Iraqi Soccer, cheerleaders and the Civil War

It's been very quiet in recent days. So quiet, in fact, that one would hardly think there's a war on. At least around these parts. Nonetheless, that doesn't mean the place has gotten entirely safe. Forget the insurgency, an entirely new danger faces us: Iraqi Soccer.

Last night, the Iraqi national Soccer team faced its biggest challenge yet. The team, whose dramatic rise to greatness despite the war and violence, faced a team that on paper should have destroyed them: China. And as they have done so often before, the Iraqi team rose to the challenge and defeated the Chinese in a stunning upset.

I was at work at the time this happened, and the first I knew was when an Army Sergeant came into the office.

"I nearly got shot this morning," he said.

"Really?" I asked. "Where were you."

I thought he'd been on a patrol in West Rashid or Karkh.

"In my trailer. Sleeping."

Yes folks, Iraqis know how to throw a party. In perfect East Houston fashion, their ubiquitous way of celebrating victory or weddings or just about anything is to raise their guns in the air and fire away. Thus, somewhere probably a mile beyond our wall, some excited Iraqi soccer fan stuck an AK-47 into the air and let loose a torrent of metallic exuberation. Miles away, the sergeant was sleeping in his room when a loud slapping sound echoed across the room. He woke up briefly, decided he imagined it, and went back to sleep.

Unfortunately, another soldier not far away was not so lucky, and got a bullet through his shoulder. Not a life-threatening wound this time, but stray rounds have been known to kill. There was one at the gym a few months back. A guy sleeping in a tent. One soldier was hit on a treadmill and another in the shower. Fortunately those two lived.

But, so far as I know, the minor wound in the shoulder was all we got courtesy of the Iraqi soccer team. Nonetheless, the MPs took precautions and went trailer to trailer to ask if there were any injuries. That was when they woke up the Sergeant in our story. He answered the door, said that they were fine, then turned on his lights. Little chunks of the ceiling were strewn across the room, and there, in perfect condition, a sharply-pointed brass 7.62 round lay on the floor. It was this he later showed to me at work.

It was rather bizzarre that the bullet was not deformed. Normally, when a bullet strikes something - anything - it changes shape from a point to a kind of mushroom-like shape. That's what happened to the bullet that Maj. Q, my boss found, earlier this week.

"I walk the exact same route home every day, without fail," he said. "And then, yesterday afternoon, as I walked home, I found this."

He produced another round - also a 7.62 AK-47 round. Although this was flat and mashed, with the brass jacket pealed away to expose the silvery lead beneath it. Maj. Q said he was going to try to get it home to show his kids.

"Not much of a war story," I said. "You need to spice it up. Tell them that you dodged it."

"That wouldn't be true," he said.

"Of course it's true," I replied. "You just dodged it by 6 hours."

He thought this was funny and put it into our growing quote book.

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Why do I always miss the cheerleaders?

This is becoming a major annoyance for me, and is seriously hurting my morale. I arrived in country about two days after the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders were here. I saw pictures, but it's not the same thing. And then, the Washington Redskins Cheerleaders arrived, and I was at work and couldn't get away. Leaving for lunch, I was barely out the door as they climbed aboard their bus and drove off.

Earlier this week, it was a new batch. I think it was the Philadelphia Eagles cheerleaders. The guy who told me about it wasn't quite sure. He seemed to recall every detail but that. Anyway, they came to visit us at midnight, which was great because the night shift always gets short shrift. Unfortunately, I arrived at work 30 minutes past midnight, and well, they were gone.

Yesterday, however, I arrived at lunch to see several very nice looking young women in the dinining facility. Wearing matching black outfits, they were signing autographs. I stopped by the table on my way out and discovered that they were in fact the dance team for the Seattle Supersonics. They gave me an autographed picture, but their performance wasn't until 8 p.m. that night. When I'm sleeping of course. And on another base down the road.

Typical

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So, knowing I couldn't make the dancers' performance, I walked over to the MWR center to go use the Internet. Out of curiosity, I poked my head into the little movie theater we have here. The movie - which was just about halfway through - was "Gods and Generals." It's a very historically accurate - if slow developing Civil War drama, and I've seen it many times. I dropped onto a couch - it's been two months since I sat on a couch - and watched the last part of it.

The most intense part of the movie encompasses the Battle of Fredricksburg, which was fought between the Union and Confederate Armies from Dec. 11-15, 1862, and the Battle of Chancellorsville, which followed it.

It was interesting, as I sat there with the other soldiers, wondering who in the room would have been fighting on the opposite sides. One guy, based on his accent alone, would probably have been wearing a blue uniform. I myself, and a few others, would probably have been wearing grey. And we would have stood there in rows and loaded and fired muskets at each other. But that was the past, and today we wore the same uniform and serve in the same army.

The other thing that struck me, while watching this, was how vast a difference in the nature of war had occurred, and how little perspective Americans have about it. At Chancellorsville, the Union Army had in one battle in one small town in Virginia almost as many soldiers as the U.S. Army has today in the entire country of Iraq. The Confederates, whose forces were half as large, actually won both battles.

And the total casualties in those two battles (less than a week of fighting) were actually greater than all of the casualties in Iraq. After five years of fighting here, 4,000 Americans have died. In those two battles alone, 5,000 Americans died. And those were just two of dozens of brutal battles in that war.

It is true, as Robert E. Lee said at Fredricksburg, that "war is so terrible." But the scope and nature have changed dramatically. Back then, 2 out of every 100 Americans died in a war. Today, that number is barely 1 in 100,000.

An interesting, statistic. But in the interest of leaving on a happy, optimistic note, as good as that is, it's getting even better today. Whatever you're seeing reported in the news about the vast improvements of the surge, let me just add this: It's better than anybody is reporting. In fact, I've noticed about a month or two lag in media coverage. So if they're saying back home that things are getting better, let me just assure you that things are getting incredibly better. Not perfect, of course, but far better than I myself (an optimist, even) would have ever predicted nine months ago, when I arrived.

Even then, attacks were headed down, as the effects of the surge and some new counter-insurgency strategies began to take hold. But the drop in violence - as big in terms of qualitative, as much as quantitative, violence - has been stunning to behold. And there came that Eureka moment when the Iraqi Army actually realized that all that painstaking training their American counterparts had given them works. Suddenly, rather than going into battle hesitantly and fearful, they started going into battle ready to rock and roll.

The writing is on the wall, and though the terrorists will continue to attack, and continue to kill (mostly innocent Iraqis who get in their way), they no longer have the ability to control the outcome of the fight.

So, with my time here coming to a close in just over two weeks, I can look back with immense pride on what we've accomplished. The great majority of the credit, of course, goes to those hard warriors who load up, sector up and get out into the thick of it every day. If I've done something to help them do their job better - or give them the tools they need to do so - then that was my mission, and that's what I will wear with pride for the rest of my life.