8 Things I Learned as an American Governor in Occupied Iraq

"We mobilized in February of 2003 and assigned to Task Force Tarawa. I organized our rolling stock into a convoy to a place called Al-Kut. I got off the first airplane and went looking for General Natonski. He said, 'Col. Couvillon, I'm glad you're here.' I knew something was wrong because he pronounced my name right. 'You're the governor now.'"

"Normally in Marines we get direct orders: 'train to this level' or 'take this hill.' Here's the order, and your expectation. So I asked, 'What does that mean?'

"'You're the governor; anything that happens is your responsibility.'"

"'I get that, but what do I do?'

"'Anything that happens, you're responsible for.' That was the extent of my training."

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"Are you familiar with a Roman imperator? Absolute. My guys joked they'd get me an SPQR standard to hang outside my tent."

This might sound like the sort of power that could go to one's head, but it also came with a ball-shriveling amount of responsibility:

"We needed to make sure there were no armed forces in the area that could make the people afraid or engage my Marines in combat. Second priority was establishing logistics for food and fuel, as well as potable water. There was health care, getting kids back in school. Garbage needed cleaning, and that included ordnance from the invasion and stockpiles left by the Republican Guard."

Basically, Couvillon found himself responsible for security in a place where roadside bombs were more common than truck stops. He also had to gain the trust of the people -- the same people his fellow soldiers had just invaded the holy hell out of. And to do that ...

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"I went and hired an interpreter off the street, and this guy got me out of a LOT of trouble. Tremendous young man, and I stay in touch with him today. When I was in Desert Storm, I'd read the Quran cover to cover, and I still haven't even read the Bible. I'm no expert, but I made a point to try and understand as much as I could. I started gathering info through the Internet and through books. And when I got there, Iraqis gave me books on Islam and the culture."

Couv quickly learned that all guns were not created equal. For example, "Note pictures of Iraqi police now and in the past: They have AK-74s now, they don't carry pistols. To them a rifle is more of a hunting arm than a weapon."

Meanwhile, handguns, which we see as much less threatening than handing out machine guns to our beat cops, were a symbol of Saddam Hussein's brutal government. When the secret police come in the night to put a bullet in your head, they do it with a pistol:

"And they are famously poor shots with a rifle. So when we were putting together our police force, we tried to give them arms training. And it was REALLY difficult to make them accurate at 50 yards. Normally you start teaching the prone firing position. But the culture in that part of the Middle East teaches that lying on the ground is a supplication thing. The concept of looking over the sights was hard, too; they liked to spray and pray."

Oddly enough, facial hair turned out to be a key part of gaining local respect, as it should rightfully be everywhere on the globe:

"One thing I learned in Desert Storm: If you didn't have facial hair in Iraq, you had no wisdom. So I asked my Marines to grow mustaches and 70 percent of them did, and it paid dividends. I also told them not to wear sunglasses, because Iraqis like to look you in the eye. We were visitors in their culture, not conquerors."

Couv's decision to be properly haired paid off big time. He recalled one meeting early in the occupation:

"When I walked in, of the Americans there, I was the only one with facial hair. And when I walked into the room, even though my colleague was 6 foot 6 inches and a general and I was just a lieutenant colonel, the Iraqis deferred to me. One thing I tried to push on my Marines is that Iraq was not our country and we needed to pay attention to what these people wanted."

And it just so happened that they wanted mustaches.

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Fun Fact: Saddam Hussein released all of Iraq's prisoners before fleeing power. So the new regime found itself dealing with a little bit of a crime wave:

"At the time Al-Kut was like the Vegas of Iraq: whorehouses, porn theaters, bars. All under cover, of course, don't get me wrong."

Couv's men were reservists, and that meant they had actual professions outside of the military.

"I had some police in my battalion, and I put them to work training the Iraqi police and making those overt criminals ... at least operate underground. So we shut down some movie theaters, raided a couple of places.

"There was one porn house. Someone had brought a hand grenade in a paper bag, and it fell through the paper bag and exploded in the house. It started a riot, and we had to clean that up. There was gun running going through the province to arm terrorists, so we took operations against them. One thing I made known was that if an Iraqi did something against an American, I brought them into our military justice and prison system. If they committed an act against another Iraqi, we put them through their own judges and jails."

Couv's efforts probably bummed out a lot of Iraq's porn-and-hand-grenade aficionados, but they helped make Wasit into one of Iraq's safest provinces.

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"We set up two television stations, two newspapers. I went on TV twice a week and held a call-in show so people could ask questions. The most common question was 'When do we get to vote?'"

Here Couvillon ran into problems with his own government, because there is absolutely no scenario that rampant bureaucracy cannot make worse.

"We broke them away from Saddam, set up a new government in Baghdad, and said everything had to go through them first. So they asked, 'Well, what's the difference between then and now?'"

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Couvillon said, "The Iraqis didn't really have experience conducting meetings. When you and I go to a meeting, there's an agenda, you follow it, call for a vote ... well, in Saddam's time, you had whoever was the leader call people together and then tell them what to do. And if you disagreed, you wound up in a hole in the desert somewhere."

The United States government has had some ... optimistic projections for how quickly democracy would take hold in Iraq. But Saddam came to power in 1979, which meant a whole generation of Iraqis grew into adulthood viewing the government as "those guys who murder anyone who looks funny at them."

"When I first started holding votes, everyone would look to who they presumed to be the power in the room and wait to see what we said. I had to say, 'No, you have to go with what YOU think is right.'

"I went to one meeting ... it was a writer's union. Authors and poets and journalists; they decided they wanted to have an election. Well before the leader had been appointed by either the governor or Saddam. Now, arguing and rhetoric are an art form in the Arab world. Being wrong or right isn't as important as the argument ... So they'd go back and forth, and in this particular meeting they argued back and forth about who they wanted to be the leader; not by name, but 'I want someone tall,' 'I want someone with a beard,' etc. Finally, I asked, 'Who are you going to vote for?' And none of them wanted to say, because they were afraid to step up without sanction from me."

"I said, 'No, you can't do that; whoever you elect, that is the person I will work with and sanction.' So finally I got three people to run, and we ended up having a runoff. And then they elected a gentleman: He was a poet. Poetry is huge in Iraq."

He went on to establish Couv's Rules of Order, a modified version of Robert's Rules of Order, geared around the peculiar difficulties of a country full of people used to their government shooting first and then publishing baffling romance novels instead of asking questions.

"The first rule of order was: no weapons in the meeting. No pistols or rifles. They were always armed. Carrying arms became a status symbol, particularly the Kurds: Their cultural belief was to always carry some sort of weapon."

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Couvillon wanted to make a different impression, although we're sure his choice in sweaters was equally festive:

"I went around with my firearm concealed. I didn't wear my helmet or a flak jacket. I wore a regular camo uniform and appeared to be unarmed. This showed the people that: 1) I wasn't afraid and 2) I didn't need a weapon to guide them.

"I'd do stuff like go get a haircut and a straight razor shave in town; people would be crowding in. I wanted to project that image of someone willing to meet them on their own terms."

"One thing I insisted: when my Marines were on patrol and they saw kids, for them to interact with the kids. Give them coloring books, toys. If you're a parent and you're seeing me be nice to your kids, it's kinda hard for you to have that immediate hate for me. That was one way we inculcated ourselves. When you see a Marine in full battle gear, it's a pretty intimidating sight. So I gave my men the opportunity to go without helmets or flak jackets. The idea was to be as non-threatening as possible when we didn't need to be."

That might sound counterintuitive, but it worked.

"When we first got into things, there were Republican Guard and Iraqi units in the area. As things went along, we had criminal elements as well as terrorists. Several of my Marines and soldiers were wounded. But none of them were killed; I'm very, very proud of that."

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"I became the paymaster for all government workers in the province. They were owed $25 a month per individual. Well, Baghdad in its infinite wisdom sent us pallets of cash, $20 bills. Thousands upon thousands of them. They sent NO FIVES OR ONES. So how do I pay someone $25 with two $20s? They suggested every fourth person ... pay them an extra $20, so they could go into town make change and give it to the other three people."

That turned out about as terrible as it sounded:

"After the first few hours of fights and knifings, I stopped that and cut back their salary to $20 a month. What else could I do? The American administration did a lot of stupid stuff. We were our own worst enemy. Here's another: It came down from Baghdad that Iraqi wheat did not meet U.N. health guidelines. So they cut off the wheat harvests, told us to burn it in the fields. We're trying to find jobs for everyone, and then this happens. The farmer makes no money, truckers can't make money, granaries can't make money, flour mills can't make flour, bakers can't make bread. The whole infrastructure breaks down."

"I screamed and hollered and yelled: 'Iraqis have been eating this wheat for thousands of years!' The Iraqis were coming to me and saying, 'Look, we've been through this with Saddam during the economic sanctions; the U.N. flour doesn't hold together, we can't make our bread the way we like.' So I told them we needed to let the Iraqi flour through, because people without jobs feed right into the terrorists. So I said, let's bring in people to help them clean up the process, rather than burn it in the fields."

Lt. Col. Couvillon credits most of his success to the forcibly mustachioed and occasionally unarmored Marines under his command, as well as the unbelievably ballsy Iraqi volunteers who risked pissing off insurgents to help turn their province back into a decent place to live:

"It was catch as catch can, thinking on your feet. Not only me, but my Marines, sailors, and soldiers. I really think I invited in my command the thought that we weren't there as conquerors. We were there to help. I wanted to make sure that Iraq was for Iraqis, not a 51st state."

Robert Evans runs Cracked's personal experience article team, and you can find more of his work right here.

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