“One of the hottest commodities in the PX is a Swiffer. When a new shipment arrives, word spreads like wild fire and these mop-like wonders are gone in minutes,” Air Force Major Brad Head fired off in an email to his wife Meredith shortly after arriving in Taji, an air base twelve miles north of Bagdad, in February 2007.
Having developed policy and programs for the U.S. Air Force Academy while stationed at the Pentagon, Major Head volunteered to come to Iraq and develop curriculum for the Iraqi Air Force Training School. He and twelve other United States Air Force members from around the world were charged with the task of building the training pipeline necessary to resurrect the Iraqi Air Force which had been disbanded early in the war.
“Besides the fact that we are a very small island of Air Force blue in a very large sea of Army green, the best way to describe Taji is MUDDY. This place is ridiculous! There are literally hundreds of construction projects going on all over the place and the last thing they are worried about is using concrete for the roads.”
Head’s mission was a critical piece of President George W. Bush’s National Strategy for Victory in Iraq. The primary tenant of this new strategy was to get a large number of coalition troops out of Iraq in order to re-establish the Iraqi military.
It would take a lot more than a Swiffer, however, to clean up the mess threatening Head’s mission. Setting up his 10x10 feet room alone proved a challenge. Head and his roommate each received a wall locker, night stand, and mattress, and spent the better part of their first twenty-four hours trying to piece the IKEA-like furniture together with the help of a single leatherman hand tool. Realizing parts were missing from the furniture that they were to assemble, they bought used items from a contractor and searched for furniture in warehouses filled with old stuff from the Soviets and French. Worse than their personal living quarters, the twenty-seven buildings designated to house the new training school were in complete shambles. They were far from usable with less than two months to go before they were scheduled to be open for business.
“They haven’t even started construction, or secured funding on what should be a multi-million project,” Head explained after his initial tour of the school property.
“Needless to say, I seriously doubt we will be ready for students in April, but we’ll see. It doesn’t matter what we are all supposed to be doing here in the long term in the short term we’ll all be picking up hammers, brooms, and paint brushes and using some serious elbow grease to get this place going,” Head conveyed.
Father, give me the fortitude and tools I need to clean up the mud and messes facing my life or the life of someone close to me today.
“How broken and shattered is the hammer of the whole earth! How desolate is Babylon among the nations!” (Jeremiah 50:23)