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An Iraq to be Proud of

Mar-22-2004 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT , Iraq News

An editorial that briefly mentions the Stryker Brigade.

[Link to Full Article]
By Andrew Apostolou

One year after Coalition forces began the liberation of Iraq, there is a rush to judge how the U.S.-led project of creating a democratic society is faring. Too many commentators set unfair standards, refusing to acknowledge that Iraq is a failed state with little record of successful government, located in the intolerant and repressive Islamic Middle East, not democratic Scandinavia. Viewed in context, Iraq is a success, although not an unqualified one. Above all, nobody who has seen the torture chambers and the destroyed Kurdish villages, can call the war a "catastrophic mistake."

Whatever one's view of the case for war, the case for continuing to assist the people of Iraq in their attempt to build a truly free society is all but unanswerable. For those who supported the war, and who understood the immensity of the task ahead, the next step must be to convince their electorates in the Coalition countries that we must persevere. Those who opposed the war, claiming that the U.S. case was simply lies, should be at the forefront arguing for a long-term commitment to ensure that innocent Iraqis are compensated for the alleged follies of the U.S. and its allies. [...]

Similarly underestimated has been the postwar performance of the U.S. military. The controversy over how many U.S. troops are needed in Iraq has overshadowed the fact that no other army could have performed so many missions — counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, policing, economic and political reconstruction — so well. What is striking is not how many troops are needed, but how much they manage to accomplish. There are just 200 U.S. soldiers from a civil-affairs battalion in the whole of Iraq Kurdistan. The 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, equipped with the new U.S. Army combat vehicle, the Stryker, has replaced the entire 101st Airborne in the Arab nationalist stronghold of Mosul, a unit four times its size. But then, the critics of the U.S. military have learned nothing since Vietnam. By contrast, the U.S. military cannot stop learning since Vietnam and is ever keen to adapt and change.


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