Re: Real American Soldiers - Intelligent Realists - Describe Duty in Iraq
- From: Florida <demeter547opine@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2007 08:34:10 -0700
On Aug 20, 5:17 am, mg <mgkel...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Aug 19, 1:49 pm, Florida <demeter547op...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:Aryan
Jeremy Murphy was shot in the head but is expected to survive.
_______________________________________________________
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/opinion/19jayamaha.html?em&ex=11876....
The New York Times
August 19, 2007
Op-Ed Contributors
The War as We Saw It
By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA,
EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHY
Baghdad
VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the
political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency
is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and
counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To
believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived
its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population
and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible
infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne
Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press
coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel
it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we
see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not
be seen as official within our chain of command.)
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in
Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered
framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are
offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the "battle space"
remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with
actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda
terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This
situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-
faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained
and armed at United States taxpayers' expense.
A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American
soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-
piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and
a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators
that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped
plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had
they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi
Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their
families.
As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports
that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can
be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion
commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the
thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of
command, who are really loyal only to their militias.
Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi
armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our
tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have
against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form
their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al
Qaeda.
However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a
counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the
center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become
effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their
loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself
working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is
justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the
Americans leave.
In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies
and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground
remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this
fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army
Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a
"time-sensitive target acquisition mission" on Aug. 12; he is expected
to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United
States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this
context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground
require measures we will always refuse - namely, the widespread use of
lethal and brutal force.
Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an
American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers
to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a
resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of
the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we
take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel
increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has
failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly
unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.
Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet
political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass
in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing
no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from
arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be
surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible
while the military situation remains in constant flux.
The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the
Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority
members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make
sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920:
rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and
losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the
majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the
Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context.
They saw in us something useful for the moment.
Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they
believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how
best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without
consolidation risks losing it all. Washington's insistence that the
Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made - de-Baathification,
the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose
federalist system of government - places us at cross purposes with the
government we have committed to support.
Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence
or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms
when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the
political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please
every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers.
The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying
to please every party in the conflict - as we do now - will only
ensure we are hated by all in the long run.
At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency,
improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we
have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in
bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally
displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular
electricity, telephone services and sanitation. "Lucky" Iraqis live in
gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide
them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of
security we would consider normal.
In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets,
engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act.
Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while
we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist,
militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of
average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can
hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us
a few days ago with deep resignation, "We need security, not free
food."
In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released
Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of
their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain
dignity is to call us what we are - an army of occupation - and force
our withdrawal.
Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let
Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced
policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve
their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be
defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible
policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.
We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see
this mission through.
Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a
sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant.
Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant.
Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.
__________________________
"Patrick J Buchanan
WordNetDaily Commentary
'He weareth the Christian down'
Posted: April 28, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
. . . Bush believes God has called him to liberate the repressed
peoples of Iraq and the Islamic world, because freedom is God's gift
to mankind, and when men are made free, they do not war with one
another.
Yet, as one looks to Najaf, Fallujah and Sadr City, this seems not
only naïve, but delusional. Where did George W. Bush of
Midland-Odessa and Crawford get these ideas?
History shows that the liberated often turn to oppressing their
oppressors. Liberated from Saddam, the Kurds seized Kirkut and its oil
fields and started kicking Arabs out. The Shiites await a Shiite-
dominated Iraq. The Sunnis do not believe in majority rule. They
believe in Sunni rule. When we liberate a people, we liberate not only
its democrats, but its demons.
When the Ancient regime fell, there came the guillotine, the Terror
and Bonaparte. When the Romanovs fell, Lenin crawled out of the
rubble. When the Western imperialists departed Africa, despots seized
power in almost every sub-Saharan nation. Democracy did not survive in
one of 22 Arab states.
Why did Bush risk his presidency on a gamble that this time it would
be different? He may be an idealist, but is he a realist? Does he
comprehend the world he claims to be changing? Or is he inviting the
brutal epitaph of Kipling?
Now, it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the
brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles, and he weareth the
Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, with the name of
the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: 'A fool lies here who tried to hustle the
East.'
On Aug 20, 5:17 am, mg <mgkel...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Aug 19, 1:49 pm, Florida <demeter547op...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Jeremy Murphy was shot in the head but is expected to survive.
_______________________________________________________
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/opinion/19jayamaha.html?em&ex=11876....
The New York Times
August 19, 2007
Op-Ed Contributors
The War as We Saw It
By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA,
EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHY
Baghdad
VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the
political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency
is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and
counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To
believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived
its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population
and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible
infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne
Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press
coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel
it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we
see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not
be seen as official within our chain of command.)
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in
Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered
framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are
offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the "battle space"
remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with
actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda
terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This
situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-
faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained
and armed at United States taxpayers' expense.
A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American
soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-
piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and
a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators
that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped
plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had
they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi
Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their
families.
As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports
that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can
be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion
commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the
thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of
command, who are really loyal only to their militias.
Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi
armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our
tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have
against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form
their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al
Qaeda.
However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a
counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the
center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become
effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their
loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself
working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is
justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the
Americans leave.
In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies
and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground
remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this
fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army
Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a
"time-sensitive target acquisition mission" on Aug. 12; he is expected
to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United
States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this
context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground
require measures we will always refuse - namely, the widespread use of
lethal and brutal force.
Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an
American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers
to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a
resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of
the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we
take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel
increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has
failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly
unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.
Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet
political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass
in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing
no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from
arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be
surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible
while the military situation remains in constant flux.
The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the
Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority
members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make
sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920:
rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and
losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the
majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the
Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context.
They saw in us something useful for the moment.
Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they
believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how
best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without
consolidation risks losing it all. Washington's insistence that the
Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made - de-Baathification,
the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose
federalist system of government - places us at cross purposes with the
government we have committed to support.
Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence
or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms
when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the
political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please
every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers.
The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying
to please every party in the conflict - as we do now - will only
ensure we are hated by all in the long run.
At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency,
improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we
have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in
bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally
displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular
electricity, telephone services and sanitation. "Lucky" Iraqis live in
gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide
them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of
security we would consider normal.
In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets,
engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act.
Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while
we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist,
militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of
average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can
hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us
a few days ago with deep resignation, "We need security, not free
food."
In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released
Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of
their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain
dignity is to call us what we are - an army of occupation - and force
our withdrawal.
Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let
Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced
policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve
their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be
defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible
policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.
We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see
this mission through.
Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a
sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant.
Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant.
Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.
__________________________
"Patrick J Buchanan
WordNetDaily Commentary
'He weareth the Christian down'
Posted: April 28, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
. . . Bush believes God has called him to liberate the repressed
peoples of Iraq and the Islamic world, because freedom is God's gift
to mankind, and when men are made free, they do not war with one
another.
Yet, as one looks to Najaf, Fallujah and Sadr City, this seems not
only naïve, but delusional. Where did George W. Bush of Midland-Odessa
and Crawford get these ideas?
History shows that the liberated often turn to oppressing their
oppressors. Liberated from Saddam, the Kurds seized Kirkut and its oil
fields and started kicking Arabs out. The Shiites await a Shiite-
dominated Iraq. The Sunnis do not believe in majority rule. They
believe in Sunni rule. When we liberate a people, we liberate not only
its democrats, but its demons.
When the Ancient regime fell, there came the guillotine, the Terror
and Bonaparte. When the Romanovs fell, Lenin crawled out of the
rubble. When the Western imperialists departed Africa, despots seized
power in almost every sub-Saharan nation. Democracy did not survive in
one of 22 Arab states.
Why did Bush risk his presidency on a gamble that this time it would
be different? He may be an idealist, but is he a realist? Does he
comprehend the world he claims to be changing? Or is he inviting the
brutal epitaph of Kipling?
Now, it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan
brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles, and he weareth the
Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, with the name of
the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: 'A fool lies here who tried to hustle the
East.'
Kipling was right, as usual. Good quote from Buchanan, too. The
problem with leaving Iraq, or even to admitting that truism of the
modern world - destroying a nation's army doesn't mean that you have
conquered the nation - is that the Bushiites gave an interlocking set
of American interest groups different valid-sounding (often emotional)
reasons for the invasion. Now we collectively are forced to deal with
those groups piecemeal. Some of them are multi-billion-dollar
corporations, floating on a sea of taxpayer dollars, which will defend
their right to impoverish us. Others, Bush'sBase, struggle protect
their (often imaginary) interests. They all want to force our army to
stay in the middle of a civil war in a country which rejects our
soldiers and our beliefs.
It was clear long before the invasion that control and
distribution of oil was the objective, which incidentally necessitated
deposing Hussein for his flirtation with pegging oil to the Euro. If
this nation has decided to turn pirate, though, why has no one in the
current administration has ever come forward to explain why, since
"we" invaded Iraq, our whole nation should not reap the oil profits of
the invasion. After all, "we" are footing the bill for the whole
thing. How did it become a welfare project for specific oil and
mercenary corporations? The only reason that occurs to me is that, so
far, in the ascendency of the American Empire, we have been
dimwittedly following the British Empire's model: public expenditure
for private profit; with a gratuitous mimicry of their other behavior,
for instance, as their famous class-ridden arrogance.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38243
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38243
.
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