Back From Iraq – An Interview with First Lieutenant Alex Hooper

submitted by Tom Linehan

I sat down with First Lieutenant Alex Hooper in mid-December, two weeks after he returned from Iraq. His parents, Mike and Vera Hooper live in Allandale where Alex grew up. He went to Gullett, and to high school at St. Michaels. He graduated from West Point in 2005. Alex is 25 and single. He is a First Lieutenant with the third battalion, eighth cavalry regiment at Ft. Hood. What follows is an interview I conducted with Lt. Hooper to learn firsthand what it’s like to be stationed in Iraq. Alex is a very fit and bright individual. He has a good sense of humor but also impressed me as being confident in his role as an officer in the army. I read about the Iraq war in the newspaper everyday and listen to it on the news but Alex is the first person I’ve talked to who has been deployed to Iraq who could talk about it from a soldier’s perspective.

Q – You just returned from Iraq after a 14 month tour of duty, where were you stationed?

Lt. Hooper – I was stationed in the Salah ad-Din province in central Iraq. It’s about 30 miles north of Baghdad. One of the more well known cities in the province is Samarra City. I lead a platoon of 32.

Q – What was your mission in Iraq?

Lt. Hooper – Our mission in general was to provide a safe and secure environment for Iraqis in the region. My platoon’s responsibility was to secure the area I was assigned. It’s kind of like being a cop in a really bad ghetto. I would gather as much intelligence on who the troublemakers were - the movers and shakers committing the terrorist acts? The terrorists in Iraq didn’t just attack Americans, they terrorized the people. The objective of al-Qaeda in Iraq is to create instability.

A lot of the insurgents started putting down their weapons by the end of my tour. They started reconciling with us and fighting al-Qaeda alongside us.

A side mission was to work with the Iraqi army company in the sector. It was necessary to get them involved in the fight. When I took over they were the most corrupt and worst Iraqi company. They weren’t trusted. The last 2 commanders were detained for terrorist activities. It was a big undertaking. I was blessed with the right personnel and with the right attitude and right team. That’s what I’m most proud of, getting this Iraqi Company to work with us. 

When we first got there the Iraqi platoon wouldn’t even go out on patrol with us. By the end they were planning the mission, gathering the intelligence and only asking us for support. They took over and took ownership of the land. They got a lot of support of the people. People started going to them with intelligence on the bad guys. People started feeling safe when they were around.

Q- What kind of timeframe are you referring to with regard to this turnaround?

Lt. Hooper – It took every single day of all 14 months I was there. It was slow and sure. It’s like a new teacher taking over a class or a coach taking on a new team. You have to build a rapport with them. You have to share suffering with them. If they were out pulling security in the cold you had to be with them. Slowly but surely their attitudes changed.

Q –How big an area was your platoon responsible for?

Lt. Hooper – It was probably about a 20x20 KM area. I had 32 soldiers assigned to my platoon. It was a large area and that’s why we really leaned on the Iraqi soldiers. Sometimes it would just be me and three or four other guys with a platoon of 20-25 Iraqi soldiers.

Q – What kind of impact did the surge have?

Lt. Hooper – The surge was concentrated in two areas: Baghdad and up north in the Baqubah area. Actually, the surge pushed the bad guys into our area. Our battalion was successful in finding and bringing the bad guys out and gathering intelligence to figure out who the main players were. We sought them out and were able to neutralize the threat.

Q – Was everybody in your platoon new to Iraq?

Lt. Hooper – No, we had a number of returning veterans who had experience in other parts of Iraq. I had a lot of experienced vets.

Q – What was the day-to-day routine for your platoon?

Lt. Hooper – It depends on the tempo. You go in cycles. When we first arrived there we went 8 hours on and 16 hours off. That’s 8 hours on patrol outside the wire, 16 hours inside the wire sleeping, fixing your vehicles, eating, trying to unwind as best you can before you have to go out again.

There’s really nothing typical about it. You go out on patrol to do what you have to do. Every day you wake up and you have a purpose. You go out and do your mission, you engage your bad guy, catch or kill him and you come back in and you’ve affected some positive change.

Q – Every time you go outside the wire, do you go with a specific purpose?

Lt. Hooper – You always go outside with a purpose and a task behind that purpose. Otherwise you take a casualty and how do you justify that. How do you live with yourself? We’re going out the wire just to go out the wire? That’s not right. I can’t tell someone’s mother that we took her son outside the wire just because we were in Iraq and we had nothing better to do.

Q – What was the hardest thing about being in Iraq?

Lt. Hooper – I never really thought about that. For everybody it’s different. One of my sergeants has a wife and seven kids. For him it was hard being away from his family and trying to do it over the internet and over the phone. For others it was missing their girlfriend or their wife or their parents. I was lucky in that I had 3 of my best friends from West Point in the same battalion and I worked with them everyday. I would go out on missions with them. I really missed my friends and my mom and dad.

The hardest part for me as a leader was dealing with one of my guys getting hurt because you’re always replaying in your head what could have been done differently. Did I make a mistake in my planning or in my decision making that ended up getting this guy hurt? That was the hardest thing for me was dealing with my guys getting hurt. Dealing with the emotions you have that usually manifest itself in anger. You always want to go out kill the bad guy. That was the hardest part for me - dealing with the reality of the war. War is terrible.

Q – I gather that where you were you saw a lot of action?

Lt. Hooper – Yes, we did. It’s all relative. I saw enough action to keep me on my toes but it wasn’t like I was - and this may just be me - scared for my life everyday. I was always confident that whatever the insurgents threw at us they would not overwhelm us. We would close with them and destroy them. It wasn’t something our unit couldn’t handle. If you look at where we started and where we got at the end of the deployment. You can argue all day about whether we should be there or not but you can’t argue we made Iraq, and certainly the little area that I was responsible for a better place. I know that we made a difference and that made it good. That justified all of the hardships we endured, all of the things we gave up, all of the sacrifices my men made. One of the Iraqis told me right before we left that for the first time in 4 years he could take deep breath. He said, “I’m not worried about people hurting me or my family.”

The terrorist don’t just terrorize the Americans as I said before they terrorize the local people. They disrupt the local influencers, the shieks, the ex-Baathists, the police chiefs, the leaders in the community. They try to undermine them. The militant al-Queda want Iraq to follow strict Islamic law. Under Sadam it was secular. They want to make the area so bad for the people that they just cave to their will.

Q – In your opinion will the religious extremists prevail?

Lt. Hooper –al-Queda in Iraq is losing ground. The whole surge did work. Let’s pray and hope we can maintain that momentum. Baqubah is safe, Al Anbar is safe, Basera down south is being turned over to the Iraqis by the British. Ramadi is light years ahead of where it was. My area is good. Bhadgad is getting safer everyday. I think a lot of our success is due to the feedback of the people on the ground and people at the top who understand the culture and understand the way these people think. Through just the 5 years over there we’ve learned their tribal system and can relate to them better. The vast majority of the populous have learned that things are going to get better slowly but surely.

Q – What’s next for you. You’re on leave for a month and then back to Ft. Hood. I understand you may possibly be deployed again in another year?

Lt. Hooper – Not sure. Everything is up in the air. In the army you just try to be as proactive as you can. I’m putting together a packet for the Special Forces. That said, I don’t mind my job at all. I don’t mind being deployed. It’s an adventure and I’m kind of good at it. You just got step up to the call and do it. With regard to whether and when I’ll be deployed again, it’s too early to say.

Q – Alex, I do want to say on behalf of the Allandale Neighborhood Association we appreciate your service to the country. It’s an honor to spend this time with you and thanks for sharing your experiences with us.