“No matter what you think of the war, or what has happened here, you cannot be around the soldiers and not be completely affected. They are amazing people, and they represent themselves and the Army better than anyone could ever imagine.” — a Spanish journalist.
Good stuff worth a read.
Comments Off on Conversion: one heart at a time
Posted in Iraq, The War, Troops
Tagged American soldiers, Iraq, Jeff Emanuel
The Dems, it seems, truly want another Vietnam defeat in Iraq, now that they’ve attached departure dates to the refunding of the campaign. Presumably Bush will veto, and the Dems haven’t the votes to override. Some conservatives think this will energize the Republican base, but I wonder. The Dems could keep this up until the military runs out of money.
Pultizer prize winning author (and old neighbor in another part of town) Lawrence Wright ("The Looming Tower") says democratization of the Middle East may be our only hope to defeat al Q and its religious zealots and wannabees. But that it won’t be pretty, and that leaving Iraq too soon could convulse the region. But with House Speaker Pelosi skipping two meetings with the commanding general in Iraq, and Senate Majority Leader Reid saying the war is lost, it looks like the Dems either disagree or don’t care.
UPDATE Crazy Politico points out that a veto isn’t all Bush can do. He can find other ways to pay for the war: "Bill Clinton couldn’t get the GOP controlled Congress to pass what he wanted for funding for Kosovo, so he signed executive orders halting certain defense contract work, and shifting the money to fund troops."
I often think the Seablogger, Alan Sullivan, is too pessimistic by half. And considering that he’s struggling with cancer, that’s not too surprising. But he’s just dead-on right about the current situation in Iraq.
"…we are not taking the fight to the enemy, and we never will. Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia continue to support Iraqi ‘insurgents.’ If we were at war, we would have assailed the regimes of those countries for warring on us. But we are merely playing at war…"
Indeed, I am starting to cringe everytime I read about another American casualty in Iraq, partly because it’s as though Bush wanted to set up another Vietnam losing proposition, with sanctuaries for the enemy, sanctuaries that (so far) have not been assailed, and may never be. Unlike Sullivan I won’t say never, but it does look that way. Some say we should cringe at all the dead Iraqi civilians, but we aren’t killing them, and the people who are won’t stop even if/when we leave.
UPDATE Still some hope in the recent infighting among the "insurgents."
Comments Off on Playing at war
Posted in Iraq, The War, Troops
Tagged Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Vietnam sanctuaries
Neel, a 1998 graduate of Fredericksburg, Tx, high school, and, in 2005, of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, died in Iraq April 9, of wounds from a grenade assualt while leading his 8th Cavalry Regt. platoon:
“Phillip was an inspiration and leader to his five siblings,” his family said in a prepared statement… “He led by example and consistently challenged them to do the right thing in all circumstances, no matter what pressures were involved.”
A memorial service for him is planned Saturday in Fredericksburg.
UPDATE The San Antonio Express News report on the memorial: "Phillip Neel often sat and prayed at the West Point cemetery overlooking the Hudson River in New York, and it was there he watched smoke rise from the World Trade Center in 2001, his dad said."
Comments Off on 1LT Phillip Isaac Neel, R.I.P.
Posted in Iraq, The War, Troops
Tagged 1LT Phillip Isaac Neel, Fredericksburg, Iraq, Texas
"A few days ago, the loud siren sounded, and the ‘big voice’ speakers bellowed ‘INCOMING! INCOMING!’. A group of new Marines scattered like ducklings under the shadow of a hawk. Several ran around the corner of a concrete barrier and into a group of us chatting on as though nothing had happened. We watched as they collected themselves and tried to pretend as though nothing had happened, and then returned to conversation."
More news from the front by Teflon Don at Acute Politics
"…consider for a moment the peculiar lack of tanks and armored Humvees in the Fort Hood motor pools. An acute and worsening equipment shortage has robbed soldiers of stateside training opportunities and decimated the readiness of units that have not gone to Iraq or Afghanistan."
A lengthy look at the strains–including three years needed to replace shot-down helicopters–that the Army is going through. Clearly, improvements are needed across the board.
Meanwhile, even as the surge shows some results, there are many contradictions at play in Iraq:
"If the insurgents are to be defeated, it will have to be by local tough guys in town after town, as happened in the American West in the 1870s. These guys will likely be more ruthless than we would like. But if we don’t let them establish some control—and give them help in maintaining it—any strategies for phased withdrawals or grand political bargains or international constabularies will be irrelevant."
Via The Elephant Bar
"…Arab Sunnis can no longer gleefully disregard American interests because they need help against the looming threat of Shiite supremacy, while in Iraq at the core of the Arab world, the Shia are allied with the U.S. What past imperial statesmen strove to achieve with much cunning and cynicism, the Bush administration has brought about accidentally. But the result is exactly the same."
We can only hope this is true.
Via Instapundit
Comments Off on Divide and conquer
Posted in The War
Tagged Arab Sunnis, Edward N. Luttwak, Iraq, Shiite
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 