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Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen makes the typical un-forced error so common among columnists and the chattering class--taking one statement and conflating it to a generalization without the context of time, place and mission.
There is no substitute for spending a lot of time outside the wire with the young men who fight the war in Iraq to understand the context.
Without the context of time, place and mission, especially mission, the statements of a Soldier or Marine are horribly misunderstood.
Qundlen, after making a sidways comparison of U.S. service members to Nazis, takes one report of one unit and generalizes it to the military as a whole.
But after reading the 60 Minutes report Quindlen uses as the facts to support her thesis, I was not surprised the Soldiers felt the way they did.
The mission of the Iowa National Guard unit Qundlen cites was convoy security. The unit had one of the most dangerous, repetitive and isolated jobs in Iraq. Driving up and down roads with convoys of semi-tractor trailers from base to base.
The only job worse than convoy security would be main supply route security--driving up and down the roads the convoys move on looking for and deterring the planting of IEDs.
The units with these missions are usually very, very isolated from what is happening around them. They rarely get out of their vehicles. They rarely interact with the public and take part in zero offensive or stability operations.
They are in fact quite possibly the worst people to ask about Iraq unless you want to know the evolving tactics of the insurgents to mine roads.
I know this because I have been with Marines on MSR security missions.
The last mission I went on in Iraq was with a Marine I'd met in 2005.
His unit patrolled the same road, every day. They never got off the road.
They did the same thing in 2006.
To him the war was one stretch of road, IEDs and culvert bombs.
To him the war was just a hamster wheel.
If I were to take his experience and generalize it to all of Iraq, even I would say it was time to pull the plug.
But, I have seen a lot more of the war than he has or will.
He has not seen residents of villages rise up against Al Qaida.
He has not seen villages where one gets the feeling the war is over and the coalition has won.
He has not seen markets in Baghdad come to life again and units roll up ranking members of Jaish al Mahdi (JAM) every week.
He has not seen the Iraqi police be aggressive against the insurgents.
To him, for the last two deployments, the war is one stretch of road.
For the members of the Iowa National Guard, their experience--largely in 2006--was of roads, not villages.
They were in Al Asaad in Anbar province when Ramadi was being cleared and now held by a mix of soldiers, Marines and Iraqi irregular forces--but they know little of it.
They were in Anbar when large swaths of the countryside were mobilizing against Al Qaida. But they did not see it because they were on the roads, not villages.
If I wanted to talk to a group of Soldiers or Marines who see the war as pointless the first place I would go to would be to units working on the roads.
If I wanted to talk to a group of Soldiers or Marines who see the war as being won I would head to the villages along the upper Euphrates.
Show me a unit that spends all their time in vehicles and I will show you a disgruntled unit.
Show me a unit where they spend their time on their feet and I will show you a more optimistic unit.
Show me a unit where just a week before they'd lost a friend and I will show you a unit ready to pull the plug.
Show me a unit that just captured a high value target or killed several bad guys in a firefight and I will show you a unit where just about everybody is ready to reenlist.
If I had the same mission as members of the Iowa National Guard featured by Pelley, I would sound a lot like them.
Their slice of the war, for all the danger involved, is rewarded only with monotony and more danger.
Which is why snap shots, especially of a unit doing one isolated type of mission, are the worst way to judge the war and the opinions of the troops.
"How is morale?" a friend asked me after I returned from Iraq.
"How is morale at the Bank?" I asked in return.
My friend thought for a moment, "So-so."
"And they are not being shot at, blown up, have to work in 110 degree heat seven days a week and live in a room with three other dudes. So, they ought to just pull the plug and give up on the business?"
He got the point. Everyone complains. But without the context of the complaint an over-generalization that drives policy would be the worst course of action.
Freedom isn't free...and neither is reporting from Iraq.
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