A Piece of the Elephant

[Dadmanly]

Michael Fumento writes of his return to Ramadi, posted at his site, and also appearing in the latest Weekly Standard.

Not to take away anything from Fumento’s must read account, but here’s his take-away on the significance of Ramadi:

People always ask how the Iraqis feel about Americans and the war in general. I respond that they just tell you what they think will prove advantageous to them, a combination of complaints and praise for Ameriki (America). Non-embedded American reporters run into the same thing. I asked one of the north Ramadi farmers through the translator if he thinks Ramadi is getting safer. He starts out with a few complaints, such as lack of water from the Euphrates for his fields because of rationing, and then tells me: "But safety is 100 percent better now that the Americans have come along." Baloney. Things got a lot more dangerous when we first came along. They may or may not be safer now than a year ago, but this guy isn't going to tell me. None of them will tell me.

Soldiers also give different accounts of the extent of progress in Ramadi. A Cougar driver told me nothing had changed since his last deployment, yet the very fact that he was driving into Ramadi in a convoy of just four trucks indicated otherwise. Another told me Ramadi is now "a thousand times better." Ultimately each was simply another blind man feeling his part of the elephant. With my three embeds in Anbar, I'd like to believe I've felt quite a few parts of the elephant.

Ramadi is not Baghdad, with its roiling sectarian violence and militias. As we've come to learn, Iraq probably cannot find peace until those militias are disbanded and suppressed. But neither will it find peace if the insurgents and terrorists of the Sunni strongholds like Ramadi continue to ply their trade; and despite the media focus on sectarian killings in October, Sunni insurgents still accounted for more than 80 percent of American military deaths in Iraq that month.

Put it all together--the Forward Observation Bases, new Combat Operation Posts, new Observation Posts, tribal cooperation, ever more Iraqi army and police, better intelligence, and public works projects. There's no "stay the course" strategy here; the course changes as necessary and it's continually changed for the better. I believe we are winning the Battle of Ramadi. And if the enemy can be beaten here, he can be beaten anywhere.

Fumento’s impression bears stark contrast to the prevailing “conventional wisdom” reported by mainstream media (MSM): that Iraq is a “mess,” that we can’t possibly win, that we are making no progress, that things are getting worse all the time, or that our only recourse is to salvage symbolic accomplishment and organize our withdrawal.

The real story, the entirety of the elephant to which Fumento alludes, is far more complicated, and perhaps more hope-inspiring.

Iraqis may not like the presence or predominance of American forces, they may not like or trust their government, they may fall under the sway of factions or militias, but they darn well despise the bitter-enders and their foreign terrorist interlopers.

We need more reports like these, and more on-the-ground and in-the-action reporters like Fumento. Else, we stand little chance of ever seeing more than a few square inches of elephant hide, and may think it something else.

(Cross-posted at Dadmanly)

Support and the Soul.

[John of Argghhh!]

Castle Denizen Fuzzybear Lioness has a post up that I thought should get a wider readership, so I'm cross-posting it here with her permission.

Jules Crittenden's provocative column, "Quitting a Worthy Fight Would Be a Great Mistake," has created some interesting discussion on his blog. The issue of "supporting" the troops but not the war came up in the context of the reception Vietnam veterans received upon their return home.

When the U.S. military went into Afghanistan, I had a powerful personal reaction to thoughts of what was being done on my behalf. It was a reaction of overwhelming sorrow and humblest gratitude. At a level that was as yet inarticulate, I understood I was inextricably linked to what happened on the battlefield and that the aftermath of those events created in me and every other U.S. citizen a response born of moral obligation and a debt that would never be repaid. And so from that day I knew at a deeper level than ever that support for our military and its goals was my obligation now that the fighting had started.

But yesterday at Crittenden's blog, a commenter finally gave me words for what I knew in my heart five years ago. He articulated exactly why it's not only incorrect to say one can support the troops without supporting their goals, it's morally reprehensible.

I had first written in comments (in part):

...[Vietnam veteran] soldiers who came home and were told their service was either dishonorable or useless (due to us giving up) had a harder time coping with the psychological and physical aftermath of that service. Humans can bear an amazing amount of suffering if they believe it is a result of [in service of] something noble or admirable, but being told they suffer for nothing good can literally make it harder to cope.

The response from commenter NAMedic:

As a combat medic and Vietnam Veteran who is 100% disabled due to PTSD, I can confirm the general point you make. It was not until five or six years of therapy, peeling away all the layers of horror from the war, that the final root of my problems was revealed. The worst trauma was in coming home, by far, and by far it was the hardest to see, and the most painful to admit. [snip]

A nation cannot ask normal human beings to engage in warfare unless that nation, top to bottom, validates what they have to do in such extremities. Normal human beings cannot remain psychologically whole, believing that their behavior was immoral - and all warfare is internally recognized by any soldier as profoundly immoral unless it is validated by a "higher power" outside the individual soldier.

Yes, it is our obligation to fight a wrong policy with every ounce of our strength before it is implemented, particularly when it involves issues of life and death. But war is a very special case, for so many lives hang in the physical and psychological balance. Once a war has begun, there can be only one course of action. To do otherwise than embrace the soldier for what he does for you is a kind of pernicious evil that takes the selfishness of one's natural desire to avoid the ugliness of this world to a new low [quote continued from above]:

This is also why the whole pose of "support the troops but oppose the war" is so insane and naive, if not deliberately and hypocritically self-serving. The "support" that counts, the only support that counts, is moral validation. If you oppose the war, you are withholding that very validation. You are destroying the soldier’s soul.

Yes, this is a democracy and you have every right to think your soldiers are on a fool's errand. But once it's been started, shut the hell up! Let them do what they must to win so that the duration is shorter and the suffering is less.

With the military power we possess, we have the capacity to win any conflict (it simply matters how much damage we want to inflict), so you cannot argue that a war we are engaged in is fundamentally unwinnable. It simply comes down to whether or not you want to pay the cost. If you don't, or you think that the prosecution of that war is a bad thing, then fine. But the only other option to winning is losing. So face up to it and admit that you want our soldiers to lose, you want them to believe they are doing immoral things for no moral reason, you want their death and suffering to be in vain, and that you are (in the words of someone who has "been there, done that") "destroying the soldier's soul."

Don't you dare stand there and clothe yourself in the rightousness of being "anti-war!" For your actions are not only prolonging the conflict and increasing physical suffering (on both sides), but they are robbing your fellow citizens of the healing they require for what they have done in your defense. And no, short of taking up citizenship in another country, you cannot repudiate their gift to you. It is always there, staring you in the face whether you pick it up or not. And frankly it's a defining moment for your philosophy and and relationship to humanity: are you going to pick it up and embrace the giver in sorrow and gratitude? Or are you going to try to simultaneously kick aside his gift as stupid at best and try to tell him that walking the darkness with the demons was wasted on you as you assure him you "support" him?

This is why what Code Pink did in the beginning months of their protest at Walter Reed ("Maimed for a Lie," etc.) was so evil. This is why military support volunteers do what they do. This is why a wounded senior NCO at WR once said to a friend of mine: If it wasn't for y'all [the volunteers here], half these boys would be suicidal.

War is not something that happens to others on a distant shore. It happens to all of us, and all of us have an impact on how it plays out and what happens to those most directly involved. What's your impact?

If you haven't yet, please read NAMedic's entire comment at Crittenden's; he has important things to say.

[A cross-post from Fuzzilicious Thinking]

{oops! Forgot to turn on comments, sorry!]

Posted at 1636Z

The Elephant in The Room

[Soldier's Dad]

via AP

WASHINGTON - A Pentagon review of Iraq has come up with three options — injecting more troops into Iraq, shrinking the force but staying longer or pulling out, The Washington Post reported Monday.

The newspaper quoted senior defense officials as dubbing the three alternatives "Go big, go long and go home."

And From The More Idiotic Side Of The 'Net

[Bubblehead]

Those who haven't been mucking around on the fantasy side of the blogosphere this weekend probably missed all the discussion about how the Navy is about to attack Iran with the Eisenhower and Enterprise Strike Groups -- it got so bad, it even infected Hugh Hewitt's site. All of them seem to have missed that the Enterprise, rather than getting ready to attack Iran, pulled back into homeport this weekend after a very successful deployment.

Also, former Gary Hart military advisor William Lind is an idiot. We're not going to attack Iran before Christmas, no matter how many people think President Bush is a warmongering dictator. More here.

Re: Five Kinds Of Ugly

[Chap]

Re the Tennessean article (standard caveats apply: we've only got one report, first reports are always wrong and always believed, more going on than we know, remember my extended explanation of the promotion process for another LT who didn't make LCDR, etc.):

Lex has some good thoughts...

Thus the conundrum: In attempting to satisfy the laudable intent of simultaneously increasing the quality and diversity of our workforce, planners found themselves inadvertently sidestepping into an accession policy that was racist in effect.

Understanding how we got here and why the policy was flawed is important even though it was rescinded in a matter of a few weeks. But it’s also important to know that young officers can challenge what they believe to be - and what were later proved to be - illegal orders without fear of professional consequence.

...and Phibian takes the story and dips it in acid.

- no, we are talking about a desire to look so much like the photographs on their glossy propaganda sheets they will short change a smarter child of a Bosnian war refugee in favor of the son of a Grenadian-American New York investment banker for a scholarship strictly on the basis of the color of his skin.

Standard caveats apply. But there's ugly to deal with, and ugly done top down for "good reasons" is the hardest to remove.

By the way, turns out the guy is a writer (link is for a table of contents, a Proceedings article with the tagline "There is a difference between managing people and leading personnel. The Navy needs to focus on leading instead of managing."). This should get interesting.

Pat Conroy Is Hard On Himself

[Chap]

Pat Conroy wrote, among other things, The Great Santini. I remember he was on the radio talking about his new book a couple of months ago--something about his old basketball team. Turns out there's a little more there to it than what I heard on NPR:

...It was that same long night, after listening to Al's story, that I began to make judgments about how I had conducted myself during the Vietnam War.

In the darkness of the sleeping Kroboth household, lying in the third-floor guest bedroom, I began to assess my role as a citizen in the '60s, when my country called my name and I shot her the bird. Unlike the stupid boys who wrapped themselves in Viet Cong flags and burned the American one, I knew how to demonstrate against the war without flirting with treason or astonishingly bad taste. I had come directly from the warrior culture of this country and I knew how to act.

But in the 25 years that have passed since South Vietnam fell, I have immersed myself in the study of totalitarianism during the unspeakable century we just left behind.

This piece has been bouncing around the Internet for a couple of months but is well worth the time. Read the whole thing. (Via Ace and Democracy Project.)

Conroy, if Santini is any indication, grew up damaged, and there were tough decisions to make as a young man in the era of Vietnam. He's living with his decisions, and is not shirking from a tough part of a tough life. I hesitate to make this next comment, and in any case I've never met the man; seen one way it's not my business. In another way, though, it definitely is.

If Mr. Conroy feels this way, it's certainly riveting writing to reveal it, and not easy to admit, I'm sure. However, the world hasn't stopped and totalitarianism is still around. We've still got the Phelps desecrators and A.N.S.W.E.R. and Code Pink, and still have guys making the hard choice to do something they think is essential. Now that Mr. Conroy's revised some of his thinking, what action is he taking now--if not to make amends, then to continue down a better path? Maybe it's presumptive of me, but we need help here, and I know the enemy we're up against is as bad as anything Conroy would rail against. Christopher Hitchens, Adam Michnik, Vaclav Havel, and others maintained their soixante-huitard ideals and sided with us, breaking lifelong attachments and the comfort of elder statesman status in the Left to do so--sometimes confronting or revealing new internal conflicts with previous decisions. Some of these Brits are thinking a bit like I am on this, too.

Any of you Vietnam-era folks have any insight on this?