Hang Right Politics

Posted by Kathy on January 17th, 2007 in Iraq

Want to know what is going on there? Here’s a good place to start.

This does not look like a big or intense war to people at home. It doesn’t look like that because we have so few troops actually in combat. But for those who are truly fighting, this is a brutal death match where every mistake can get them killed, or make worldwide headlines. Yet when the enemy drills out eyes or tortures people with acid, it never resonates.

There is an explanation for why when some of these young soldiers and Marines go home and people are trying to talk with them they might be caught silently staring out a window. Many people back home seem to think they have an idea what is happening here, but most do not. And nobody is here to tell the story of our people in this war.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE:

Michelle Malkin has returned from Iraq, here’s a sample:

There’s nothing glamorous or romantic about these missions. No one will make a movie about our men and women in uniform engaged in the tedious, painstaking business of moving Iraq toward stability and governability. But if the war is to be won—if security is to be established and the foundations of a civil society bolstered—this is ground zero. The troops I met ask only three things of their fellow Americans back home: time, patience, and understanding of the enormous complexities on the ground.

In Washington, counterinsurgency theory (COIN) is a neat, elite intellectual abstraction. Since coalition forces simply can’t catch and kill every insurgent lurking in the populace, the theory goes, it’s up to the military to persuade the Iraqi people to turn on the insurgents, join the political process, and help themselves. (See also the Patriquin Powerpoint and The Theory of Counterinsurgency in Six Easy Paragraphs.) At FOB Justice–former headquarters of Saddam Hussein’s ruthless military intelligence unit, the site of the dictator’s execution by hanging, and home to the Dagger Brigade 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division–COIN is a vivid, hands-on reality fleshed out.

Here, a task force of brainy commanders, brawny patrol officers, courageous Arab-American interpreters, wizened trainers and intel gatherers, baby-faced convoy drivers, and grim-humored gunners attempts to put President Bush’s “winning hearts and minds” idealism into daily practice.

Go read the whole thing. Being informed on the Iraq War is possible, we simply have to bypass the media. For most of us - that’s a foregone conclusion on any subject.