Ben Brody’s Photo Blog

This day is much like I pictured it would be, five years ago. Hot and dusty, my blood still boiling from the countless threats and fights and little triumphs and little defeats, as the war slides into nameless hostile oblivion like little wars so often do.

My mind reaches back to my original purposes for becoming a soldier, which was to learn something of the forces that continually shape our world. I’ve learned a great deal about guerilla warfare, small-unit tactics and the nature of fighting men, though I clearly still have much to learn about the larger cycles of war and peace in a bewilderingly complex world.

Photography has ever been a means to an end for me, driving me toward a continuous stream of fascinating events and forcing me to pay close attention. In my mind, if I’m not out photographing, I’m not living. And though I feel I’ve reached the practical limit of the living I can do in the army, I’m grateful for the many opportunities I’ve had to get out where the air is heavy with lead, operate on my own terms and learn on an unforgiving road. Though my motivation has often been for my own education, I certainly hope I’ve done right by the soldiers on the burning streets, in the deadly alleys, in the trackless desert, in the soggy stinking marshes.

The sheikhs run the Sons of Iraq, the program where the US military pays local men a monthly salary to set up traffic checkpoints and generally make life difficult for foreign fighters and the militias.

It’s been very successful against the foreign-led al-Qaeda in Iraq, less so against the homegrown militias.  Many of the SoI volunteers and leaders are militia members themselves.  But as long as their neighborhoods are reasonably safe, no one cares what membership cards they have in their wallets.

This harmony was upset in Abu Jassim recently when sophisticated IEDs started appearing on the streets.  Several soldiers were wounded by them.  One was pulled off life support last night.  So the SoIs aren’t doing their jobs so well.  But with the Shiite bloodbath only five miles away, it’s not a good idea to scrap the tiny village’s only semblance of a security force.

So we came, we yelled, we cut their pay, we arrested a couple of the militia-affiliated ones who probably had a hand in the bombings.  There were a lot of kids around watching this weird scene.  What a way to learn about the world.