Iraq: View from the Ground (CSM)

Two from the Christian Science Monitor worth reading in full:

Iraq Story: how troops see it.
BROOK PARK, OHIO – Cpl. Stan Mayer has seen the worst of war. In the leaves of his photo album, there are casual memorials to the cost of the Iraq conflict – candid portraits of friends who never came home and graphic pictures of how insurgent bombs have shredded steel and bone.

Yet the Iraq of Corporal Mayer’s memory is not solely a place of death and loss. It is also a place of hope. It is the hope of the town of Hit, which he saw transform from an insurgent stronghold to a place where kids played on Marine trucks. It is the hope of villagers who whispered where roadside bombs were hidden. But most of all, it is the hope he saw in a young Iraqi girl who loved pens and Oreo cookies.
. . . . .
 “What the national news media try to do is figure out: What’s the overall verdict?” says Brig. Gen. Volney Warner, deputy commandant of the Army Command and General Staff College. “Soldiers don’t do overall verdicts.”

|| And ||
on the difference in approach between American and Iraqi forces:

Two Views.

NEW OBEIDI, IRAQ – Iraqi Army Capt. Khalid Hussein grew impatient as he explained what seemed like the obvious.
“They are the enemy,” he says, exasperated, to his American counterpart. “They killed my friends.”

Marine Capt. Clinton Culp doesn’t waver. “I know sir. I’ve lost men, too. But if we beat [up] the enemy, then we are no better than him.”

These two stories go right to the heart of the problem with the current debate on Iraq:  the total lack of a balanced “picture” of the conflict.  That failure literally adds insult to the injuries suffered by our troops, and those suffered by the people of Iraq.

“Support our troops” means understanding – and publicizing – the way they perform the tasks they’ve been assigned.  It does not mean walking over them on the way to make a point.