What Garbage Workers and Make-Believe Iraqis Taught Our Military

Los Angeles Times ^ | April 21, 2005 | Max Boot

[billorites]

Despite this week's bad news, things have gotten better in Iraq. A lot of the reason has to do with the success of the Jan. 30 election and the growing competence of Iraqi security forces. But give credit where it's due: The U.S. military has stepped up its game. When the insurgency began in the summer of 2003, the U.S. armed forces were caught off guard. Most soldiers and Marines had little training for, or interest in, nation-building and counterinsurgency operations. But the U.S. military has proved that it adapts to unexpected events, learns from its mistakes and passes those lessons along.

Last week at Ft. Hood in Texas, on a tour of military bases organized by the Council on Foreign Relations, I heard a colonel in the 1st Cavalry Division explain one training approach. The 1st Cavalry, which garrisoned Baghdad from March 2004 to March 2005, is an armored force designed to fight other tank armies. In order to figure out how to run a modern metropolis, officers spent time with Austin city officials before they deployed. They also rode along with electrical, water, sewage and garbage workers. Applying what they learned, the 1st Cavalry troops discovered that the more they improved municipal service in Baghdad, the less likely residents were to cooperate with insurgents. Thanks to their efforts, the Iraqi capital is significantly more peaceful today than it was a year ago.

One of the biggest lessons U.S. forces have learned in Iraq is the need to guard convoys against ambushes. There are no safe rear areas; every Humvee is on the front lines every time it goes "outside the wire." Yet until recently, most soldiers in trucks and Humvees did not train together for combat as intensively as tank crews did.

To address the shortfall...

[Sthitch]

A positive story about the military in the LA Times? Is this the third sign of the Apocalypse?

[Gunrunner2]

Heck. . .Cairo, Egypt doesn't even have trash collection. Millions of people every evening pile their trash in the street and burn it. Unmistakable smell. Ugh.

[CFC__VRWC]

A positive story about the military in the LA Times? Is this the third sign of the Apocalypse?

Max Boot is the Times' designated conservative punching bag. They print his columns so they can fill their letters to the editor sections with seminar letters ripping him to pieces.

[Tennessee_Bob]

Is this the third sign of the Apocalypse?

You have nothing to worry about as far as the Apocalypse is concerned until I get a date.

After that - Katie bar the door, it's going to get ugly.

[CyberAnt]

I know .. it's getting almost scary .. LOL!

[CHARLITE]

Thanks so much for posting this one. I get the impression that Max Boot is one of the few conservative journalists which the LA Times has reluctantly decided to feature lately. He certainly is a better choice than the way left feminine activist, Susan Estrich, who recently had her much publicized hissy fit over not being chosen by Michael Kinsley to become one of his pantheon of liberal luminaries.

How many conservative writers are there now, on the LA Times? - a grand total of three?