many years in the military. I would imagine most gay
people who don't get kicked out don't usually re-enlist. So that's another
huge number of people that the military's losing every year because of this
policy that goes uncounted.

GROSS: My guest is Stephen Benjamin. He was an Arabic translator in the
Navy. He was discharged from the Navy in March because he's gay. More after
a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: My guest is Stephen Benjamin. He was an Arabic translator in the
Navy. He was discharged in March because he's gay. He was outed when he used
the military's instant messaging system to chat with his former roommate who's
also gay and was stationed in Iraq. The messaging system is monitored by the
military and randomly checked.

Now, the way you've described it, you were a part of a circle of gay people
where you were stationed who hung out together. And you kept each other
secret. So now that you're out, does that mean they've been outed, too? Do
you know what I mean? Does it become clear that they're gay because you were
part of that circle, and are they worried now about getting discharged
themselves?

Mr. BENJAMIN: The group I was in was kind of interesting because most of us
were out to our peers and our officers for the most part. And there are
plenty of street people in our group as well. So I don't necessarily think an
association with me means, `Oh, hey, that person might be gay.' But rumors
aren't enough under the policy, usually, to kick someone out. I mean, that's
not really stopping someone's command from going to check out their MySpace
profile to see who their friends are or, you know, just starting an impromptu
kind of under-the-table investigation. But I don't really see that happening
because for the most part, the senior leadership don't want to kick people out
under this policy. But they're still kicking out two or three a day
military-wide because they're forced to.

GROSS: Is there a whole code that gay people speak in the military so they
can talk about being gay without using the word gay, and without therefore
violating policy in an overt way?

Mr. BENJAMIN: Yeah, actually. We use the word family to describe ourselves.
`Is he family?' That kind of thing. It's kind of amusing, because we really
were family. I mean, they're some of the closest people--some of the closest
relationships I ever had were in the military.

GROSS: Were you screened in any way for homosexuality when you joined the
military? Are you asked if you're straight or gay?

Mr. BENJAMIN: The law, actually--the "don't ask" part of that law, the only
point...

GROSS: Oh, of course, they can't ask. Right.

Mr. BENJAMIN: They can actually ask. The only thing the law prohibits is
they can't ask when you're recruited. The only thing you're handed is a
statement, it's mixed in with a whole bunch of other recruiting documents, and
it just says `I understand our military's policy of homosexuals,' and you just
put a little X by it.

GROSS: I don't know if your parents are alive, but if they are, were you out
to them when all of this happened with the military?

Mr. BENJAMIN: I was not. I was not out to them before I got kicked out.

GROSS: What a way to be outed to your parents.

Mr. BENJAMIN: I did tell them before the first media stories hit. I talked
to them about it.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. BENJAMIN: And they're adjusting pretty well. But it's definitely a lot
to drop on them. `Hey, I'm not in the military, and by the way I'm gay.'
That's kind of a huge thing to drop on someone. And by the way, watch me on
CNN next week. You know, that's, you know...

GROSS: But they're handling that OK?

Mr. BENJAMIN: They're handling it OK. You know, now they're like, `Oh, let
us know when you're going to be on TV again,' or, `Hey, you're in the
newspaper this week.'

GROSS: Why did you feel like you couldn't tell them before?

Mr. BENJAMIN: I grew up as a conservative evangelical. My parents are, as
well. So I was told my whole life that being gay was wrong and I struggled
with that for a long time. Especially when they tell you you can change and,
you know, a decade later I realized that's not going to happen. But it was
still difficult to tell them because I knew what they believed, and I really
didn't want to challenge their beliefs. It took me a long time to realize who
I was. And I didn't want to think about what it would take, or what they
would be feeling when I told them.

GROSS: You know, it must be hard to go from a climate where you're brought up
thinking that homosexuality is really bad and that it's within your power to
become straight, and then to decide that you disagree with that. But then you
end up in the military where, you know, the climate is, `Well, if you're gay
don't let us know because if you let us know you're out of here.' I mean,
again, it's such a kind of anti-gay ethos.

Mr. BENJAMIN: It was--it actually wasn't that difficult because I wasn't
changed from what I was used to. I really didn't come out until after I
joined the military. I was still pretty closeted beforehand, only a few
friends knew. So it really wasn't a huge change in the way, you know, I went
about my life because I was closeted when I was outed--before I was in the
military. And then I just stayed there.

GROSS: So this really is a big change for you now, huh?

Mr. BENJAMIN: It is a pretty huge change. It's hard getting used to all the
attention and knowing that I'm out to everyone. Pretty much, you know, it's
really--type my name, it's a google. The first couple of words that come up,
you know, it's obvious I'm gay for the rest of my life, and it follows me.
But I think I made the right decision, and I think--I really hope I'm making a
difference at least in changing some minds out there.

GROSS: Well, Stephen Benjamin, than you very much.

Mr. BENJAMIN: All right. Thank you.

GROSS: Stephen Benjamin worked in the Navy as an Arabic translator before
being honorably discharged in March because he's gay.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
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