A grunt-level look at the surge

Political ideology and feelings about the Bush administration aside, history is likely to show that the surge in Iraq was a success — at least militarily...

Remember, too, that the first six months of the surge, from January to early July 2007, were some of the war's toughest months.

Into this complicated global stew, David Finkel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter, has gone micro to look at a group of soldiers brought into the surge to serve a 15-month deployment. Finkel's often lyrical book, "The Good Soldiers," follows a U.S. Army battalion, the 2-16, nicknamed the Rangers, from tearful send-offs in the wintry windswept fields of Fort Riley, Kan., to a former Iraqi air base...where "everything was the color of dirt and stank."

...Finkel's main protagonist is Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, who "believed in destiny, in God, in Jesus Christ, and in everything happening for a reason, although sometimes the meaning of something wasn't immediately clear to him." He would lead some 800 soldiers into the surge. Fourteen would not come back; and scores of others would face a new world of prosthetics, antidepressants and nightmares...

Finkel's journalistic skill is significant. He has a sharp eye for detail that illuminates the bigger picture. For instance, he captures the frustration of trying to secure an old spaghetti factory that was to be key to establishing a command post in a volatile Baghdad neighborhood. The problem: The factory sat above a basement with several feet of raw sewage, with a cadaver floating in it. The sewage became known as "the float" and the cadaver was nicknamed "Bob." The phrase "Bobbing the float" will never be the same. After several attempts to respectfully retrieve the body and much paperwork and bureaucracy, the factory was eventually mortared and made unusable by insurgents.

Actually the surge was an incredible success as was the rest of the military effort.

As par for the course, the US military inflicted far more casualties on its opposing combatants than the enemy. The US military controlled all specified zones of combat.

All that remains is a rather rhetorical contest about meaning. In this battle, our Media actively opposed and sought harm for our troops. They celebrated bombings of civilians by our adversaries as ‘victories” against our troops and portrayed the explosions as political indictments on President Bush.

They do not do that when bombings afflict our troops in Afghanistan. That is a minor relief.

The considerable global mood of annihilating America and Israel simmers and periodically boils over. Pretending that leaving it alone would be akin to letting a fire burn around your house and believing that leaving it alone would put it out.

Either American will defeat its enemies or our enemies will defeat us. Ambivalence will not disarm or demobilize the enemy. If that were true, 911 would have never happened. Withdrawing from Gaza would have brought peace to Israel.

Good job on the surge. Bush rammed it down his surrendering anti american media’s throat.

I will buy this book and see what the author has to say.

The 16th Regiment of Infantry is no jake leg army outfit. They endured the hell that was the Devil’s Den and Wheatfield of Gettysburg. The stormed the heights of San Juan Hill. Three of her soldiers were the first U.S. soldiers to fall in combat in World War I. On the 6th of June, 1944 they dyed the sea red with their blood on Easy Red at a place called Omaha. And on, and on and on through Vietnam, Desert Storm, An Anbar, and onto this story.

What is significant is not the battles that we all know, at least in name, but the soldiers. They were not from the nation’s elite, no Ivy Leaguers here, they were not the privileged, and they were not the rich. They were the Joe’s, hard scrabble and tough as nails. They fought for each other and do so unto this very day.

I am a son of this Regiment. My father commanded one of her battalions, as did I in my time. As a boy of eight years old, I met Sergeant Schroeder who received the Medal of Honor for his actions on San Juan Hill. I have met many more such men since, including such men as Joe Dawson who led the way up the bluffs at Omaha Beach, Jake Lindsey who served from North Africa to Czechoslovakia with a Medal of Honor along the way, and John Busheyhead who just knew how to lead soldiers.

Men such as these have been let down often by politicians, something that continues to this day. They deserve our thanks and support and we should reminds the spineless politicians of the debt that they owe to these heroes.

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