Newport veterans reflect on service, society and the legacy of the Iraq War
NEWPORT – The Iraq war began 20 years ago, and officially ended in December 2011 when American troops lowered the flag of command that flew over Baghdad. While many Americans have forgotten about the war or simply moved on, the veterans who served there generally seem to think it is worth reflecting on and remembering.
All of the veterans quoted in this article now call Newport home, and all are members of Newport VFW Post 406. They all came to the decision to serve in the US military for different reasons and from different backgrounds, and they all walk different paths in life now, but they share the common bond of having once put their lives on the line for their country in the Iraq War, and they all carry that experience with them in civilian life.
With a recent survey by The Veterans and Citizens Initiative showing the majority of Americans either do not know any Iraq War veterans or have never spoken to an Iraq War veteran about their service experience, The Newport Daily News decided to speak with local veterans about the legacy of Operation Iraqi Freedom and what it means to them to serve their country in the military and participate in their society as civilians after service.
Crystal Arel, Newport police officer
Crystal Arel is a Newport police officer now, but in July of 1999 she was a 17-year-old getting ready to leave her hometown of Warren and head to basic training at Fort Gordon, a U.S. Army base in Georgia. That in itself was a huge cultural experience in a completely new environment, but she had no idea that only four years later she would be riding through the desert in an armored convoy from Kuwait to Baghdad in the opening months of the war. That dusty ride turned out to be the start of a decades-long journey marked by tenacity and hard work on the way to becoming the first female officer on the Newport Police Department’s Special Response Team.
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Reflecting on the value of conversations with civilians and with other veterans about the war, she said:
“Sometimes (talking about it) stirs up things you don’t really want to stir up. How do I feel about it? To be honest with you, I don’t know. I can’t answer that question. I don’t know if it was good, I don’t know if it was bad. I don’t know if we did something good for them. I want to think that. I want to think that if we didn’t go over there life would have been 100 times worse for them, but it’s something that I will actually never know.”
Anselm Richards, field studies program coordinator at US Naval War College
Anselm Richards, now the field studies program coordinator at the US Naval War College, is originally from Philadelphia but grew up summering in Newport and graduated from Salve Regina University. Before marrying his college sweetheart and moving to Newport permanently, Richards enlisted with the historic First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry of the Pennsylvania National Guard, one of the oldest military units in the country. He served as a platoon leader in the Iraqi city of Ramadi from June 2005 to June 2006, taking part in intense combat on a near-daily basis in what many at that time considered to be the most dangerous place on earth.
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“Could the message be any more loud and clear that we as an American people need to serve?” Richards asked rhetorically. “We need to give back to our country, we need to give back to our society in whatever capacity we see or feel that. It doesn’t have to be with a gun and a uniform; it could be to go work at a voting station or go give blood – the idea of giving back of oneself to the betterment of a society, I would argue, is almost forgotten about.”
Dan Cormier, US Naval War College professor
Dan Cormier, who in addition to teaching courses at the Naval War College also works as the senior instructional design manager at Newport’s Naval Leadership & Ethics Center, served three tours in Iraq and eventually retired as a colonel with the Army's 1st battalion, 30th infantry unit before starting his academic career.
Befitting a man who would go on to get his master’s degree in international relations and his Ph.D. in diplomatic history, Cormier experienced a variety of temporal, geographic and geopolitical settings during his service in Iraq; he served as the operations officer for a battalion stationed in Fallujah during his first tour shortly after the fall of Baghdad, then as the operations officer for an entire brigade in Baghdad during his second tour. In his third tour, Cormier was ranked Lieutenant Colonel and led the first battalion of the 30th infantry unit for the duration of its deployment from December 2009 until October 2010 in the oil-rich and ethnically diverse city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq.
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"I wouldn’t want to take anything away from those soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen who served honorably, courageously, and demonstrated discipline and heroism; to me that is still a valid viewpoint. At that level that’s all you can do – you serve your country honorably and hope your senior leaders are doing the right things,” said Cormier.
“But I think at the strategic level certainly, I don’t know how you can think of it as a success,” he continued. “I think what we have done is basically broken Iraqi governance into sectarian factions; we have opened the door for Iran and China to gain more influence in the region. I think part of that is because our approach was flawed. It wasn’t inevitable it had to turn out that way; we had a clear misunderstanding of sociopolitical realities of Iraq and the region and we tried to force some American model into that region that was not ready for it.”
Paul Radion, project manager at Mantis Innovation
Paul Radion, who now works for a company focused on energy efficiency solutions for large facilities, retired as a captain in the Army’s 2nd brigade, 1st armored division in 2009 and has lived with his wife in Newport ever since. Radion, who grew up in Woonsocket, is a third-generation veteran on both sides of his family – his father was a Vietnam veteran, his mother served in the Army Reserves and both of his grandfathers served in World War II.
Radion enlisted in the army after receiving his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering at URI, got stationed as an officer in Baumholder, Germany and completed two tours in Iraq. In November 2005 he deployed to Kuwait, spending about six months there before a Shia Muslim mosque in the southern Iraqi city of Samarra was blown up, unleashing a tidal wave of sectarian violence. His brigade was subsequently distributed through Baghdad and Mosul, and he spent six months conducting operations across the city of Baghdad. In his second tour, from April 2008 to May 2009, his brigade was spread across a wide area of Iraq as they took over for multiple units and started preparing the transition of responsibilities to Iraqi troops.
Radion reminisced about eating lunch with his aging father, who at the time was undergoing chemotherapy for cancer which originated during his service in Vietnam, when he was 24 years old and preparing to enlist in the Army. It was 2003, and people across the street from the restaurant were protesting against the invasion of Iraq. The memory has stuck with him through all of these years. When asked about his thoughts on those protestors now as a 45-year-old veteran looking back after two tours in Iraq, he said:
“It’s tough for me to go ahead and see it, but I appreciate (the right to protest) and it’s an essential part of being an American. That is something that is a freedom of speech, a form of discourse, in order to determine what the country is going to do. A simpler example I keep in mind is when I see somebody burning the American flag, I abhor it; I hate it. I absolutely hate it. The only thing I can do is say hey, I went to war, I served in the military to enable that person to do that. And as much as I disagree sometimes with things I hear and see, it is essential that those voices be allowed to be as loud as they want to be, and my hope is that they are as factually based as possible.”
This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: Iraq War 20th anniversary: Newport veterans reflect on service
