Army captain learns hard truth about money and war - Entertainment, Books - Navy Times

Army captain learns hard truth about money and war

Money can’t buy happiness, and in Baghdad, Army Capt. Jason Whiteley learns money can’t buy peace, either. Or peace of mind.

Whiteley’s “Misfits” company of the 1-8 Cavalry Regiment was the focus of PBS Frontline’s “A Company of Soldiers,” which aired in 2005 with the slogan, “the final battle for Iraq will be won or lost in places like this and by soldiers like these.”

Soldiers such as these have little chance to win in the long run. Why not? While viewers watch “Frontline,” Whiteley watches “the evolution of a tangled web of alliances based on power, opportunity and survival.” Whiteley drifts “down the path of bribery and corruption that seemed endemic.”

As governance officer in Al Dora district, he is christened “Abu Floos,” the Father of Money, and the West Pointer finds life “outside the Green Zone was run by a feudal system of money and power.”

Feudal and familiar. “Watching Tony Soprano control his crime family with violence and coercion” on a newly arrived TV set, he sees similarities. “We had our family there — the army — and across the street the Iraqis had their families, their tribes ...

“While we were using money and occasionally violence, the other families were using violence and religion.”

At deployment’s end he believes “the American way of councils and contracts had provided a year of reassuring headlines to the American public but a lifetime of heartache to the people of Iraq.”

Americans see heartache, of course. Spc. Travis Babbitt “died well — fighting a soldier’s battle, while saving the lives of others,” and the account of one evening’s grieving process is memorable.

Whiteley receives other bad news the same night: “Car bomb for Captain Whiteley is ready” is written on a piece of paper carried by a former Al Dora council member. “I thought I had gained the upper hand in this fight for loyalty. I was wrong.” Dishonesty continues to devastate the young officer’s ideals.

But all is not anguish: At an Iraqi-hosted party in a former Saddam palace, Whiteley’s commander requests help in providing a soldier with a “manly experience.” Fortuitously, “enterprising young ladies” are supplied by the hosts, and Whiteley plays matchmaker.

The party ends abruptly with threats from Sunni loyalists outside. The ladies leave quickly, “dressed as religious women, in black from head to toe, except for a piece of torn red lace dragging from behind one of the girls.”

J. Ford Huffman is a Military Times book reviewer.