One Medic's View of the War

[Animalmother]

I'm tired of hearing the media's skewed version, the politicians squabbling over what they read in a report, and the average ill-informed American ranting about things he knows nothing about.

I've been over here a couple of months now, and I've learned more about this country than a year's worth of watching CNN. I've sat in mission briefs with Colonels, talked with village elders, had tea with Sheiks, played with the kids. And I agree with the President. We need more troops and we need to take greater action.

There are 3 major factions here. The Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. The Shiites are in the majority, but Saddam was a Sunni, so he kept the Shiites in check. Everyone hates the Kurds, who are in the vast minority. The Kurds received the brunt of Saddam's murderous tyranny. Now that Saddam is gone, the Shiites have taken control of Baghdad. The largely peaceful Sunnis are now the victims of radical Shiite terrorism. So the young Sunni men, who can no longer go to work and support their families, do what all young men would do. They join the Sunni militia and battle the Shiites. And thus the country sits on the brink of civil war.

But this war is between them. They largely do not concern themselves with the U.S. troops. The insurgents who battle the Coalition Forces are from outside the country. And the biggest problem down here isn't the insurgents. Its the politicians. The local politicians. Even though the country is controlled by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, downtown Baghdad is controlled by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The Shiites follow al-Sadr and thus the Prime Minister does what al-Sadr says. Think of it as if a warlord controlled New York and blackmailed the President into diplomatic immunity.

When 1st Cav (mainly 2/5 Cav) came here in 2004, they took downtown Baghdad (known as Sadr City) by force. It cost many lives, but after a year, we held an iron grip on the largest insurgent breeding ground in Iraq. The insurgents were afraid of the Horse People, and rightfully so.

But when 1st Cav left, al-Sadr influenced the Prime Minister to kick out the Coalition forces from that area of Baghdad. He said the Iraqi military forces could hold the city. But all that happened was al-Sadr regained control of his city, and it is now a heavily guarded fortress.

A place where insurgents and terrorists can train and stockpile arms.

And we cannot go back in because the Prime Minister won't let us. Our hands are tied.

So where does al-Sadr get his backing? From Iran and Syria. Iran supplies him with money and Syria supplies the terrorists. The insurgents that battle the Coalition Forces are from Syria, Somalia and dozens of other places outside of Iraq. Iraq is literally a terrorist breeding ground. They have terrorist and sniper schools here. Why not?

They train by teaching them to attack the military forces here. And they have an endless supply of these training tools. They have factories in Sadr City to build bombs. Both Iran and Syria have openly proclaimed their number one goal in life is to destroy the great Western Devil and the little Western Devil (America and Britain). Iran wants to control Iraq to further this purpose. Al-Sadr will get to "run" the country and live like a king, but in reality Iran will pull the puppet strings. Iran will have access to thousands of radical Shiites who will do whatever al-Sadr tells them to. And Iraq will be used as a breeding ground for terrorism. Terrorism that will be targeted directly at America and Britain. The Iraq Study Group advised we should let Iran and Syria help with rebuilding? Bravo to President Bush for striking that idea down and vowing to keep those two countries out of Iraq.

So how do the Iraqi people feel about everything? Of course they don't want the Americans here. But they would far rather have us here than the Iranians. My platoon visited an average Sunni village on a patrol a few days ago. Their only source of income was to farm, as they could not go to the city to work for fear of violence. Many of the young men had already run off to join the militia for no other reason than to feed their families. They had no school or hospital near them and the community was dying. The village elder's granddaughter was very sick and I was able to treat her. Afterwards he invited me and my Platoon Leader to sit in his house and have tea with him, and we talked about the situation.

The people want peace. The Shiites kill the Sunnis because al-Sadr tells them to do so. The Sunnis fight back because they have no choice. They are glad Saddam is dead (Sunni or not), but do not want to replace him with another dictator in a politician's clothes (which is what al-Sadr will become). And they especially don't want Iran in charge. Many innocent Iraqis will die if this happens. These are the words that came out of the elder's mouth:

"We do not want America here, and America does not want to be here. But you cannot leave because the militias control the country. America must use the might of its giant army and sweep through, root out and destroy the militias. Then Iraq can be free and you can leave."

What appears to have happened within our diplomatic community, is that Prime Minister finally realizes that his days are numbered. If al-Sadr remains, he will be kicked to the curb. So hopefully he is about to allow us to reenter Sadr City, root out and destroy the enemy. A dramatic troop increase will allow us to do this. And the Horse People are back and ready to finish what they started over 2 years ago.

If leave now, it will be a failure for democracy. Iran will control Iraq and the end result will be more terrorist attacks on America. The American people don't want soldiers dying over here, but its better than American civilians dying over there. Do NOT forget 9/11. They will do it again. The moment we loosen our grip on the noose, they will do it again. And the only way to root out the evil here is to stop beating around the bush, increase troops and destroy the insurgents once and for all. The Iraqi government cannot do this on their own. The Iraqi security forces are inadequate for this task. We are the only ones who can stop al-Sadr.

http://www.military.com/forums/0,152...,00.html?wh=wh



Sounds like we're going after al-Sadr with the troop increase, and it should make sense now.

[[R-MOD]Bob_Marley]

makes sense to me. If they can knock off this al-Sadr character, suppress his malitia and prevent a new leader from coming to the fore, the prospects for a peaceful, democratic Iraq become much brighter.

[[R-MOD]dunehunter]

Last I heard, one of Al-Sadr's luitenants was arrested, so I hope that the coalition forces will do what they can to stop him now.

[dhimmi]

The "threat" of invading Iran is also a factor, along with the internal unrest in Iran that will help to make the troop surge a timely intervention.
But even with Sadr City under control, the terrorist types won't simply pack up and go to the Sudan to terrorise people.
We can be drawn down to minimal forces in a year or less but we will have to be ready to surge back in divisional strength for at least 5 years.
The locals, in Iran , Iraq and even Syria and getting tired of this and they no longer have the same stranglehold on their media they did even a decade ago.
When the average Arab realizes that people who sound like the Arab version of x3dChris aren't really telling the truth the local support withers.
But it won't end the extremist's will to fight.

[Top_Cat_AxJnAt]

HAAAAHaaaaaaaa LOL. GOd so simple, yet so funny! Good ones, both of them!

In a non forum situation it would have been like "ooo,*looks up and sighs* ttttt *Shackes head*" but here, your dodgy jkes bring smiles to my face!

[Ghostrider]

Avoid posting racist jokes.


-Ghost

[dhimmi]

Hunh >?

[danthemanbuddy]

My brother in law recently got redeployed to Iraq At Thanksgiving. He is a squad leader seargent Wall. He has a command humvee and is in charge of trucking, but his task has been changed many times.

He is now training the iraqi army. And to him it gets ridiculous at many points. Because they can leave at any time without any repercussion> They can join the militias with the weapon they were just provided, and now they are trained.

He says many soldiers like him just don't care about the politics anymore. They are ready to get the job done and just follow orders. But he can't change our tactics so all he can do is follow them.

One thing he told me that was pretty ridiculous was IEDS.
He got hit by 2 Ieds before, got wounded (minor), but he says its just crap.

Insurgents don't dig the holes anymore. They pay kids age 5-12 to dig the holes and get them to put the ied in.

But the bs part about it was that they couldn't shoot anybody digging a hole near the road, they could only shoot them if the IED was seen beign put into it.

But he said that changed and a whole lot less IEds were planted.

One idea lol quite ridiculous but could work would be a ghetto.
Like the warsaw ghetto. build huge walls around the area, get everyone into it, cleanse all the outside, police the inside... Ionno. What would hitler do...?
(DON"T TAKE THAT SERIOUS mods meaning nothing by it)

[dhimmi]

I think we have made a ghetto for terrorists.
It's called Iraq.
But it's more like a roach motel.
They check in but they don't check out.

[[R-MOD]Wasteland]

Ever seen the movie Uprising? Damn that's a good movie. To bad David Schwimmer's in it.