Posted on 06/22/2005 4:39:11 PM PDT by TheGeezer
Your editor returned to Iraq in April and May of 2005 for another embedded period of reporting. I could immediately see improvements compared to my earlier extended tours during 2003 and 2004. The Iraqi security forces, for example, are vastly more competent, and in some cases quite inspiring. Baghdad is now choked with traffic. Cell phones have spread like wildfire. And satellite TV dishes sprout from even the most humble mud hovels in the countryside.
Many of the soldiers I spent time with during this spring had also been deployed during the initial invasion back in 2003. Almost universally they talked to me about how much change they could see in the country. They noted progress in the attitudes of the people, in the condition of important infrastructure, in security.
I observed many examples of this myself. Take the two very different Baghdad neighborhoods of Haifa Street and Sadr City. The first is an upper-end commercial district in the heart of downtown. The second is one of Baghdad’s worst slums, on the city’s north edge.
I spent lots of time walking both neighborhoods this spring—something that would not have been possible a year earlier, when both were active war zones, where tanks poured shells into buildings on a regular basis. Today, the primary work of our soldiers in each area is rebuilding sewers, paving roads, getting buildings repaired and secured, supplying schools and hospitals, getting trash picked up, managing traffic, and encouraging honest local governance.
What the establishment media covering Iraq have utterly failed to make clear today is this central reality: With the exception of periodic flare-ups in isolated corners, our struggle in Iraq as warfare is over. Egregious acts of terror will continue—in Iraq as in many other parts of the world. But there is now no chance whatever of the U.S. losing this critical guerilla war.
Contrary to the impression given by most newspaper headlines, the United States has won the day in Iraq. In 2004, our military fought fierce battles in Najaf, Fallujah, and Sadr City. Many thousands of terrorists were killed, with comparatively little collateral damage. As examples of the very hardest sorts of urban combat, these will go down in history as smashing U.S. victories.
And our successes at urban combat (which, scandalously, are mostly untold stories in the U.S.) made it crystal clear to both the terrorists and the millions of moderate Iraqis that the insurgents simply cannot win against today’s U.S. Army and Marines. That’s why everyday citizens have surged into politics instead.
The terrorist struggle has hardly ended. Even a very small number of vicious men operating in secret will find opportunities to blow up outdoor markets and public buildings, assassinate prominent political figures, and knock down office towers. But public opinion is not on the insurgents’ side, and the battle of Iraq is no longer one of war fighting—but of policing and politics.
Policing and political problem-solving are mostly tasks for Iraqis, not Americans. And the Iraqis are taking them up, often with gusto. I saw much evidence that responsible Iraqis are gradually isolating the small but dangerously nihilistic minority trying to strangle their new society. With each passing month, U.S. forces will more and more become a kind of SWAT team that intervenes only to multiply the force of the emerging Iraqi security forces, and otherwise stays mostly in the background.
Increasingly, the Iraqi people are taking direction of their own lives. And like all other self-ruling populations, they are more interested in improving the quality of their lives than in mindless warring. It will take some time, but Iraq has begun the process of becoming a normal country.
Karl Zinsmeister is the Editor-in-Chief of The American Enterprise.
Needless to say, the MSM is not reporting any of this, and we are led to believe that Iraq is just a landscape of craters and refugees. It is not, and the expectations of Iraqis for greater security and liberty are growing ever stronger.
This is evidence again of the nobility of our military personnel and the heroism of Iraqis, rebuilding from the ruins of Baathist fascism.
Funny, Fred Barnes said EXACTLY the same thing on Fox just a few minutes ago.
I think we are at the point the Union was at in early 1864;
the nay-sayers were demanding an end to the endless war,
and the replacement of Lincoln.
They had no idea how close they were to victory, and were ready to throw everything away.
To all the doom and gloomers here please read this article...
I read Zinsmeister's "Boots on the Ground" about his experiences as an embed with the 82nd Airborne in the initial invasion in 2003. Well-written and pro-soldier. A perfect combination, to my way of thinking.
"Now we are engaged in a great civil war(terrorism), testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure." "Let us have faith that right makes might: and in that faith let us to the end,
dare to do our duty, as we understand it" Abraham Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln
This article has just explained for me why Newsweek did their flushed Koran story AND why that low life Druban said what he said. They knew this! They knew things were getting better in Iraq!
So now I'm left wondering were they trying to stir up problems to make it worse in Iraq again? And could it be they were trying to breed new terrorists with their traitorous words?
Bingo
Free Iraqi
I was not living before the 9th of April and now I am, so let me speak!
About Me
Name:Ali Location:Baghdad, Iraq
"During the war these kids (most of them are teenagers) patrolled our neighborhood with an obvious sense of pride, you know, like they're the men who are protecting their country, and needless to say, none of them fired a bullet and they all came back to their homes even before the end of the war with their only gain, their rifles that no one was going to ask them to bring them back.
Soon after the war, some Ba'thists in more friendly or neutral neighborhoods like ours started to re-organize themselves. They made sure to be the 1st ones who get to the weapon cashes in these districts and they distributed them among their supporters; the same teenagers and common criminals. I was one of the people who asked an American unite stationed in our district to go on a search for these weapons which were surely going to be dangerous sooner or later. American officers there told us that they don't like to go searching homes and act like occupiers and that they preferred if people handed their weapons by themselves and they asked for our help in this. They also told us that these kids can retain their arms to defend themselves against criminals but that they should lower them when they see an American patrol...................."
I notice in Iraq the use words in timeframe.."before" or "after" the war. Your post reminded me of this Iraqi authored post.
Ali also writes: "Operation lightning (I called it thunderbolt in a previous post so I apologize for that mistake) seems to be going better than what I expected in terms of reducing violence in Baghdad. I think everyone who's following the news must've seen that the attacks in Baghdad these days are getting less than before, and here on the ground we can see the same thing. Not just terrorist attacks that has been reduced but even regular crimes, as it seems that part of the operation is focusing on capturing regular criminals who are in addition to their usual criminal activities do form, in my mind, the right hand for the Ba'athists......."
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