Suicide Was the Only Way Out of Iraq for Col. Westhusing

By Robert Bryce, Texas Observer. Posted March 16, 2007.

Ted Westhusing was a true believer. And that was his fatal flaw.

A colonel in the U.S. Army, Westhusing had a good job teaching English at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He was a devout Catholic who went to church nearly every Sunday. He had a wife and three young children.

He didn't have to go to Iraq. But Westhusing was such a believer that he volunteered for what he thought was a noble cause. At West Point, Westhusing sought out people who opposed the war in an effort to change their minds. "He absolutely believed that this was a just war," said one officer who was close to him. "He was wholly enthusiastic about this mission." His tour of duty in Iraq was to last six months.

About a month before he was to return to his family -- on June 5, 2005 -- Westhusing was found dead in his trailer at Camp Dublin in Baghdad. At the time, he was the highest-ranking American soldier to die in Iraq. The Army's Criminal Investigation Command report on Westhusing's death explained it as a "perforating gunshot wound of the head and Manner of Death was suicide."

He was 44.

In the ever-expanding tragedy of the second Iraq war, the tragedy of Ted Westhusing is just one among tens of thousands. Four years of warfare have decimated Iraq. Its economy and infrastructure are in ruins. Tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Iraqis are dead. Hundreds of thousands more have fled the country. More than 20,000 American soldiers have been wounded, and more than 3,000 killed. Yet among all of those tragedies, amid all the suffering and heartache, Westhusing's story stands out. It shows how one man's life, and the fervent beliefs that defined it, were crushed by the corruption and deceit that he saw around him.

The disillusion that killed Ted Westhusing is part of the invoice that America will be paying long after the United States pulls its last troops out of Iraq.

Some 846 American soldiers died in Iraq in 2005. Of those, 22 were suicides. Westhusing's suicide, like nearly every other, leaves the survivors asking the same questions: Why? And what was it that drove the deceased to such despair? In Westhusing's case, the answers go far beyond his personal struggles and straight to the heart of America's goals in Iraq.

When he was in Iraq, Westhusing worked for one of the most famous generals in the U.S. military, David Petraeus. In January, Petraeus was appointed by President Bush to lead all U.S. forces in Iraq. As the head of counterterrorism and special operations under Petraeus, Westhusing oversaw the single most important task facing the U.S. military in Iraq then and now: training the Iraqi security forces.

All the goals set out by Bush and his band of neoconservative backers -- a democratic Iraq, a safe and secure country that can support and govern itself, a country able to rebuild itself with its vast oil wealth, a place governed by pro-Western secular rulers who can provide a counterweight to Islamic extremists in the region -- depend on America's ability to "stand up" the Iraqi army and police force. Without a dependable security apparatus, none of those goals is achievable.

When he arrived in Iraq, Westhusing discovered that just like the rest of Iraqi society, the Iraqi military and police are riven by religion. Religious hatred, Sunni versus Shiite -- combined with the corruption that permeates Iraqi society -- made his job impossible.

Two years before Westhusing left for Baghdad, he had finished his doctoral dissertation in philosophy at Emory University in Atlanta. The focus was on honor and the ethics of war. Westhusing wanted to understand arete -- the ancient Greek word meaning virtue, skill, and excellence. His quest for understanding the concept was, he believed, a central part of his existence. "Born to be a warrior, I desire these answers not just for philosophical reasons, but for self-knowledge," he wrote.

Westhusing did not find excellence or virtue in Iraq.

That fact is evident in a two-inch stack of documents, obtained over the past 15 months under the Freedom of Information Act, that provides many details of Westhusing's suicide. The pile includes interviews with Westhusing's co-workers, diagrams of his sleeping quarters, interviews with his family members, and partially redacted reports from the Army's Criminal Investigation Command and Inspector General. The documents echo the story told by Westhusing's friends. "Something he saw [in Iraq] drove him to this," one Army officer who was close to Westhusing said in an interview. "The sum of what he saw going on drove him" to take his own life. "It's because he believed in duty, honor, country that he's dead."

The officer said that "strength of character was Ted's defining characteristic. It was unflinching integrity." That integrity, he said, was also Westhusing's great flaw. "To be a true flaw, the personality has to have great strength. And that characteristic caused his downfall."

Westhusing was born in Dallas, one of seven children. He went to grade school in La Porte, near Houston, until the seventh grade, when his family moved to Tulsa. He was an outstanding student. He was the starting point guard on the basketball team at Jenks High School, a National Merit Scholar, and a devout Christian. He was a hard worker. He was so devoted to basketball that he would shoot 100 jump shots each morning before school. His work ethic, grades, and reputation gave him his pick of colleges. He was accepted at Notre Dame and Duke. He chose West Point. Westhusing's father had served in the Korean War and had later been in the Navy Reserve.

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Austinite Robert Bryce is an Observer contributing writer.

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