As Arlene Walters watches the evening news, the chaos in Iraq feels all too familiar. The work her son and others did during the eight-year Iraq War looks like it is slowly unraveling.

“What they did over there, it will have to be done again,” she said.

Locals who have been been close to the conflict, whether personally or through a loved one, are skeptical that sending more Americans into Iraq will help. Families and veterans alike said they’re not sure it’s worth losing more American lives.

Walters’ son, U.S. Army Sgt. Donald Walters, was one of the first casualties of the war. He was killed in an ambush in southern Iraq on March 23, 2003. Six of his fellow members of the 507th Maintenance Company were captured and 11 killed in the ambush.

Now, 11 years later, the country is embroiled in a violent collapse. Militants aligned with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) began a week ago wreaking havoc on the country. They have marched 230 miles, attacking civilians in one city after another, and are now nearing Baghdad.

This week, President Barack Obama said the United States would send 275 troops to Iraq “to provide support and security for U.S. personnel and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.”

He told Congress he may also send up to 100 special operations troops to advise the Iraqi military in handling the Sunni militants.

Former Oregon National Guard Sgt. Paul Johnston said it’s true that America can’t fix these problems for the Iraqi government.

America’s role right now, Johnston said, should be to go in with very targeted air strikes and “surgical” strikes to take out the leaders of ISIS. It helps that they have congregated and banded together, he said, because now the military knows exactly where they are.

Sitting down to reason with them won’t fix it, he said. “It’s all about standing up to the bully on the block.”

Former U.S. Army Third Division Infantry Rifleman Patrick Woodmency said his experience leaves him doubtful the United States should involve itself.

“The only reason we should currently be sending any troops into Iraq is to evacuate all our citizens immediately,” he said. “The Iraqi people want nothing more than for us to leave them alone. They may very well want to kill each other, but our involvement will do nothing to stop that.”

Woodmency, who lives in Keizer and left the military in 2007 on a medical retirement, said America accomplished little during the war.

“The best thing we could do would be to get out of there completely because we only add to the chaos and provide them with a common enemy,” he said.

For Walters as well, sending more troops seems like a foolhardy decision. American men and women have already fought and died over there, and less than three years later the problem has returned, she said.

“I really don’t think we should send any more troops over there…it’s a mess,” she said.

Walters is not far off in thinking the Iraqi chaos feels familiar.

Forty-four Sunni prisoners were found killed in a government-controlled police station in Baquba on Monday, and four of the bodies were dumped in the street. The killings “fit the familiar pattern of death squads during the sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007,” according to the New York Times.

During the war, “Bodies would be dumped in streets and empty lots after execution-style killings, often without identity documents. Many of the extrajudicial killings, as well as kidnappings, were the work of Shiite militias, often in cooperation with the Shiite-dominated police force, although Shiites living in Sunni neighborhoods were killed as well. At the peak of the violence, as many as 80 bodies a day were found in Baghdad and its immediate suburbs,” the Times reported Monday.

Stayton High School alum and U.S. Army veteran Evan Cupp said the war was handled badly from beginning to end. Cupp was stationed in Mosul, the city where the recent violence first exploded.

He did not support the president’s approach to the drawdown of troops in Iraq, but he isn’t sure sending soldiers back into the country is the answer.

“The problem with the issues in Iraq is that it is a holy war we cannot win,” he said. “Getting more of my brothers and sisters killed in that place would be an extremely dumb decision.”

The idea of sending American troops back into the country to try and fix the same problems it spent years trying to solve is painful to Walters.

“It makes me feel like our fathers and sons….it was all in vain,” she said.

Johnston said military families shouldn’t feel this way — the military fought for something real and won. It controlled the spread of terrorism in the Middle East and sent a message to neighboring countries that America won’t stand for it.

The failure of the war was political, he said. The American government didn’t explain to its people why we went to war, he said, and it hasn’t ever explained what our role should really be.

The U.S. can’t prop up the Iraqi government or force people who identify foremost with tribe, religion and family to unite under a flag. That is a problem only the Iraqi government can solve, he said.

“They’ll figure this out, the Iraqis, because they have to, on their own,” he said.

hhoffman@statesmanjournal.com or (503) 399-6719