Posted on 04/16/2004 5:07:20 AM PDT by dennisw
AN EMAIL FROM THE FRONT:
Here's an email from a soldier I first corresponded with when he was a cadet at West Point. He's legit - and his email is worth printing in full, I think. I'm not endorsing everything he says, but it's worth hearing what a very bright and committed young soldier is going through right now:
Troop strength - I think we have consistently underestimated the number of troops it would take to pacify Iraq. Gen Shinseki's original estimates were much closer to the mark. The fact that the 1st Armored Division (my unit) has now been extended for at least 4 months shows there aren't enough troops - in order to deal with a fairly minor uprising we had to break the one-year-boots-on-ground pledge. If we had had a strategic reserve, this would not be necessary. However, the dirty secret is that there aren't any more troops to be had - at least not the active-duty armor/infantry brigades and divisions requried to fight a tough enemy. Furthermore, the frenetic destruction that occured after the fall of Baghdad set us way back in terms of reconstruction - more troops could have limited if not prevented the extensive looting.Good and bad. But it's only one year.
Sadir et al. - Although his uprising is seen as a ominious sign for the coalition, it does have an upside. His poorly trained and poorly equiped rag-bad militia is being chewed up by our army. His defeat and eventual marginalization will serve the coalition well. After one year of occupation, I think many Iraqis have come to see the army as rather toothless - we get blown up by roadside bombs or mortars and yet we continue to rebuild schools, enforce the laws, train police etc. Now because of Fallujah and what has been going on in Baghdad, our potency and resolve are on full display. My task force alone has killed many insurgents in the last two weeks - something that was not happening before. By confronting us in a conventional way, Sadir et al. are playing to our military strengths - and it isn't going well for them.
Long term prospects - I have to admit that after one year here I am largely pessimistic. Iraqi society is sick in many ways. Sometimes it's hard to tell if Saddam was the problem or the symptom. I just don't know how a society so divided along ethnic and tribal lines, with no democratic or liberal traditions and almost zero respect for the rule of law can build any kind of society accept and autocratic one. I'm not ashamed that the US came here with good intentions and noble sentiments about the universality of our values - democracy, liberty, the rule of law etc., but I think all our efforts might be eventually futile. In essence, we have given the Iraqis an enormous gift, but they don't seem to be seizing the opportunity. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink...
The Army - Most soldiers in my unit were pretty demoralized by the extension. We were promised a one year tour and now that promise has been broken. Retention will certainly suffer. However, we are facing a difficult time in Iraq and our continued presence is necessary. What I would like to hear and I think most soldiers feel the same way - is for someone high up to say "Look, we didn't plan for this. Things have gotten screwed up and we need your continued sacrifice. This is why it is so important you stay." Instead we have gotten vague comments about "managing the troop redeployment" - as if it were some little snafu or inconvenience. The truth is, our division is now getting ready for another bloody and hellishly hot summer that none of us expected to ever go through again.
I didn't think so.
I can't say. It was a great publicity opportunity, no matter how you slice it. And it was going to be criticized, no matter how you slice it.
These would have been the worst time of the year to be in Iraq, which is why starting the action in March was a bad idea -- unless this administration really believed that most U.S. military personnel would have been out of Iraq after 90 days. Perhaps this was exactly what they thought -- but that makes the administration look even more naive and incompetent.
That's just an absurd comparison. The Administration has been very open about this entire thing, despite some bleating to the contrary. That's the exact opposite of what the Impeached Rapist would have done. Then again, he wouldn't have made this huge, politically risky move in the first place, unless perhaps he was having another bimbo eruption.
God bless these brave warriors who understand why they are there. We are blessed to have them protect America from having to fight this war on our soil.
We are a country at war with those who want to kill us and any aid and comfort to the enemy talk will strengthen them. Shame on those who want to demoralize our troops.
It was a great publicity opportunity if the situation in Iraq had remained quiet for the most part from that point forward.
I've heard this a lot in the last couple of weeks, and I'm reminded of the situation just before the I Drang battle in Vietnam. There were men in Col. Moore's group who were close to being finished with their tour of duty. Rather than extend their tour, the Army brought in new men who didn't have time to get trained and up to speed before being shipped off. It is believed that the lack of experience of some of those men made the battle more difficult than it need have been. Am I remember this right, AR? I seem to remember having read this in Col. Moore's book.
Experience is a wonderful, though sometimes tough, teacher, and the fact that these men on the ground now HAVE lots of it helps when dealing with a flare up like Fallujah. Imagine the dog's breakfast it could have been with all new troops. They could rotate new folks in a few at a time to get them up to speed and rotate the other guys out slowly. In fact, I believe the military is doing something like that now. There are new folks in who are learning the ropes, so to speak, and the ones who've been there a long time will be coming home.
But we have to remember, this is war, and things don't always go as planned, so our folks have to be flexible. It seems the media is under the impression that the war is over, so that's why they're so incensed about American soldiers continuing to die. It ain't over folks. The President announce that MAJOR operations were over last year, and he was right. We're no longer having to fight all over the entire country. We can now concentrate on the hot spots and deal with the terrorists who are coming in from all over the Middle East; something else the partisan media is mentioning. These are not just Iraqis we're fighting.
Do you really think the U.S. military would have sent 150,000 troops to Iraq if there was any chance in hell that Saddam Hussein possessed the kind of WMDs that we "thought" he had?
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