While You Were Out
The battery grides and jingles,
Mile succeeds to mile;
Suddenly battering the silence
The guns burst out awhile . . .
I lift my head and smile.
-Nichols
So how are we doing here? Are we making any progress? Is our mission proceeding smoothly? Is the region and our country safer for us being here? Or I am I only going to talk about XBOX and movies and how hot it is?
Like I’ve said before, I’m in the Eagle’s Nest of Iraq. This place, more than any other, should be the main hive of anti-American attitudes. This should be IED central. But it is the exact opposite. It is so much quieter than even a year ago. We have only lost one soldier from our battalion; the battalion we replaced lost twelve. (We hunted down and killed the guy responsible for the soldier we lost, by the way, and when we found out who paid him and gave him the sniper rifle, we went and arrested him and his friends. Then we made them watch us bulldoze their houses and burn the rubble.) The IA battalion we’ve been training is now officially in charge of the battle space. They are undisciplined and lazy and careless, but they are willing to learn and show amazing displays of initiative. Their NCOs especially are extremely competent and very brave. The platoon I’ve been personally training, in particular, is very good. I think there are probably other platoons in the IA battalion that are better infantry and better marksmen and whatnot; but mine is definitely the hardest-working and the smartest. I sound like some kind of racist, being all surprised that they are normal people and can learn and improve; but like you, I consume American media too, so I had been led to believe on some level that these people were a lost cause, or cowards, or undercover terrorists.
Many Iraqis do not have electricity. Many more have it only a few hours a day. Nevertheless, over 30,000 new businesses have been started here since the war began, and the Iraqi stock market trades over $100 million A DAY. You didn’t even know there WAS and Iraqi stock market, did you? And people say the media isn’t biased. 77% of these businesses are projecting significant growth and profit in the next year. There are over 3 million Iraqis who have cell phones. When the war started, there were virtually none, because they had neither the infrastructure to support a cell network nor, most people, the financial wherewithal to make the regular payments for a cell plan. Coming back to electricity, like I said, there is little infrastructure to support a national power grid; but many, many people are wealthy enough now to buy generators, and the gas they use to run them is certainly in good supply here.
In 2005 alone we trained over 100,000 Iraqi soldiers and police to a satisfactory level. Many are not what I would call proficient yet, and will not be for some time; but they are getting better, and the stigma of corruption and evil attached to soldiers and cops under Saddam’s regime has vanished. Most promising of all, over 70% of Iraq’s registered voters turned out for the December elections. This is a higher turnout than America has had in years, even the 2004 election, which was our highest in decades. Election days are also remarkably quiet, without the calamities and coordinated countrywide attacks by terrorists that many naysayers predict (and, I think, hope for) every time an election looms near.
I talk to Iraqi soldiers—and not just their joes, but their company and field-grade officers and civilian authorities—and they are all optimistic. They want American troops to leave, yes, but when it’s time; and certainly not because they resent us. I have developed close friendships with several of their NCOs and officers. I must note here that there is one thing that disturbs a significant number of them: the way the American media covers the war. They get Fox and CNN and C-SPAN too, so they know that most American journalists would rather cover nothing than a positive story. They have asked me, outraged, why our citizens allow journalists to file such one-sided and sometimes blatantly false stories. What kind of answer can I give them? I myself am ashamed that many journalists on all sides of the political spectrum file “news” stories that are apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, as a way of disguising an op-ed piece. So I cannot bring myself to confess this to them. They ask me if America really wants to abandon them, if our citizens back home really hate Iraqis so much that they want us to stop helping them. Again, what the hell am I supposed to say to that? Do I tell them that American and European journalists are, to quote one of my soldiers, “nothing but f—king liars,” looking to manipulate public opinion through yellow journalism, selective reporting or misleading poll numbers? This concept is so upsetting that I don’t even want to accept it myself, much less confess it to our friends.
These people are doing great. They are not Americans, and never will be; they would still, I believe, accept tyrants and hardship much more readily than we would. But they are coming around. They have tasted freedom, and it is my fervent hope that they will slowly persuade themselves to work harder and harder toward it.
Mile succeeds to mile;
Suddenly battering the silence
The guns burst out awhile . . .
I lift my head and smile.
-Nichols
So how are we doing here? Are we making any progress? Is our mission proceeding smoothly? Is the region and our country safer for us being here? Or I am I only going to talk about XBOX and movies and how hot it is?
Like I’ve said before, I’m in the Eagle’s Nest of Iraq. This place, more than any other, should be the main hive of anti-American attitudes. This should be IED central. But it is the exact opposite. It is so much quieter than even a year ago. We have only lost one soldier from our battalion; the battalion we replaced lost twelve. (We hunted down and killed the guy responsible for the soldier we lost, by the way, and when we found out who paid him and gave him the sniper rifle, we went and arrested him and his friends. Then we made them watch us bulldoze their houses and burn the rubble.) The IA battalion we’ve been training is now officially in charge of the battle space. They are undisciplined and lazy and careless, but they are willing to learn and show amazing displays of initiative. Their NCOs especially are extremely competent and very brave. The platoon I’ve been personally training, in particular, is very good. I think there are probably other platoons in the IA battalion that are better infantry and better marksmen and whatnot; but mine is definitely the hardest-working and the smartest. I sound like some kind of racist, being all surprised that they are normal people and can learn and improve; but like you, I consume American media too, so I had been led to believe on some level that these people were a lost cause, or cowards, or undercover terrorists.
Many Iraqis do not have electricity. Many more have it only a few hours a day. Nevertheless, over 30,000 new businesses have been started here since the war began, and the Iraqi stock market trades over $100 million A DAY. You didn’t even know there WAS and Iraqi stock market, did you? And people say the media isn’t biased. 77% of these businesses are projecting significant growth and profit in the next year. There are over 3 million Iraqis who have cell phones. When the war started, there were virtually none, because they had neither the infrastructure to support a cell network nor, most people, the financial wherewithal to make the regular payments for a cell plan. Coming back to electricity, like I said, there is little infrastructure to support a national power grid; but many, many people are wealthy enough now to buy generators, and the gas they use to run them is certainly in good supply here.
In 2005 alone we trained over 100,000 Iraqi soldiers and police to a satisfactory level. Many are not what I would call proficient yet, and will not be for some time; but they are getting better, and the stigma of corruption and evil attached to soldiers and cops under Saddam’s regime has vanished. Most promising of all, over 70% of Iraq’s registered voters turned out for the December elections. This is a higher turnout than America has had in years, even the 2004 election, which was our highest in decades. Election days are also remarkably quiet, without the calamities and coordinated countrywide attacks by terrorists that many naysayers predict (and, I think, hope for) every time an election looms near.
I talk to Iraqi soldiers—and not just their joes, but their company and field-grade officers and civilian authorities—and they are all optimistic. They want American troops to leave, yes, but when it’s time; and certainly not because they resent us. I have developed close friendships with several of their NCOs and officers. I must note here that there is one thing that disturbs a significant number of them: the way the American media covers the war. They get Fox and CNN and C-SPAN too, so they know that most American journalists would rather cover nothing than a positive story. They have asked me, outraged, why our citizens allow journalists to file such one-sided and sometimes blatantly false stories. What kind of answer can I give them? I myself am ashamed that many journalists on all sides of the political spectrum file “news” stories that are apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, as a way of disguising an op-ed piece. So I cannot bring myself to confess this to them. They ask me if America really wants to abandon them, if our citizens back home really hate Iraqis so much that they want us to stop helping them. Again, what the hell am I supposed to say to that? Do I tell them that American and European journalists are, to quote one of my soldiers, “nothing but f—king liars,” looking to manipulate public opinion through yellow journalism, selective reporting or misleading poll numbers? This concept is so upsetting that I don’t even want to accept it myself, much less confess it to our friends.
These people are doing great. They are not Americans, and never will be; they would still, I believe, accept tyrants and hardship much more readily than we would. But they are coming around. They have tasted freedom, and it is my fervent hope that they will slowly persuade themselves to work harder and harder toward it.
posted by Battler03 at 9:15 PM
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