Even Baghdad is improving significantly, although it has a long way to go. We're just winding up the end of Ramadan, and it's been a lot better than it was last year. At that time, Iraq was still reeling from the bombing of the Samarra Golden Mosque, which inflamed passions - exactly what Al Qaeda wanted it to do.
Across the country, there have been widespread stories of tribes joining forces against Al Qaeda, and against the insurgency. Despite death threats, ordinary Iraqis are taking to the streets to battle insurgents as part of a kind of neighborhood crime watch (one can almost picture an Iraqi "McGruff the Crime Dog.").
As I returned to Baghdad earlier this month, the headline in the Stars and Stripes read, "Iraq death toll lowest in 14 months." Military casualties are down. Civilian casualties are down.
That isn't to say the war is won. Far from it. But it is a hugely positive trend that puts us in the best position we've been in for a couple of years.
But, of course, there are people who don't want that progress to continue, and no, I don't mean the Democrats. Last night, this group of folks decided to make a Ramadan statement - in my opinion, it was a desperate effort to get on CNN. As far as I know it, they didn't make the big splash they wanted, but they did make the AP:
Iraq: Attacks Kills 2 Soldiers
By KIM CURTIS – 1 hour ago
BAGHDAD (AP) —
Two members of the U.S.-led coalition force were killed and 40 others were
wounded in an attack at Camp Victory, a sprawling base near Baghdad's airport
that houses the headquarters of U.S. forces in Iraq, the military said
Thursday.
Those wounded in the rocket or mortar attack included two "third
country nationals," meaning they were neither American nor Iraqis. Most troops
stationed at Camp Victory are American but other coalition soldiers are based
there. No further details on the attack were immediately released.
Camp
Victory and other U.S. bases in Iraq have frequently come under fire, but
attacks with such a large number of casualties are rare.
On Sept. 11, one person was killed and 11 were wounded in a rocket attack. The U.S. military said a 240 mm rocket provided to Shiite extremists by Iran was used in that attack.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gkx-3oYeFwuWKCusr2jrojs98w8wD8S6UIR80
For me, the news didn't come from any wire service, but in a more dramatic way. It came as I was sleeping in my trailer last night:
"Whump." A deep, indescribable sound. Not like the high-pitched, treble-like Hollywood explosions, which are all gas, flames and show. But a dark, bass-like, earthy sound, which you felt travelling both through the air and the ground simultaneously.
I woke up. I had earplugs in my ears, as it happened, since my neighbors had been playing their T.V. too loud at 3 p.m. when I had gone to sleep. I checked the clock. It was near 9 p.m.
"Whump, whump."
I sat up. In Baghdad, you hear explosions not all the time, but fairly frequently. They're not all bad, because sometimes it's our soldiers finding hidden weapons or IEDs and blowing them up in a controlled setting. Often, you never know, and go about your own business as blithely uncaring as a stroll through a field in Texas during dove season, when the neighbors are shooting shotguns off in every direction.
You know when they're close and when they aren't. These were not close close, but I could tell they were on base somewhere. Perhaps a half mile away, perhaps farther. Certainly, not as large and not as close as the one I heard on Sep. 11. Of course, I had heard that one passing over my tent, and could guess where it was coming from and going to. Here, I had no such idea. It could be aimed at a specific point, fired wildly in hope of a lucky shot, or it could be a creeping barrage that could move away from me or towards me.
"Whump..."
I groggily sat up. I switched my flashlight on by my bed and let it shine on the wall. Then, still half asleep, I reached under my bed for my body armor, and pulled it out. I put it on, then fell back on the bed, still dog-tired after a very long day. Then I grabbed my helmet and put that on.
And then, with a calm, unconcern which I guess I should find odd, but don't, I went back to sleep. Or at least rested there, knowing that wearing my body armor in my trailer - which is surrounded by concrete barriers - is about as safe as I could be.
I guess the bunkers nearby are safer, but in order to get to them, you have to cross open ground. That is not recommended during a barrage. The bunkers are meant for people who are out walking, biking, or going to the latrines, who just happen to be caught outside when an attack by indirect fire comes in suddenly.
So I stayed in my trailer. After only a couple of minutes, the barrage was over. I later found out that I had slept through the first five minutes of it, and only woke up after a few rounds came closer to my location. Not hearing an all-clear call on the loudspeakers - sometimes it can be hard inside a building - I waited for a few minutes, then took off my armor, rolled it off the bed, and went back to sleep.
Oddly enough, I experienced both of the attacks mentioned in the story above, and for the entire 18 days I was back in the U.S., nothing significant happened at Victory. The one from Sep. 11, I already wrote about in an earlier post. As for the news story, as far as I know, it's fairly accurate in the details.
To someone uninitiated, it sounds pretty hairy, perhaps, but that's not the way to look at it. We have a massive base here - larger than many small towns back home. The enemy hides in a metropolis that surrounds us on three sides and can hide anywhere. And yet, this is the best they can do? A sudden, cowardly strike, after which they certainly jumped into their bondo-colored 1978 Datsuns in a style reminiscent of the "Dukes of Hazzard" and high-tailed it before the Americans could come and introduce them to the martyric wonders of a Hellfire missle. The 300 Spartans, these are not.
Their attacks are only somewhat coordinated, and when it comes down to it, whether or not they're successful - and how successful - relies mostly on luck. As one civilian contractor put it to a female Air Force Sergeant rattled by the experience - "You could step out into the street and get hit by a General's car."
This place reminds me a lot of a college campus. Put in that context, and equated to Virginia Tech, if you spread out the VT casualties over an entire year, it is actually more dangerous than Victory. In that context, the wimpy, pathetic attempt at creating an End-of-Ramadan spectacular seems puny. Tragic as the death of two people and the wounding of others seems, put in the context of the larger mission, it will not derail the successes we are starting to see here.
But that's not the image the media wants to sell. They, like dogmatic adherents to some ancient cult of moon worship, refuse to see the objective reality in a clear, sober, scientific way. They want this to be Vietnam, even though the truth is, we'd have to stay in Iraq for the rest of my life and 30 years beyond it (at current casualty rates) and we still wouldn't catch up to that war.
The truth is, great things are going on here, and American troops continue to do their work every day despite the insurgency. Each day we are joined by more and more Iraqi Police, and while some of them may not live up to ideal standards, the majority - joined each day by volunteer groups of civilians - are fighting alongside us and making big contributions.
More and more Iraqis are starting to get a disease called Hope. It is a strange illness. The symptoms may ebb and flow, but given the right conditions, the germ will flourish. It can also be a highly contagious one, with potentially surprising results.
We've seen such hope before, and been disappointed. It sprang up in 2005 after the elections, only to be stripped away by one random act of violence in Samarra - an act of ill fortune, one might almost say, as it was totally in contrast to all of the trends. But those trends, while delayed, can returned cloaked with the mantle of inevitability if hope spreads far enough.
Already, we're seeing the seeds. Samarra was bombed again this year. The result? Practically nothing. Whereas fearful Iraqis in 2005 mistook Samarra for the beginnings of Civil War, we saw a different result this year. Realistic, righteously angry Iraqis today recognize such attacks for what they are: A desperate gamble by a group of child-murdering, head-chopping, evil thugs, who would sacrifice their own kind, spilling Arabic blood by the truckload - in order to prevent the spread of the one thing that can defeat them more than all the weapons of any army.
The spreading, benevolent virus of hope.
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