Mid-East Meets Midwest

Three Iraqi cattle herders were killed today after wandering into the middle of a U.S.-Iraqi mortar training exercise north of Baghdad.

U.S. troops were conducting a live-fire training exercise with Iraqi forces near Taji, a city about 12 miles north of Baghdad, when the three men walked onto the artillery range, a military spokesman said. An 11-year-old boy was also injured in the incident.  He was evacuated to a U.S. military hospital where he is in stable condition.

The incident comes as the U.S. military shifts its primary role in Iraq from combat to training Iraqi security forces with exercises like these.

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The American government is now paying for skydiving lessons. And paint ball.

In what could be seen as reverse logic, the U.S. Army is hoping an adrenaline rush will help vets calm down.

With a wave of soldiers returning home from Iraq with mental health disorders and this problem has the military searching for new ways to supplement and redefine its counseling and self-awareness evaluation programs. Beyond your typical therapy, the Army is hoping thrilling terror of war home through safe outlets through a new program called “Warrior Adventure Quest.”

Warrior Adventure Quest sends soldiers just home from war on outings of paintball, mountain biking, scuba diving, sky diving, whitewater rafting, alpine skiing, snowboarding and rock climbing in hopes of overcoming the “Rambo Syndrome”– the emotional need for some of the tension and fear-tinged excitement of combat.

Army officials say they’ve learned that soldiers who are used to life in a war zone suddenly find life at home to be moving at a glacial pace and hope this program will reduce the anxiety of this shift.

Read the AP’s story: Army Using Extreme Sports to Help War Veterans

As our troops pulled out of Iraqi cities last week, the American armed forces are now playing a completely different role in Iraq than they have played over the last six years.  Moving away from the days of armed conflict, soldiers focus on civil affairs, helping local governments and fulfilling their roles as advisers, training Iraqi security forces.

This shift has also required a shift in how the Army trains its soldiers.  Now troops are expected to not just help stabilize Iraq, but to transition their duties to their Iraqi comrades by the end of 2011.

The Associated Press reports:

The 3rd Infantry Division, headed by Maj. Gen. Tony Cucolo, will lead all U.S. military operations in Iraq’s volatile north. Since January, the Georgia-based division has been training at Fort Stewart to defuse potential conflicts before they flare up — largely with the help of Iraqi forces or through diplomacy.

Training to leave a war, however, is a delicate mission.

Retired Gen. John Hendrix, who used to command the 3rd Infantry Division and the Army’s Forces Command, said military planners probably did not have a good idea of what would happen when U.S. troops pulled out of Saigon in April 1975, months before the North Vietnamese takeover.

Military historians say the Army’s overall strategy during the Vietnam War failed precisely because it did not understand the nature of the society. It’s not a lesson the Army wants to repeat in Iraq, with its rich oil fields and strategic location in the Mideast that will be an important U.S. interest for years to come.

“We never got at the strategic problem in Vietnam. We were not nearly as prepared then as we are now,” Hendrix said in an interview. “When that decision was made, we didn’t have nearly as good a plan as how we were going to come out. These guys do have a little bit more of a challenge — they’ll do the last handshake and the Iraqis will look around and there’ll be no one there.”

…”To secure a victory, you send in your closers,” Cucolo said. “I said [to my unit], ‘Gentlemen, ladies, we are the closers. We’re going there, and we’re going to leave it all on the field because this is the decisive moment.’”

To read full article: Army ‘closers’ train for new mission: leaving Iraq