« With Men Such as These... | Main | Iraq War Fallacies: "We Should Have Kept the Iraqi Army" »
January 6, 2006
With Men Such as These... II
Explain this if the war in Iraq is going so poorly:
"I've only met two kinds of soldiers in the combat arms community: Those who have served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, and those who are pulling every bureaucratic string to get deployed there."I spent the summer of 2004 with a group of Marines in Niger and sub-Saharan Africa, and every Marine in that platoon was trying to get to Iraq. A few months later, one of them got lucky and ended up leading Iraqi forces into combat in the second battle of Fallujah. He was a sergeant from Georgia, and after the battle, he sent me a long e-mail flush with pride. And that's not just a cutesy-pie story -- that's basically what I encounter all the time. ...
"Soldiers are very aware of why they're fighting -- and that awareness stems from their own practical day-to-day experience, which is not killing people. By and large, they're rebuilding, patrolling, and helping the Iraqi people."
-- Robert Kaplan, author of "Imperial Grunts," interviewed in the January/February issue of the American Enterprise (excerpted in today's Washington Times)
Further, as Marc at USS Neverdock reports, the Army exceeded it's reenlistment goals for 2005.
As Kaplan reports, the troops are by and large quite proud of their service in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. While we so often hear about how we are simply "creating more terrorists" by our actions in Iraq, or because of various administration policies, the determination of US troops must give the terrorists pause.
All too often the news media forgets that the other side has troubles of it's own. If you only read the press, you could be excused for thinking that things were going swimmingly for the insurgents in Iraq, and for al Qaeda in general. Osama bin Laden, after all, is still on the loose.
But as Al-Zawahiri's letter to al-Zarqawi, intercepted last summer, showed, the insurgents are deeply concerned that they are the ones who are loosing. One reason for this is that no matter what mayhem they cause, those darned Americans just won't give up.
This reminds me of an incident last summer that occured in Afghanistan regarding Seal Recon Team 3.
Four US Navy Seals, on patrol in a remote mountanous region of Afghanistan, ran into a large number of Taliban. In the ensuing firefight, three of the Seals were killed. One survived, evading superior numbers while escaping their grasp. He was later rescued by US forces rushed to the region.
At the time this occured, Wretchard, writing at Belmont Club, reflected on how our enemy must have preceived our determination:
Sixteen more Special Operations soldiers died in an attempt to reinforce the recon team when their MH-47 was shot down. The US response to the loss of the recon team was not to run but insert hundreds of troops into the area to find the missing men and possibly to complete the unfinished mission. The Al Qaeda might ask themselves what manner of men these are, who fight to the death rather than surrender, and who though injured evade over high and cold mountains until they have outdistanced their unwounded pursuers. It's not an idle question. One of Osama Bin Laden's strategic assumptions when he wrote contemptuously of the US in his 1996 fatwa was that he was facing cowards.
What manner of men indeed? Those who do not give up until the fight is won. Those who understand that there will always be setbacks in war, but who does not let this deter them.
It has always struck me as rather odd, that while those who face danger directly perform so heroically, and are so determined to finish the job, that all too many here safe at home want to give up.
So on the home front it is our duty to support the troops by whatever means possible, private and public. As individuals we should contribue to one or more organizations that directly help them. On the sidebar of this blog you'll see a section titled "Helping the Troops". If you're not already doing so, I encourage you to go through them, and contribute in some way.
Posted by Tom at January 6, 2006 8:24 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.theredhunter.com/mt/refer.cgi/552
Comments
Zawahiri in his recent statement is practicing taqiyya on his own people, that's all.
Posted by: elmers brother at January 7, 2006 3:28 PM
The honor and loyalty of our military men and women is incomprehensible to not only the terrorists and bin Laden (because they rule by fear), but to many of those on the left as well. Why would standing up for freedom and putting your life on the line for those seeking freedom, be such a foreign concept to so many? The only answer I can come up with is that they have taken their own freedom so for granted that they can no longer see what a struggle it was to achieve it.
Posted by: Anna at January 9, 2006 6:39 PM
