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Back from Iraq, Cole gives a look at life inside the Green Zone
“Almost everyone that I met had lost someone,” said Haymarket vice-mayor John Cole Tuesday evening as he sat on the front porch of his exurban home across the street from St. Paul’s Church.
Cole worked in Baghdad as a civilian with the U.S. Department of Defense tasked with giving the Iraqi government the intellectual assets they need to do their jobs. A heart attack cut short his six-month tour by two months, sending him home in May.
The 1982 University of Virginia graduate who served in the Air Force after college is accustomed to mounds of responsibility outside the Town Hall chambers in Haymarket. As a 21-year-old in the Cold War, he worked as a missile launch officer in North Dakota with his fingers quite literally near triggers backing enough firepower to wipe out a country.
“We had more destructive capability at our finger tips than all the wars combined,” he deadpanned.
That experience taught him various aspects of leadership, he said, with the most important lessons coming in terms of discipline and understanding rules.
Twenty-six years later, the D.O.D. sent him to Iraq to teach some of those same values to that country’s citizens.
There was a bit of a culture shock he had not quite anticipated. While he and other Americans wanted to work efficiently, he found out that Iraqis in general are much more relaxed as they go about their jobs.
“It’s just a different mindset,” he said. That means foreigners need to understand, “You’re not going to change it. You work within it.’”
For instance, at a business meeting in America, it is generally frowned upon to answer cell phone calls. In Iraq, Cole found that to not be an issue.
“They live and die by their cell phones,” said Cole, noting many Iraqis had multiple phones and answered them whenever they wanted.
Another big difference between the American way of life and the Iraqi one is how money is transferred and handled.
Cole said he never saw any sign of an Iraqi post office and people would come up to Americans to ask them to order items online for them since they received mail.
That also meant when payday comes for many Iraqis, checks are not issued or sent out, but rather the company boss hands out wads of cash to the employees.
A typical work day for those employees starts between 9 and 9:30 a.m. and ends around 2 or 2:30 p.m., Cole said. But what was unique about those he encountered was how much they studied and learned at home, often taking college courses.
“They like education,” reckoned Cole.
But of course, that assumes they make it home each day.
Walking around the Green Zone, Iraqis and Americans alike tend to know where the nearest duck-and-cover station is for when mortar rounds come barreling over the walls.
The 107 mm shells coming in would sound like trash bins being dropped, according to Cole, and would just “crash.”
After the first one he experienced, attacks “became pretty routine” for him. He even ran with an Iraqi woman to safety once as warning sirens sounded.
“Let’s go,” he told her, again honing in on relaxed attitude of those within the county. “You must run faster than that.”
One of the Iraqis working with Cole’s unit was on his hour-and-a-half commute home when an improvised explosive device blew up next to hit feet.
Shrapnel expelled into his chest and killed him.
“He was a very nice man,” said Cole of the Iraqi administrator who had seven daughters, a son, a wife and no set pension. Cole added, “They detonated it right beside him. We’re guessing. It just detonated when he was right near it.”
Cole and other Americans had been helping that man learn basic managerial skills such as how to develop spreadsheets and track systems for memos.
“We went the next day after we got the news and cried with the Iraqis,” recalled Cole.
An Iraqi general later explained to Cole why someone could just be killed like that in the cradle of civilization by telling him he was impressed with how he thought Americans treated women equally and valued all human life.
“And that’s telling, you know, because life is not all the same to them,” said Cole as he reflected on a lesson he learned overseas. “So that’s why it’s easy for an insurgent to kill a school child. And so he noticed that. And, you know, it’s funny; I had never really registered that, but it’s true: We do. We may squabble about entitlement programs, but we have them. And it’s doesn’t matter who you are; you’re eligible. So that’s I think a great testament to our country and our way of life.”
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