Support Our Troops!

09/30/2005

Paul Munnis

Never mind that Generals Casey and Abizaid are not on the same page as Donald Rumsfeld.

Never mind that fault can be found with their prior and present testimony in Washington.

Never mind the damned Washington politics either.

What we are seeing are two honest men having honest doubts and not afraid to admit it even though it is a painful thing to do in public and its humiliating too.

In Generals it is critical that they have time to appraise their sphere of operations and time to examine their minds and hearts and soul to see if they are going about their command responsibilities the right and best way they know how to and thus getting the intended results. And if they should find they need to make a change then good for them. That is what keeps American men and women alive. A goal that all of us support.

If the boss needs to be managed then so be it. They will take him on too. They know how to do that.

This is the loneliness of command. This is the agony of leadership. This is the soul’s moment when men are made and heroes are born. Leave them alone and let them work it through. Then support their decision. Encourage them not to give into politics but do what they must do to win the war.

We all know that the Iraqis are not cutting it as a self protection force nor as a force that can deal with insurgents or that can police their cities. The U.S. forces aren’t doing so hot themselves at this right now either.

It’s very hard to train forces in a combat zone. You take them out for a fire drill and they find themselves attacked before they are trained in fire discipline. This is not an easy job we are asking these guys to do. In fact, it’s damned near impossible when boss Rumsfeld doesn’t put enough boots on the ground because he has some damned thesis to prove about limited forces that comes before winning the war.

Make no mistake these guys have a jerk for a boss.

Then there is supposed to be a complimentary effort going on where the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people are being won and thus they boot the insurgents out of their city and refuse to support them. That makes the jobs of the troops, both American and Iraqi, a lot easier when it happens. It is not the Army’s job to win the hearts and minds of the people. They are the muscle of public policy. Political solutions are largely civilian activities that are marked by vast failure of their GOP bosses and those civilian operatives who have failed America. Generals won’t let that stop them though; they’ll just take it as a factor to deal with, and then move on.

So how are they going to pull it off?

Charlie Zea, an Army lifer who was part of the occupation forces in Berlin at the end of WWII made a modest suggestion that sounds like a darn good beginning to me. When American troops take prisoners, turn them over to the Iraqi’s to manage, guard, and imprison. “Round ‘em up and turn ‘em over. Move on.”

That gets Americans out of the POW abuse and torture business and it leaves us in a better position to refute the claims of al Qaeda that American troops are mean and nasty to Iraqi’s and that we hate all Arabs. It also makes for a different tone. “We are there to help you and not to control you.” It also forces the Iraqi’s to deal with their people.

Once the tone changes then the Iraqis will have a better sense of control and a better sense of destiny. As more and more responsibility is given to them, the burdens on U.S. troops will decline. Happiness for these Generals will be when they can withdraw their troops to border security duty.

So, let the Iraqi government members start to earn their pay. They must choose too, are the part of the problem or a part of the solution? If they choose to be a part of the problem, arrest them and turn them over to the Iraqi forces to deal with. Soon they will want courts and justice and rule of law else they’ll be hung by fellow Iraqi’s without a chance for a legal self defense. Watch how fast minority rights are then demanded in the Iraqi Constitution.

It sounds easy on paper but war is hell and these guys are standing at the very gates of hell. This is a time to support our troops and to give them the support that they need to manage their way through this idiot war of Bush’s.

Give them time to reflect.

Don’t throw tomatoes at their every doubt but instead help them with positive suggestions instead of calling them incompetent’s.

These are the best men we have and we need to really support them right now. Even Christ had agony in the garden. It created a mighty resolve that changed the world.