Reading the New York Times article by seven non-commissioned officers in the 82nd Airborne earlier this week returned me to the late-1980s when I was a small-town radio talk show host.
It was early June, and I booked an old gentleman who had been in the Marine Corps, stationed on Midway when the famous battle for that small but strategic dot in the Pacific Ocean took place. With D-Day always getting the World War II glory around that time of year, I looked forward to shedding some light on the tide-changing aircraft carrier battle half a world away, and two years earlier.
So my guest comes into the studio, all ready to talk. I start the show, ask him some questions, and ... he knows nothing. Not a darn thing. They were told to expect an attack. They got attacked from the air. There was a bunch of damage. Nothing else happened. Let's just say that an interview I hoped would cover an entire hour was cut drastically short.
Well, anyone who knows anything about World War II history is aware that a heck of a lot else did happen, close to where that Marine was. My guest found out later, pretty much the same way we learned about it, by reading newspaper articles and books, and watching movies. There was no first-hand knowledge.
I've heard similar stories, about how troops knew all about what was going on with their unit, and very little about what was taking place around them.
Which brings me to the article in the New York Times. The experience of these writers has been in the Baghdad section of Sadr City, a teeming Shiite slum ruled by the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. This place has been, along with al-Anbar province, the toughest of nuts to crack for the U.S. military. So for them to have a negative view of conditions in Iraq, and a negative view of Iraq officials, is no surprise at all. But they have no sense whatsoever of the progress of the surge in Anbar and elsewhere, where some progress has been made. They probably don't understand the significance of the looming disaster in the southern port city of Basra, where the British are about to be run out of town.
The article is, however, very enlightening about the situation right where those soldiers are, and our military and political leaders should take note of what has been written. We're going to have to take out al-Sadr before this is over, and cut off his Iranian support. Given severe logistical constraints, such a thing is going to be extremely difficult.
The New York Times, as the media leaders of the anti-war left, presented the article to discredit the surge in the days ahead of a report by Gen. David Petraeus on the strategy's progress. It should discredit nothing. The comments of the writers should, however, be taken into consideration before any major moves are made right there in Sadr City.
