Letter from Iraq

Here is an excellent letter written by a Marine in Iraq, which I found through TimEllsworth.com. A lot of what the Marine complains about are the same things I griped about in my last job (and a lot isn't.) Call me an idiot ("Who is this idiot?"), but this helps persuade me that the situation there is better described as a post-war period than a war. Of course this does not mean men and women are not continually in jeopardy there, but the job we do in sealing the victory would progress better if we first acknowledged the victory. We need to adopt the attitude of Iraqi police recruits he describes: These guys' bravery and 'tenacity' is mind-boggling. The only issue I might take with the Marine's assessment would be paragraph six - I hear quite a bit about Ramadi and al-Anbar province on the news.

Anyway, if the U.S. is in this mission seriously, we need to remember that the post-WWII era in Europe lasted for 45 years. At the beginning it was very rough rooting out Fascist loyalists and your run-of-the-mill criminal activity (rent "The Third Man"; you won't regret it), and it remained tense through to the end because of Soviet-bloc opposition. It will be a long slog in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and anywhere else we end up, as new governments struggle to learn to crawl even after dictators fall in only a few weeks.