I Love It. But I Have To Leave It.

My mission as a platoon leader was to clean up police corruption and reintegrate the Iraqi police into the security structure of Ghazaliyah, a district in western Baghdad. Over time, my platoon built a relationship of trust with Iraqi policemen, who gave us leads on insurgents. On one patrol, we detained a Sunni whom our battalion's intelligence officer confirmed as a genuine criminal. This man had threatened local residents, preventing them from participating in a clinic we had restarted.

A search of his home yielded illegal weapons, sniper bullets, insurgent propaganda, gobs of money and lists of Iraqi political and military officials' addresses. When we learned that he was the leading Sunni insurgent in Ghazaliyah, our platoon felt like world-beaters. Morale surged. Finding this man validated counterinsurgency theory -- empowering indigenous forces, patiently letting them take the lead, and collecting intelligence through local and national networks that know the "human terrain" better than foreign armies. It taught my men to be patient with it, and gave them pride.

Moreover, a change came over our counterparts in the Iraqi police. You could see their hope awakening. They began to feel safe in giving us the names of corrupt policemen and police car numbers. We secretly built a case against their leader (which this very newspaper inadvertently exposed in late 2006 when it published the full name of my Iraqi confidante, creating even more stress for my troops.)

So, good grab, right? Wrong. We later had to release the detainee. Somehow the evidence to hold him was lacking -- even though he had discussed his role in sectarian violence under questioning by our intelligence officers. At the detention facility, I learned that most of the evidence we had collected against him had never been analyzed. I was told that a high-ranking official (I don't know whether it was a diplomat or someone from the CIA or the Army) had called the facility, incredulous that the man was being detained. Later, I found out that our detainee was politically well-connected, which supposedly played a role in his release. But we lost credibility with the Iraqi police. And we were ticked off at the waste of our time and our unnecessary exposure to danger.

It's possible that there was some great rationale for releasing this man. But my men and I will never know why he was really let go. We knew that he was contributing to sectarian violence. Could someone at least tell my men that everything they did counted for something? What did I risk their lives for?

In the Army, junior captains and lieutenants, mainly as platoon leaders, as well as senior captains who are company commanders, are the primary group of officers manning the trenches and facing battle alongside enlisted soldiers (sergeants and privates). When a soldier dies, we feel it more than generals and colonels do. Along with the sergeants, we're the ones who explain to young enlisted men why a 23 percent interest rate on a car loan is not the best idea. Or that while a soldier may qualify for a loan to buy a Lexus (to attract girls), he also needs gas and insurance. And that stripper poles don't equal marriage altars. In short, we help raise them.

During war, we're the ones who are there when the bomb goes off or an enemy's bullet meets its mark. On one occasion, one of my fellow captains had to deal with a firefight even as he tried to calm a soldier whose genitals had been blasted with shrapnel slivers.

I'm not indicting generals and colonels. The point is that the experience of lower-ranking officers on the front lines creates a gap between us and other officers, and it makes us want to catch our breath before deploying again.

Older captains and higher-ranking officers can get jobs in the Army and "hit pause" before redeploying. They might, for instance, become ROTC instructors or go to graduate school. I tried for an ROTC job at a university and got a good reaction. Awesome, I thought -- my fiancee would get to keep her job, and I would use my experience to prepare future officers for combat, returning to command matured and refocused. Another captain was accepted into a graduate program starting in 2011. But the Army requires both of us first to attend the Career Course and deploy again as commanders -- and see our fiancees/wives two years later. The other captain wants to stay in, but he's wavering.

After experiencing the front lines, we'd stay in if we had a chance to take a break. We'd get family life right, mature, dissipate the frustrations and refocus. But Army career management policy doesn't allow it.

I love a lot about the Army and I don't want anyone to think that it's an evil institution. It's not. But I can't stay in any longer. It will be too long before I've achieved enough rank to work to change it. That's for generals and colonels, which is 16 years away for me, assuming that I'd keep getting promoted. My desire to start a family, the possibility of other jobs and my frustrations have combined to usher me into a new season of life earlier than I had planned.

john.rogersiii@us.army.mil

John Rogers served in Iraq from June 2006 to September 2007.