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He's Training Iraqis To Be Confident

Major Howard F. Hall, USMC, has served three tours in the Middle East - once in Kuwait in 1996 and twice in Iraq. during his latest deployment, he was embedded into the Second Brigade of the Iraqi Intervention Forces.

Major Howard F. Hall

By BOB HITE bhite@wfla.com

Published: Nov 17, 2005

FALLUJAH, Iraq -- For Marine Corps Maj. Howard Hall, this is his third trip to Iraq.

Hall, who is based at the Marine Corps training center on Gandy Boulevard in Tampa, first came to the region in 1996 for training exercises. He was back at the start of this war, and now he has returned to help rebuild Iraq's army.

"There's a lot of talent out there, and there's a lot of energy, and it's a matter of harnessing it," Hall says.

Perhaps the hardest part of the work is undoing years of fear bred into the Iraqi troops under Saddam Hussein's regime. Saddam's army was built on that fear; it has left troops who are unable to make decisions on their own.

"Independent actions, initiative, all these types of things we thrive on, that was all punished in the former regime," Hall says. "So we have some very skilled, very talented young officers and noncommissioned officers who've never been given the authority to take action on their own, to make decisions or even to make suggestions to senior officers."

It will take training and much trial and error for the Iraqis to gain confidence in their ability to lead. That training is hampered by the lack of tradition in their military and by a communications gap between the Americans and their Iraqi students.

"It is an uphill battle, because there is a language gap and there is a paradigm gap as well," Hall says. "We've set up situations where they can make decisions and be rewarded for decisions. Even if it's the wrong one, to a certain degree, we teach them that it's something to learn from.

"[We teach] that a mistake is a learning point if you treat it the right way, and it's not the end of your career -- or, in some cases, the end of your life. That was the case with the former regime."

Bob Hite