An aquaintance of mine recently returned from Army service in Iraq. I had an eye-opening conversation with him with regards to the goings-on in country. He did not serve in a "frontline" post but spent most of his time in the area of Bahgdad referred to as the "green zone." He does not know who coined that term but he said that it is really a misnomer. They had motar shells fired at their compound daily, not to mention the car bombings that took place a few weeks ago.
He also said that if things do not change, we are going to lose and he cited several reasons why. First, our forces are essentially hamstrung. The recent upring with Al-Sadr is a good example. He is holed up in a mosque, as the Muslims put it, a holy shrine, and the U.S. forces are essentially prevented from moving in for political fears regading damage to the site. He referred to this as losing with an asterisk. "Yeah we lost but we did not put in our best quarterback." His solution was to treat the mosques as what they are, buildings. The U.S. needs to get over this idea that we cannot touch these places and get in there and root out Al-Sadr and those of his ilk.
Second, we should not put any faith in the new "Iraqi Army." These men that have been put in the army and police forces are not serving or protecting the people that put them there. When a crisis happens, a car bomb for instance, while the general populace in the area go to help the victims, these Iraqi police and military forces are looting the stores. While they guard bridges and overpasses, if the insurgents were going to attack the area, they would not stand and defend but rather, let them destroy the bridge or use it as a chockepoint to attack the United States military. Essentially, they are more in the way the helping maintain the peace.
Thirdly, even the secure areas are no longer secure. This serviceman's comment was that a year ago, you could walk around the Baghdad and not have any problems. Today, you need to be in fear for your life. He said there were times that they were driving around the city and finding themselves in a traffic jam with their weapons ready wondering if they were a sitting target.
If the government and military do not reach some sort of accord with how to conduct this campaign and win, we could be looking at another failure by the United States in nation-building. We need to allow our troops to get into the fight and take out the militant leaders like Al-Sadr and to put down the insurgents by force. The quicker those that are hindering the peace process are taken out of the picture, the quicker real peace will return to Iraq and the governing council can get on with its job of rebuilding the country. As long as the insurgents are there, little to nothing will be accomplished.
This veteran did say that going in was a good thing. They are still digging and finding all kinds of things, even a jet buried intact in the desert. If Hussein could find the time to bury that, who knows what else if out there.