In the end, we did a lot of good

Ron-Michael Pellant

Last update: March 13, 2008 - 11:40 AM

Ron-Michael Pellant of St. Paul was deployed to Iraq for 22 months, including 16 as a chief warrant officer at the Balad air base. Pellant, 40, now works for the Minnesota National Guard, coordinating deployments to minimize time away from families, school and jobs. These are his words:

I've always been a patriot, but not one of those drum-banging patriots. I've always felt one needs to give service back to their country. I think that's why I became a teacher for so many years, and also why I joined the National Guard -- so I could help out the state with floods, tornadoes and that kind of stuff.

My participation in the war keeps that up. But I've never been one for war. I don't think that should ever be the first step. And when we went to war, it wasn't necessarily my belief to go to war.

Once we got there, though, I kind of like what [former Secretary of State] Colin Powell said: We broke it and we need to fix it. At least we're trying to put the pieces back together so that we can get to a point where we can withdraw and let Iraq be on their own.

I hope we're there long enough to successfully hand over the bits and pieces that we have, but I don't want to pull out right away, either. If you pull out rapidly, you might leave the vacant space that something else you're really not thinking about could move into.

The answer to whether Iraqis can govern themselves is pay grades above me, but I know we saw a lot of growth in the good chunk of time we were over there. I saw that they were able to handle things a little bit better and actually project and think out a bit, so I saw huge improvements in my short bailiwick.

I was out three or four times a week, and I had certain people I would talk to every single time. People would invite us over to eat in their houses and you'd eat so many times, they knew the soldiers aren't going to eat the boiled goat but they really like the kebobs and bread.

There were several people I knew by first name and, every once in a while, I think of them and hope they're doing well.

As a target officer for a unit that protected the base, we'd influence important people in certain ways. If we were getting a lot of IED explosions along a stretch of the road, we'd game it out and ask why. Maybe there's a high level of unemployment. So we'll go talk to the imam, the mayor and the sheikh to see what we could do to employ your guys.

It was very rewarding for me. We spent a lot of money to good effect. We built schools. We built roads. We built water treatment plants. We helped some people with vehicles to get their crops to where they needed to go.

I feel really good about what we are able to accomplish in our little area.

Pellant's remarks were edited from a longer interview by staff writer Curt Brown.

Coming Thursday: Michele Naar-Obed, a Duluth peace activist.

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