Interview with Maj Thomas Frohnhoefer

MAJ Thomas Frohnhoefer served as tank company executive officer (XO) in Samarra, Iraq during 2003, as division battle captain in Baghdad, Iraq during 2005 and 2006, and as company commander and operations officer (S3) in Al Anbar Province, Iraq during 2007 and 2008, all in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). In this April 2012 interview, MAJ Frohnhoefer discusses the different challenges of each deployment, how he witness the engagement change over time, and his experiences working with the Marines. MAJ Frohnhoefer concludes his interview with the observation, “I guess the big question is was it worth it? I don’t think anybody knows that. I like to think it could go one of two ways; it could go the South Vietnam route or the South Korea route, and I think this is more going the South Korea route right now. I don’t think anybody is going to overthrow the country and whatever they’ve got going on right now in Iraq is probably going to work despite all the naysayers. Even talking a lot about the religious fundamentalism, once you get the American in there, you can’t get it out. They saw the other side, and that’s the one thing that I don’t think people who weren’t there realize. We gave them our magazines; we showed them pictures of our houses. They saw what the good life is and they ain’t going to go back to that other crap, I don’t think. That’s it.”