A Grunt's Eye View of Iraq

Mario Loyola has a grunt's eye view of Iraq. While there is good news coming out of Iraq daily, there remains many pockets of the country where the news isn't always good. As teh soldier Loyola spoke to noted, corruption in the Iraqi police is rampant. The military is pretty good and getting better and the average Iraqi citizen wants to partner with Americans but lives in a state of constant fear.

Loyola notes that the war on terror will be fought on a long term, much like the Cold War was a long term war:

This young soldier has spent his tour of duty in one of the worst neighborhoods of Baghdad — ergo, one of the worst in Iraq — and it should come as no surprise that he is pessimistic. He doesn’t know what the generals know, what Americans are starting to find out: that across Iraq, soldiers like him are seeing a different picture than he is — a light at the end of the tunnel in some parts, a feeling that we’re winning in others — a palpable sense that we’ve turned the corner, that the defeat of our enemies here is becoming inevitable.

But this soldier’s stories seemed to me a salutary warning that America needs to focus on the task at hand and avoid the allure of soaring, unreachable goals. Among conservatives, “realists” long scoffed at the democracy-building mission, focusing instead on establishing security in Iraq. But even the seemingly limited goal of establishing security in Iraq is a bridge we don’t need to reach in order to complete our mission in Iraq. The war on terror may go on for decades, and the terrorists have made Iraq the central front.

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