Getting the news out about the good in Iraq

Jim Golby:

I'm sick of hearing about all the horrible things that happen in Iraq without ever hearing about any of the good ones. That's not because horrible things don't occur here every day; they do. I've witnessed far more death and sadness than I wish anyone ever had to see. And it's not because I believe in some left-wing media conspiracy. If I'm affiliated with a political party at all, I honestly can't remember which one it is.

Rather, I'm sick of hearing about all the horrible things that happen in Iraq because I've been deployed here for more than 24 months since this war began, and I think I have a story to tell that's heroic, maybe even noble. It's not my story. In fact, I'm quite average, and I'm certainly not noble. But I've been blessed to serve with some amazing officers, noncommissioned officers and soldiers who have sacrificed another 15 months away from their families -- and, for once, produced something that I don't think looks all that bad, even in this desolate country.

Over the last six months, I've served at a large U.S. base in Iraq. My soldiers and I have been responsible for securing the area around the main entrance. We've played a major role in protecting thousands of soldiers and civilians who reside on the base. That's a significant accomplishment in itself, even though it's not sexy, and it has required a lot of discipline and dedication from my troops to do it so well.

But this past summer, we accomplished something else that seems to me almost unequivocally good.

In April, I began working with a group on an initiative that the U.S. government calls the IBIZ. As adept as most of us in the military are at deciphering acronyms that would befuddle the average man, we couldn't figure this one out. I think my first sergeant guessed closest, hypothesizing that it stood for "Iraq's Big-Ass Iguana Zoo." Unfortunately, IBIZ involves no arboreal lizards. It stands for "Iraqi Business and Industrial Zone."

This is an initiative intended to give Iraqi companies better access to U.S. contracts, establish security to let Iraqi companies develop, and train individual Iraqis in skills such as carpentry, plumbing and electrical work. It consists of a contracting office, two Iraqi industrial plants -- one for producing concrete and the other for crushing rock into gravel -- alongside a shipping and receiving yard and a skills training area. It also has the potential to save the U.S. government a significant amount of money by using cheaper Iraqi labor for many jobs usually performed by other contracted foreign nationals.

...

In the first month after the contracting office opened in June, the Iraqi contracts in the province jumped by more than 20 percent and nearly $4 million. Villagers watched two Iraqi-owned plants go up in a semi-secure area in less than two months, grabbing several enormous contracts that typically would have gone to better-positioned Turkish firms. And 35 residents from four small villages received apprenticeships for on-the-job training as carpenters, plumbers and electricians, jobs that provide lunch and a decent salary by Iraqi standards.

Now, when we tell them to expect an additional 85 jobs this winter when we expand the IBIZ skills training program to include welders, small-engine mechanics and air conditioner repairmen, Iraqis are more likely to believe us, even though it might be a different "us" after my unit rotates out of theater.

I'm the one who receives the glowing appreciation and the e-mail invitation to lunch from an Iraqi contractor in broken English for what we've done with IBIZ, but my soldiers are the heroes. And they deserve the credit.

...

Here are some remarks sent to me recently by the Iraqi who owns one of the industrial plants:

"We and each honorable Iraqi should not forget each drop of blood that the US military dropped it for our sake to put us in right way to life and we should know that we owe much for the US people."

...

Liberals are so desperate to lose the war in Iraq that they are willing to ignore the successes we have achieved through the efforts of our investment in troops and new infrastructure for Iraq. What these guys are accomplishing in spite of the liberals is really heroic. It would be a real betrayal to let the losers prevail and give al Qaeda a victory it has not earned in Iraq.

Yet tht is what anti war Democrats have worked hard to accomplish for the past year, and just when it appears that the surge is successful and efforts like this one are achieving results liberals are trying the indirect approach by alienating our ally in turkey to make it even hard to keep logistics working in Iraq. fighting the evils of liberalism is a constant battle, just like the one against al Qaeda.