From Jewish Journal of North Boston

Swampscott Officer Ready for Deployment to Baghdad

Bette Keva

Jewish Journal Staff

Lately, when Michael Finer walks to KFC in Vinnin Square for lunch, just a few yards from his firm, he’s thinking about the marching he’ll be doing with a weighted down rucksack on his back while wearing heavy boots and dodging suicide bombers in the besieged city of Baghdad.

No, he is not a voyeur dreaming about being GI Joe.

Lt. Col. Finer – who is 42 and became eligible to retire from the military yesterday, May 17 – will be in Baghdad in late summer, along with the 630 Army National Guardsmen in the 181st Infantry Regiment who are under his command.

Finer is not retiring. On the contrary, although he doesn’t look as though he needs it, he is getting his body in shape for his upcoming tour of duty. The Swampscott husband and father of two has command of 11 percent of the 6,000 Army National Guardsmen in Massachusetts.

“We will train Iraqis,” Finer said during an interview in his Vinnin Square financial planning firm, of which he is a founding partner. “We will exchange knowledge with them.” Although many Iraqis are experienced soldiers and leaders, they learned under the Ba’athist regime of the late dictator Saddam Hussein, Finer said. The “new operating system” in the current military is different.

A Jew Alone

It gets lonely for Michael Finer when serving his country. As a Jew, he has fewer alliances than his fellow servicemen.

“When I go to summer training, there’s services for Catholics, Protestants, probably even Islamists,” Finer said. “If you are Jewish and looking for services, [the chaplains] say, ‘let’s discuss it.’ There’s so few of us, it’s hard to get anything organized.”

Not that Finer wants to broadcast that he’s Jewish while serving in an Arab country in the Middle East.

“Being Jewish is not beneficial where I’m going,” he said. “My religion comes second in this situation. I’m an American soldier first.”

However, his dog tag says he’s Jewish, and he plans to go into combat wearing it, even though his commander suggested that it be engraved simply with the word Conservative, since he’s a Conservative Jew, because the enemy won’t know what that means.

Iraqis like to talk about religion ; yours and theirs. But a chaplain urged Finer not to talk about his.

“The issue isn’t being Jewish,” Finer said. “Iraqis are upset about the Palestinian situation. It’s how the Muslim world views the way Israel is treating the Palestinians. I have to understand that culture. Whatever Israel does, I own. I’m tagged with it.”

Finer plans to stay away from that subject and keep his focus on winning peace in the region.

“I’ll wear my Jewish dog tags when I get there. I’m not afraid to die whatsoever. Should I assume I’ll get captured? I’m not concerned about that. I’d never surrender in the first place. I would rather fight to the death than be captured. It’s a remote possibility.”

What does upset Finer, though, is that so few Jewish people enlist into military service. Only one-half of one percent of army personnel are Jewish; and Jews comprise 2 percent of the overall U.S. population. In World War II Jews were over-represented; but not now.

It concerns Finer that the general perception is that Jews don’t serve, even though they are so vocal about their political opinions, such as saving the people in Darfur.

“Why not join the military?” he asked. “Even if we were going [to Darfur] as the U.S. military, not enough Jewish people would be helping with that campaign.”

Finer was upset that Jews throughout the country mounted Jewish Federation campaigns to raise money for Israel’s soldiers in last summer’s war, but not for soldiers here at home.

“There’s been no real organized effort to do anything for the American soldiers,” Finer said. “That was disheartening for me as a leader. While I’m proud that they want to help Israeli soldiers with flak jackets or this or that, what about me, what about my soldiers going to Iraq? I suppose it’s because Israeli soldiers are Jewish and American soldiers are not.”

There also is no money being raised to support families, even though they do suffer financially when the husbands leave work to enter the military.

“We are going to the Middle East to fight. There are ramifications for the U.S. and Israel. Everyone has opinions. What about people who actually are the doers?”

Finer’s battalion will train Iraqi police, prison guards and possibly local military units. “Iraqis are now operational,” Finer said. “We are there in a reinforcement mode.”

Asked if any progress has been made since the war began in March 2003, Finer recalled that the United States went into Iraq for “regime change,” and it accomplished that goal. “We went in to help with a democratic government. We validated that there were no weapons of mass destruction,” he said while conceding that there were none there to begin with. “We have accomplished those three things.”

Nothing in life or war is simple, Finer contends. “You can’t assume that once you solve three things, you don’t manifest 20 other problems. The geo-political war machine hasn’t been able to get ahead of the rest of the problems.” But Finer stresses that he is in the military, not the State Department. It is not for him to make political decisions. His goal is to provide a stable Iraq with a population that can live with liberty and freedom.

He acknowledges that Iraq is a culture unique from that of the United States; however, he believes that Iraqis – like all people – wish to live peacefully.

“It is possible to affect change,” Finer said. “There are Islamic countries such as Turkey where people are living peacefully together with different types of Islamic subgroups. There are Kurds and Sunnis who live successfully together in some countries. In Iraq, there is a power struggle between various groups that is making it extremely complex” with Al Qaeda, Sunnis and Shiites fighting one another; and the U.S. presence being “part of the problem and part of the solution.”

Exiting the country prematurely could spark “something like a genocide or Darfur situation,” he said, echoing the Bush administration’s stance. When one subgroup is stronger than the other, that kind of slaughter can be expected. On the other hand, Finer acknowledged that pulling U.S. troops out could remove “a catalyst that is fueling some violence.”

Finer spent last summer in Kurdistan working with the armies of several central Asian countries to build rapport and stabilize the area. Operation “Regional Cooperation” is a diplomatic initiative Finer has participated in since 2002.

Finer first joined the National Guard infantry unit in Dorchester in 1998 after completing ROTC as a commissioned officer in 1987. He was deployed to New Orleans five days after Hurricane Katrina laid waste to sections of the famed city, taking command of 500 Massachusetts soldiers. While it was “chaos” in Louisiana and military leaders had to figure out how to bring the area back to some form of normalcy, Finer expects that the situation in Baghdad will be more organized.

He had just returned from Guantanamo, Cuba, where he served from 2003-2004 with 350 soldiers of the 181st Infantry when he was deployed to New Orleans. “We were expecting a quiet few years. That didn’t happen.”

Despite the negativity in the Democratic Congress, President Bush’s low popularity rating because of the war and the daily deadly violence ripping through Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, the lieutenant colonel expresses positive feelings about his deployment to Iraq.

This backdrop, he acknowledged, makes it difficult; but his eye is on the mission. “I’m a lieutenant colonel battalion commander. I’m required to follow orders from my leadership and, most important, carry out the mission as best I can and be a positive, not negative, role model for my soldiers. I provide motivation, direction and purpose to my people.”

When the tide of public opinion is against you, it presents “tough times,” he said. But that is also when real leaders shine. When counseling his soldiers for the upcoming deployment, he tells them to prepare for a longer tour than they are being told – for several months, at least. Then, if their duty is extended, they will be able to psychologically pace themselves.

“I don’t sell them any sunshine,” Finer said.