Author Karl Zinsmeister, on his way to visit the Fayetteville home of new friends he made as an embedded reporter in Iraq, spoke at a John Locke Foundation luncheon last week in Raleigh.
Zinsmeister, editor-in-chief of The American Enterprise magazine, traveled most of March and April this year with troops of the 82nd Airborne Division, away from his family in upstate New York. He emerged from his trip with an appreciation for the sacrifices made by the U.S. military, which he documented in his new book, Boots on the Ground: A Month with the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq.
“I spent this spring on vacation in the Middle East,” Zinsmeister told the audience in Raleigh before heading to Fort Bragg for an event there. “It was one of the most tremendous and inspirational things I’ve done in my life, and that’s because of these guys.”
“These guys” were the hundreds of soldiers Zinsmeister traveled with in Kuwait and Iraq. Unlike many embedded reporters who stayed with their assigned troops during major combat operations, Zinsmeister moved around.
Assigned to a helicopter battalion, Zinsmeister quickly realized that if he were to experience combat, he would need to stick with ground troops. He used military convoys that delivered food and supplies as a “taxi service,” which afforded him freedom of movement.
“I saw whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted,” he said, adding that the reporters who complained about limited mobility had only themselves to blame. Zinsmeister said that embedded media was “not led by their nose” by the military.
Zinsmeister’s freedom enabled him to witness a broad sampling of Army operations, including the planning of raids, house-to-house searches, urban assault, the enemy’s unethical fighting tactics, and medical operations on injured soldiers.
He was even privy to internal disagreements, such as one in which a chaplain and a chief medical officer argued over the recovery of bodies. Zinsmeister said that while the troops exhibited strict discipline, such disputes were allowed to unfold until the best argument won. The strife exemplified the difficulty of making life-or-death decisions on the battlefield, he said.
“There is no easy answer,” Zinsmeister said. “You just wrestle.”
The war often tested soldiers’ ability to make clear moral choices, such as when the enemy often hid behind women and children or barricaded themselves in hospitals and schools.
“The price of a mistake here is serious,” Zinsmeister said. “It was very difficult work to sift and sort.”
He came away impressed by the Army’s ability, by necessity, to improvise combat operations while minimizing collateral casualties. Most soldiers maintained an idealistic view and reminded themselves often of the reason they were in Iraq, he said. “I Love NY” and “NYPD” emblems were frequently visible on vehicles and apparel.
“They do think in bigger, grander terms,” Zinsmeister said.
Disappointed with much of the current American reporting on operations in Iraq, Zinsmeister praised the military for tremendous progress in a short period of time.
“It’s only been about six months,” he said. “They didn’t think six months after combat that it would be soccer games with the Fedayeen.”
Chesser is an associate editor at Carolina Journal.