Honor a Soldier--Get It Right!
It is time to stop calling people traitors, cowards and losers who say that the war in Iraq is not going well—‘cause it ain’t. It is time to stop blaming them for the incompetence we are all witnessing. The Press is not just reporting bad news for the sake of reporting bad news. They are reporting bad news because there are too many officers with too many power point slides briefing too many higher ups asking permission from too many to allow the press to show the good things. Listen, the US Government controls Iraq and it should be controlling at least part of the message the press reports back to us--but it can not. It can not because once again they can not get out of their own way.
Our men and women have inoculated every child in Iraq. We have built over 3000 schools and Iraq is pumping oil at 97 percent capacity. But you would not know that. Johnnie and Jane Soldier are doing a great job, but the fact remains that it is easier to get a picture of a burning tank than it is to get an Army General or Colonel to allow the press anywhere near the good things going on.
Yes, some in the press--like the New York Times have an anti-war agenda--but much of the bad press situation comes from a piss poor effort on the part of the Department of Defense to get, what in reality, is mostly a good story—but—and here is the but...
The status quo is no longer acceptable: Over 880 murders have occurred in the last month in Baghdad and that does not including road side or suicide bombings. In addition, there have been over 700 attacks--on our forces--per week. That number is up by over 100 attacks per week from a year ago. That is not good. Better said, that is very bad.
Time for a lesson in warfare: Insurgencies are not won. They end when the other side stops fighting. The only way they will stop fighting is when we kill enough of them so that they decide fighting isn't worth it.
There are people who know how to do this--who have done it before. Settle down, this is not Vietnam. But if we don’t fix it now, the comparisons will be unavoidable and it will be very regrettable because it does not need to be that way. We need to get the experienced people involved now. We need to fire the people who are screwing this up--like Patraeus, Casey and Pete Pace. They wear the uniform they should know better than this. Put a Special Forces Captain in charge. This is what Special Forces guys are trained to do; it is time to set them loose and let them do their job.
As for Rummy, fire him if you want, it doesn’t really matter because he is a political appointee; he is what he is.
The fault is not just with the military--not by a long shot. The State Department and the CIA are rotating their men and women to Iraq for just 90 days. You can’t do anything in 90 days. You cannot unpack your bags, get used to the heat, the food or the dust storms in 90 days. You clearly cannot effectively spy in 90 days. Any organization that would think so little of the effort that they approve deployments for only 90 days is a leaderless, insipid and just plain stupid organization.
So, fire somebody. Put people who know the deal in charge. Kill the bad guys. Kill lots of them and kill them now. Get it right.
We honor our men and women in uniform, those serving out of uniform and those who have lost all and those who are missing parts of themselves by getting this right and more Iranians help the terrorists or another soldier dies because he or she does not have the right body armor because we did not care we dishonor them. Get it right! Fix it right now! Now means this very minute--not tomorrow, not after a meeting, not after breakfast, right damn now, damn it!
