What the troops think about their mission in Iraq

Red States' Jeff Emanuel is in Iraq talking to the troops and his interviews have a ring of truth.

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One notable person I spoke with was in transit back to Iraq after spending time in Germany recovering from wounds. This young officer, a captain, had been in Iraq for three weeks when he was called to respond to an EFP attack on a humvee that had killed two soldiers and grievously wounded a third (breaking both of his femurs). Upon arriving at the scene to do his job, he was struck in the upper arm by a sniper’s bullet. The .308 round passed completely through his arm between the biceps and the shoulder, and struck a companion in the stomach. The tow truck which went to recover the injured personnel and the destroyed humvee was also hit by an EFP en route to the scene, and both occupants were also killed.

Read on . . .

“I didn’t know where the shots were coming from,” he said, “and it’s not like we could fire back. All we could do was take cover behind the wreckage and hope to be rescued.”

The young officer and his companions were eventually recovered, and were evacuated to a combat hospital before being transported to Germany for longer-term medical attention.

Who was this young officer, you ask, and why couldn’t he “fire back”? He was a chaplain – an official noncombatant. He had hustled to the scene to administer last rites to the soldiers killed in the attack.

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Another remarkable conversation was shared with a bespectacled captain of infantry, who was on his second tour in Iraq and had been here since just before Gen. Petraeus’s confirmation as the new head of MNF-I. We spoke at length about the war, and about the differences between his first tour and now. I asked what he thought about the mission in Iraq, and what he thought the prospects for success were. Gazing pensively at the ground, he took a moment to collect his thoughts, and said, “Well, politically, staying here probably isn’t the best decision.” He added that, given the situation at home, “winning here seems less possible all the time, even though we’re now doing what it is we probably should have been doing all along.” Moving on from that moment of near despair, he paused and glanced up, looking earnestly at me through his thick, military-issue glasses, and said, “There’s not a single one of my soldiers who doesn’t look at the neighborhood we’re in, look at the children there, and not want to do whatever they can to give these kids as bright a future as possible. We want to finish this job, and we know we can do it.”

The knowledge that the American military can win this fight appears to be shared by the vast majority of the soldiers here (and it was expressed by every one that I talked to). This doesn’t mean that they enjoy being here – not at all. “This place sucks,” said one soldier. “Sand sucks. I’m exhausted, and I miss home.” Though these latter sentiments are as common and as pervasive as the formerly expressed confidence, they should be taken for what they mean, not twisted to suit an anti-war agenda. Living somewhere away from home for twelve to fifteen months at a time, living in conditions that aren’t exactly five star resort-esque, eating bad food, going a long time between getting showers and clean clothes, and having an opportunity to be killed virtually every day is an unpleasant situation, and can quickly grind people down.

“On camera, the soldiers are very upbeat, and say just the right things,” said a foreign embedded reporter with whom I spoke. He continued:

They say, ‘We’re here for democracy, to help the Iraqi people,’ and all of that stuff. Off camera, they still believe it, but the demeanor is changed. They are extremely tired. They can handle fighting every day if they have to, because they know in a fight they will always win. But most of it is not fighting. It is doing many other jobs, and it is always having danger. Driving roads and being hit with IEDs in the same place three days, they know it is just a matter of time before it happens to them again. They can’t trust the Iraqis – IEDs were found by the bomb squad 200 meters from an Iraqi checkpoint three times in one week. They are just exhausted.

An Army NCO with fifteen years in acknowledged that “mistakes have been made” to this point, but pointed to the biggest one as being the perceived tying of the soldiers’ hands by the bureaucrats, instead of letting them act with force against those who cause violence – the only currency which many people who carry out such acts understand.

“I don’t think that any of us Americans or even any Westerners can understand the culture here of ‘you kill somebody, I kill somebody in retaliation,’ and on and on,” said an Army Specialist. “While we can keep working to secure the place, it’ll take a lot more time to do, and leaving will just create a vacuum and leave chaos here.”

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There is much more. It is too bad the Democrats do not care about what these guys are saying. That they would pull the rug out from under them is a sad comment on the triumph of bad politics over high purpose and effort. It is clear that the people closest to the situation in Iraq do not believe that their efforts are in a hopeless cause. Aren't they in a better position to decide whether they have lost the war?