Assessing Iraq: Malkin and Preston Return From Iraq
Please read Assessing Iraq, at Hot Air and Back From Bagdad, at Michelle Malkin’s. The two of them spent the past week over in Iraq and both have wonderful pictures and some preliminary reporting! I’ll give you just a bit from each:
From Michelle:
There’s nothing glamorous or romantic about these missions. No one will make a movie about our men and women in uniform engaged in the tedious, painstaking business of moving Iraq toward stability and governability. But if the war is to be won”if security is to be established and the foundations of a civil society bolstered”this is ground zero. The troops I met ask only three things of their fellow Americans back home: time, patience, and understanding of the enormous complexities on the ground.
In Washington, counterinsurgency theory (COIN) is a neat, elite intellectual abstraction. Since coalition forces simply can’t catch and kill every insurgent lurking in the populace, the theory goes, it’s up to the military to persuade the Iraqi people to turn on the insurgents, join the political process, and help themselves. (See also the Patriquin Powerpoint and The Theory of Counterinsurgency in Six Easy Paragraphs.) At FOB Justice–former headquarters of Saddam Hussein’s ruthless military intelligence unit, the site of the dictator’s execution by hanging, and home to the Dagger Brigade 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division–COIN is a vivid, hands-on reality fleshed out.
Here, a task force of brainy commanders, brawny patrol officers, courageous Arab-American interpreters, wizened trainers and intel gatherers, baby-faced convoy drivers, and grim-humored gunners attempts to put President Bush’s “winning hearts and minds” idealism into daily practice.
From Bryan:
This post is mostly about mistakes. The troops didn’t sit down with us and tick off all the mistakes that they think we have made in Iraq to date, so what follows isn’t their gripe list being published under my name. They did answer our questions forthrightly and we learned much from interviewing them and just talking with them over chow and listening to their crosstalk in the Humvees. So this post is made up of my observations after seeing the war up close and following it from afar, including mistakes, fumbles and ways forward to win–and what victory actually looks like.
- Â No plan for the post war period.
- Â Leaving Iran alone.
- Â Pullbacks and soft failures. Leaving Moqtada al-Sadr alive
- Iraqi elections held too early.
- Misunderstanding the fundamentals.
- Assuming Iraq will conform only to unreasonable expectations which are based on ignorance of counterinsurgency warfare.
- Media misconduct and malpractice leading to flagging homefront morale.
Others blogging:
- Church and State
- Gun Toting Liberal â„¢ » Blog Archive » You and Michelle didn’t patrol [EXPLETIVE]
- Bill’s Bites
- Captain’s Quarters
- The War Of The Fleas at Conservative Times–Republican GOP news source.
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Michelle Has Landed>Â Sierra Faith
Time, Patience, Understanding>Â Jeremayakovka
Malkin Back From Iraq>Â JammieWearingFool
Quick hits>Â Don Surber
January 17, 2007 - 12:41 PM on January 17th, 2007
[...] Read Also: Michelle Malkin; Right Voices; Blue Crab Boulevard; Townhall Blog; Confederate Yankee; Captain’s Quarters; [...]
January 17, 2007 - 01:38 PM on January 17th, 2007
Welcome back, Michelle and Bryan!
Michelle Malkin has returned from her trip to Iraq, and so too has Bryan Preston, and both have quite a bit of research put together. Here’s the first of their video reports at Hot Air.
January 17, 2007 - 02:05 PM on January 17th, 2007
Peejz, I just read that you had been in Baghdad. If you ever come around again let me know. I will create a website and blog and leave a link.
CPT John Galt
January 17, 2007 - 02:45 PM on January 17th, 2007
No John, it was Michelle and Bryan..I just posted what they said, but if I did go over, you can be sure I’d hook up with you!:wink:
January 17, 2007 - 03:10 PM on January 17th, 2007
I feel foolish… kinda like a liberal when presented facts…:lol:
January 17, 2007 - 03:23 PM on January 17th, 2007
3. John, wrong feeling. A liberal presented with the facts soils himself and starts lying his way out of the corner he put himself in.
You just feel like an AZ voter who voted for McCain.
January 18, 2007 - 09:03 AM on January 18th, 2007
Malkin was on Fox & Friends this morning. She covered pretty much the same thing there as well.
January 19, 2007 - 12:49 PM on January 19th, 2007
A liberal presented with the facts soils himself and starts lying his way out of the corner he put himself in.
Then they have a number of techniques:
1. Change the argument: Well what about Bush? It’s all Bush’s fault! (or some other change of focxus.
2. Repeat the same blather that has already been refuted/debunked by the facts, as though that had never occurred. Like the secondhand smoke kills fraud. They couldn’t find any real science to support it, so they just kept repeating it over and over until it just became accepted as part of the popular (idiot) culture.
3. Assume their condescending uber intellectual persona and berate you for not accepting the “facts”, when the real facts do not support their position. San Francisco Liberal does this with the Global Warming argument. Actually, he uses a combination of techniques #1 and #3 on the GW argument.
There are more but these are all I have the patience to post right now.