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There's No Vacation for Our Troops in Iraq
By Joseph L. Galloway
McClatchy Newspapers
Thursday 26 July 2007
We're hard upon the dog days of August. Members of the U.S. Congress and the
Iraqi parliament will soon slither away to the shade of cooler rocks, and President
Bush will no doubt head off to Crawford to take his frustrations out on some
brush with a chainsaw.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, the 60,000 American combat troops who daily patrol the
most dangerous streets and roads in the world will carry on fighting, dying
and bleeding in the broiling sun where temperatures nudge the 130-degree mark
and 40 pounds of body armor and Kevlar helmet plus weapon and ammunition weigh
more with every step an Infantryman takes.
The politicians in Washington and Baghdad will take their summer breaks, happy
to postpone any further thought of Iraq at least until September, when the U.S.
commander Gen. David Petraeus makes his progress report on the American troop
surge to Congress, as though that may make some difference in how much longer
this agony is going to continue.
Has anyone noticed that virtually every one of the players, political and military,
have already begun chipping away at the September milestone? That, shock and
horror, they begin to talk of the urgent need for American troops to remain
in Iraq at the present level of 160,000 or maybe even more until 2009?
The Democrats in Congress - most of whom seem to be running for president
- seem content to await further developments. The Republicans, especially
those up for re-election in 2008, are wearing out the knees of their $4,000
suits praying for some miracle to remove Iraq and assorted other administration
disasters from the voters' minds. The President has gone back to talking about
his impossible dream of "victory" in a war that can't be won with
the tools he's applying in the place where he's applying them.
The Iraqis bide their time and dream, as ever, sweet dreams of bloody revenge
and communal slaughter and laugh at the to-do list of impossible American benchmarks.
We talk of Iraqi "national" goals while the Iraqis talk of old, dark
tribal and sectarian goals and we pass in the night like so many camel caravans.
The foreign jihadist suicide bombers flow in to take their turns at the wheel
of a cargo of plastic explosives, old artillery shells and scrap iron to murder
the innocents who've gone to market or the bus station or even to school. The
shadowy militias of the Shia - whom we've empowered by visiting the blessings
of democracy on a feudal society - kidnap and kill their Sunni neighbors
and, for good measure, daily lob mortar shells into the American Green Zone
in Baghdad.
Among them all, targets for all, American troops move in a desperate, hopeless
attempt to quiet the slaughter and give peace a chance in a place where it has
none. Day by day, the toll of those killed and wounded rises like the temperatures
in August, and for what?
There aren't enough American troops at their home bases, resting, refitting
and re-training after their second or third combat tours, to replace those now
in Iraq and Afghanistan come next spring. Not to worry. We can just extend their
new 15-month-long tour of duty in Hell to 18 months or maybe even 24 months.
After all they're volunteers - the half a percent of Americans who serve
and sacrifice while the rest of us obey a President's orders and go shopping
and lay about the splendid beaches in August.
It's their blood that stains the hands of politicians who are vacationing when
they should be working to bring this insane war to an end, bring those American
troops home from Iraq and redirect their energies toward Afghanistan and neighboring
Pakistan where the real enemy, the real al Qaida, plots real attacks on Americans
at home and abroad.
There's no vacation break for our troops this August. Only another day, another
week, another month on another patrol on an impossible mission in a war that
their commander-in-chief and his men expected to be over, and indeed declared
over, four years and four months ago.
"Mission Accomplished," that banner draped across an aircraft carrier
crowed. A "cakewalk," one of them predicted.
Have a nice vacation all you politicians, and by the way, keep those bloody
hands hidden. You wouldn't want to frighten the children on the beach.
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