Letter from the front

We soldiers who serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, even those of us who are not banging down doors on patrols, do feel a little bitter and alienated from the rest of you. Especially when you complain about little things. You are perfectly safe and have 18 brands of toothpaste to choose from. Your schools and buses are not blowing up everyday, you are not being mortared by night, you aren't spending parts of everyday trying to calculate if gunfire is being aimed AT you, and if so, how far away it is. We watch and experience these things every day. We come home, and people see us in uniform, and sort of look the other way. It ain't what it used to be.

General Petraeus is rock star to us. He calls it like it is, acknowledges our hard work and sacrifice. He knows we might not succeed, that we will be in more danger for longer tours in country, and that many of us will die in the process. But his honesty and inspiration are enough to keep us going. When he says that more commitment is needed, and more over time, however, I hope that means more will be asked of the average American than an extended shopping spree.

But even after Iraq, we have a long way to go. Especially since the current administration doesn't think too highly of diplomacy. I will go no further down that road.

LTC Yingling's comments were published in an unofficial journal which openly states that its purpose is free and open discourse. He has a few good points. Conformity and loyalty and supremely important in the armed forces, ESPECIALLY in the higher ranks. Us juniors at the bottom of the heap can only cause so much damage by insubordination. But at the top, it risks everything below breaking down. Inexcusable in war or peacetime. The Lieutenant Colonel may well suffer for his words. But I hope that they will be heeded anyway. The loyalty must not extend past the point of moral courage.

We have, as a nation, entrusted a great deal to General Petraeus. Let him play it out for another six months. Things are not going to work out perfectly to our advantage. A stable government in Iraq will likely NOT be a great power-sharer. The most likely outcome: it will be a Shia-dominated Iran-friendly government which will curtail sharply the civil liberties of its minority citizens (of a necessity, as the Sunnis will continue to cause mayhem until we withdraw, and then will tone things down but still cause damage on a regular basis.) If it can do this without killing or openly persecuting very many of them, I think we will have to take it, and hand power over to it, and go home somewhat gracefully. We may very well have to settle for stability only slightly better than Saddam's regime. Because I don't see partition working out peacefully. Read up on the split of India and Pakistan sometime. And I don't foresee these people willingly choosing to compromise.

My heart goes out to those Iraqis who helped us, and who have fled Iraq for their lives, and who wait in refugee camps for someone to take them in. Our government has shown no signs of being willing to do this.