Perceptions from Iraq. A soldier's view by Diana West.

Back on january 5th, Diana West wrote a great three part article
on the surge in Iraq, and whether it was a success or not. I will let
you draw your own conclusions. Ms West then follows this three
part column with a letter from a soldier stationed in Iraq. She asked
 his persepective and was shocked by his answers. As she notes,
his soldier's answers will rock everyone, liberal, conservatives,
Islam o lovers and those who hate the war, any war. Her three
part series will be posted first then the soldier's perspective.

From the Brussels Journal



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Was the Iraq "Surge" a "Success"? The Answer in
Three Parts
Diana West


The following series of three columns examines the impact of the Iraq
 "surge," widely considered a success roaring enough to be replicated
 in Afghanistan. Since it ran in papers across the country over the last
three holiday weeks, I thought I'd put them all together here for the record.




The "Surge" and "Success," Part 1



The main reason the "surge" in Afghanistan is on is because
the  conventional wisdom tells us the "surge" in Iraq "worked."

The problem is, the Iraq surge did not work. Yes, the U.S. military
perfectly executed its share of the strategy -- the restoration of
some semblance of calm to blood-gushing Mesopotamian society
-- but  that was only Step One. The end-goal of the surge strategy,
Step Two was always out of U.S. control -- a fundamental flaw.
Step Two was up  to the Iraqis: namely, to take the opportunity
afforded by U.S.- provided security (see Step One) to bring
about both "national reconciliation" and, as the powers-that-were
further promised, the emergence of a U.S. ally in the so-called
war on terror.

Step One worked. Step Two didn't. The surge, like an uncaught
touchdown pass, was incomplete. The United States is now walking
off  the battlefield with virtually nothing to show for its blood, treasure,
time and effort. In fact, another "success" like that could kill us.

Take the state of post-surge U.S.-Iraq investment lately in the news.
Remember "blood for oil," the anti-war mantra of the Left? "Blood not
for oil" is more like it. Not only did Paul Wolfowitz's prediction
that Iraq would pay for its own reconstruction with oil revenue never
come true; not only did the United States never get to fill up one
crummy Humvee for free; but when Iraq staged one of the biggest oil
auctions in history last week, U.S. companies left empty-handed.
Russia, China and Europe came out the big winners.


"Strange," said industry experts, which is one word for it. What's
also shocking is Iraq's apparent willingness to denigrate the United
States by showing favoritism to hostile nations (that sacrificed
nothing in Iraq's war), and disregard for American interests in the
war's (supposed) aftermath.

Such benefactor-abuse fits a pattern of what you might call Iraqi de-
Americanization. At the big Baghdad Trade Fair in November, for
example, the United States was "not much evident among the 32 nations
represented," the New York Times noted. In fact, of the 396 companies
represented, only two or three were American -- "but I can't remember
their names," the fair company director said. As the newspaper summed
up: "America's war in Iraq has been good for business in Iraq -- but
not necessarily for American business."

Leading the field is United Arab Emirates with investments in Iraq
amounting to $31 billion, mostly from the last year, "compared to only
about $400 million from American companies when United States
government reconstruction spending is excluded."
U.S.. government reconstruction spending, of course, equals taxpayer
dollars. Beyond our incredible largesse -- which (not including the
astronomical cost of the war itself) comes to $53 billion, much of
each is headed down the drain as Iraqis show little capacity to
maintain U.S.-provided public works projects -- one market analyst
told the Times, "U.S. private investors have become negligible players
in Iraq." Meanwhile, Turkey, the nation that prevented U.S. troops
from transiting through during the initial invasion, has become a
major commercial player in Iraq. Likewise Iran, the nuke-seeking,
genocide-promising nation that fomented much of the war, particularly
the IED war, on U.S. forces in Iraq.


The sour experience of FedEx is revealing. This fall, the shipping
company announced it was suspending operations to Iraq. "The reason is
that Iraqi officials gave RusAir, a Russian airline, exclusive rights
to cargo flight," the Times reports. "FedEx was one of the very few
American businesses that braved the risks of working not only on
American bases but also in the Red Zone, back when it was particularly
dangerous to do so. Now that the danger is much less, its business is
being thwarted by an upstart Russian come-lately."

Emphasis on "Russian." And, with the oil auction, emphasis on
Chinese." "We all know that China is on track to become a major
economic as well as technological power," an Iraqi oil ministry
spokesman told the Washington Post.

And the United States? More like an old shoe now than anything else.
Which reminds me: After that Iraqi "journalist" threw his shoes at
then-President Bush, The Scotsman newspaper reported that the Istanbul-
based shoe manufacturer received orders from around the world,
including an incredible 120,000 orders from Iraq.
What's that old Middle Eastern saying -- The shoe of my enemy's enemy
is my shoe?


Part 2



So much for the lack of post-surge U.S. business benefits in Iraq, as
I wrote last week. Now, what kind of post-surge ally is Iraq? No kind.
I write in wonder that the ultimate failures of the surge strategy --
which include the failure of anything resembling a U.S. ally to emerge
in post-Saddam Iraq -- have never entered national discourse. Rather,
the strategy that "won Iraq" has been mythologized as a "success" to
be repeated in Afghanistan.
It's not that there aren't hints to the contrary -- as when U.S.
Ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill arrived at the Iraqi parliament in
early December and "some deputies," the New York Times reported,
"demanded he be barred from the building." Or when 42 percent of
Iraqis polled by the BBC in March 2008 still thought it "acceptable"
to attack U.S. forces. Or when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, as U.S.
forces transferred security responsibilities to Iraqi forces in June,
obstreperously declared "victory" over those same U.S. forces! Such
incidents convey hostility toward the United States inside Iraq, but
there's more. Of greater consequence are the positions against U.S.
interests Iraq is taking in world affairs.

Take the foundational principle of freedom of speech, continuously
under assault by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in
the international arena. The OIC includes the world's 57 Muslim
nations as represented by kings, heads of state and governments, with
policies overseen by the foreign ministers of these same 57 nations.
Describing itself as the "collective voice of the Islamic world," the
OIC strives to extend Islamic law throughout the world, and to that
end, is the driving force at the United Nations to outlaw criticism of
Islam (which includes Islamic law) through proposed bans on the
defamation of religions" -- namely, Islam. This is a malignant thrust
at the mechanism of Western liberty. Where does post-surge Iraq come
down in this crucial ideological struggle?

An OIC nation, Iraq is, with other OIC nations, a signatory to the
1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam. This declaration
defines human rights according to Islamic law, which prohibits
criticism of Islam. Indeed, Iraq's U.S.-enabled 2004 constitution
enshrines Islamic law above all. Little wonder Iraq consistently votes
at the United Nations with the OIC and against the United States on
this key ideological divide between Islam and the West, most recently
in November.

Then there's Iran.
Iran may be a menace to the West, but it is also Iraq's largest
trading partner. Heavily involved in Iraq's reconstruction, Iran has
Masterminded extensive loan, tourism and energy programs in Iraq while
maintaining close connections to Iraq's dominant Shiite political
parties. This disastrous fact should dampen -- at least enter into --
assessments of the surge strategy's "success."

But it doesn't. Not even the fact that Bank Melli -- the Iranian
terror bank outlawed by the U.S. Treasury as a conduit for Iran's
clear and terrorist programs -- operates a branch in Baghdad gives
pause to one-surge-fits-all enthusiasts. The Bank Melli example is
particularly egregious because the bank funds Iran's Revolutionary
Guard Corps' Qods Force, which is responsible for innumerable American
casualties in Iraq -- American sacrifices on behalf of Iraq. Guess
we're supposed to look the other way. But that's like applauding the
Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the United States and Iraq
without noticing that the agreement prohibits the United States from
attacking Iran (or any other country) from Iraq.

Iraq's pattern of hostility to U.S. interests continues vis-a-vis
Israel, a bona-fide U.S. ally against jihad terror. Whenever Israel
strikes back at jihad -- whether at Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in
Lebanon -- post-Saddam Iraq is quick to condemn the Jewish state,
which, not incidentally, it also continues to boycott with the rest of
the Arab League.

Additionally, Maliki's public refusal even to criticize Hezbollah in
2006 prompted Dan Senor, a former Bush administration advisor in
Baghdad, to write in the Wall Street Journal: "It wasn't supposed to
be this way. We had thought that a post-Saddam Iraqi government would
be less susceptible to Arab League pressure. ... This change of tone
was to be a model for the region."
And why did "we" ever think this? Such was -- and is -- the deceptive
power of the see-no-Islam fantasy.

Onto Afghanistan.

Part 3

There's at least one more aspect to consider when appraising the past
six years in Iraq climaxed by the "surge." This would be the indirect
effect of "reflected glory," if such a quaint term applies, and has to
do with the sort of state the U.S. helped create in Iraq.

I don't know how to candy-coat reality: Post-surge Iraq is a state of
increasing repression, endemic corruption, religious and ethnic
persecution and encroaching Sharia. Recent media reports flag just
some of these glaring truths that American elites, civilian an
military, seem to shy away from.

In October, from AsiaNews, came the latest news of, to quote the
headline, "Sharia Slowly Advancing in Najaf and Basra, for Non-Muslims
Too." Here, the Sharia (Islamic law) is invoked to ban alcohol sales
and consumption by non-Muslims -- namely, Christians, given the
eradication and dispersal of Iraq's ancient Jewish population -- "on
the grounds that Iraq's constitution," as Ahmad al Sulaiti, deputy
governor of Najaf, notes, "'bans everything that violates the
principles of Islam.''" More on that below.

In November, Reuters highlighted the government crackdown on the media
via lawsuits against criticism, and laws enabling the government to
close media outlets that "encourage terrorism, violence," and --
here's a handy catch-all -- "tensions." There are new rules to license
satellite trucks, censor books and control Internet cafes. "The
measures evoke memories of ... the laws used to muzzle (journalism)
under Saddam Hussein," Reuters writes.

In December, the British paper The Observer reported that hundreds of
Iraqi police and soldiers descended on Baghdad's 300 nightclubs where
They "slapped owners' faces, scattered their patrons and dancing
girls, ripped down posters advertising upcoming acts and ordered
alcohol removed from the shelves." The official reason? No licenses.
But, the paper reports, "the reality is that a year-long renaissance
in Baghdad's nightlife may be over as this increasingly conservative
city takes on a hard-line religious identity." As one club owner said:
"This is a political decision with a religious agenda. (Prime Minister
Nouri al-) Maliki needs the votes of religious parties ... They (the
government) supported us and gave us incentives to reopen the clubs,
then when it suited them, they sold us and themselves out to the
fundamentalists."



There's a lot of that "selling out to the fundamentalists" going
around post-surge Iraq, where, it must be faced, one particularly
shocking, unintended consequence of U.S. involvement has been the
religious "cleansing" of Iraq's ancient Christian populations. In
2003, 1 million Christians lived in Iraq. Six years later, after
successive waves of violence and intimidation largely unchecked by
either Iraqi government action or U.S. intercession, more than 500,000
Christians have fled the country. It is a crisis that inspired
Christian leaders to assemble in Baghdad in December for a conference
piteously titled: "Do Christians Have a Future in Iraq?"

This anti-Christian persecution is a large part of why the U.S.
Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended in December
2008 that the State Department name Iraq a Country of Particular
Concern (CPC) -- its dread Saddam-era designation. (Recommendation
denied.) In May, to strengthen human rights in Iraq, the commission's
Iraq report included suggested amendments to Iraq's constitution,
which, not incidentally, boil down to abolishing the constitutional
supremacy of Islamic law. (And yes, U.S. legal advisers helped write
this same Sharia-supreme governing document.)

For example, the commission suggested deleting the line in Article 2
that says no law may contradict "the established provisions of Islam."
It suggested revising the "guarantee of `the Islamic identity of the
majority' to make certain that this identity is not used to justify
violations" of human rights. It also suggested that "the free and
informed consent of both parties (be) required to move a personal
status case to the religious law system," and "that religious court
rulings (be) subject to final review under Iraq's civil law." Another
suggestion was to remove "the ability of making appointments to the
Federal Supreme Court based on training in Islamic jurisprudence alone."

Good ideas -- if religious freedom is the objective. But it is not the
objective in Iraq, or in other Islamic countries. Which should make
the United States, founded and defined by such freedom, look before
nation-building, and ask: Do we really want Americans to "surge" and
risk death to build nations such as this to stand as monuments to
"victory"?


Diana West: Was the Iraq "Surge" a "Success"? The Answer in Three Parts


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Now a Soldier's perspective: An an extraordinary letter from a soldier currently stationed in Iraq
 
Brussels Journal
 
He Writes:
 
I apologize for the delay in my response. I have been putting in long days ... lately and I hadn’t had the time to put the thought and effort into writing this until now.

Your three-part column series wonderfully analyzes Iraq and reaches the correct strategic assessment that no one in power wants to acknowledge.

I have many things that I want to say but I do not wish to waste your time and I therefore put an executive summary at the beginning of this e-mail so you can skip the expanded version if you wish.

You correctly assessed that we have not gained anything positive from our efforts in Iraq and that the nation is not our ally. (The same is true for Afghanistan.) I will go as far as saying that the Iraqis are our enemies—enemies better equipped to wage jihad against us than they have ever been. We will regret what we have done. We will regret that we created this officially Islamic nation. And we will regret that we created an officially Islamic Afghanistan. We will regret that we have placed ourselves in the service of Islam, waging jihad worldwide as we advance the Religion of Peace and eliminate Christians in the process. (So much for the accusation that the U.S. is on a “Crusade.”) It is a shame that so many people refuse to recognize how horrible Islam is, and that the U.S. made a fatal mistake when it refused to declare war against Afghanistan and Islam—when it refused victory by binding the greatest military force of all time.

The Full Analysis:

Parts 1 and 2 of “The ‘Surge’ and ‘Success’” correctly identify that we have gained nothing positive for our efforts in Iraq while the Iraqis have betrayed us. I do not trust any Iraqi or Middle Easterner. I do not care if anyone calls me a “racist” or “bigot” anymore. Those words have lost their meaning. Do I think that every single Iraqi or Middle Easterner is bad? No. But I think it is difficult to tell. An Iraqi or Middle Easterner will smile to your face or be your best friend one moment, and cut your head off in the next. It is odd that so many people cannot comprehend this. It is even weirder that those who pride themselves on being “culturally aware” cannot grasp that Middle Eastern culture and thought, and Islamic behavior and thought are completely different than ours (than ours on the Right, at least). Perhaps this ignorance partially explains why the U.S. had no reaction when Maliki declared victory over the U.S. when we moved out of the major Iraqi cities. But even if it is a partial explanation it still is no excuse.

The Iranian War in Iraq is a travesty and has been since it started under Bush. I still cannot believe that a nation can war against us and murder Servicemen, and not pay the price of oblivion for it. Our nation sits back and apologizes, and defends itself constantly from accusations of an “illegal” and “unjust” war yet Iranians, other foreign terrorists, and even Iraqis go about murdering American troops without any consequence whatsoever. We should war back against them. But we won’t.

I remember when people said that we had brought on the September 11 attacks because “we created Bin Laden.” I never understood that. In fact, that we had helped the Afghanis defeat the Soviet Union should have been even more reason for us to kill Bin Laden and destroy Afghanistan. We had saved their lives and they repaid us for it by murdering us on our own soil. Yet our government refused its God-given duty to its people to mete out punishment and justice. History repeats with Iraq. The Iraqis lived under oppression for decades and when we liberated their nation they repaid our unimaginable mercy and sacrifice with betrayal. It is sickening.

Part 3 (“Victory” in Iraq? Really?) perfectly summarized where the U.S. is now in our “war” in Iraq. Once we made Iraq an officially Islamic country I knew that it would become among our worst enemies. (The same is true for Afghanistan.) I said years ago that the end result of our efforts will be that Iraq will be a rebuilt nation better prepared than ever to wage jihad against us. You cannot create an officially Islamic nation and expect anything less. Regrettably, our leaders and our nation cannot identify Islam for what it is: evil. And so we continue our suicidal practice. The Iraqi betrayal of the U.S. started sooner than I expected it but I expected it nonetheless. This is outrageous. Yet the situation is even more unjust than this.

Muslims have waged jihad against the West since their insane, pedophiliac founder started their cult; they have waged jihad against the U.S. since our inception. But what is worse about our policy of establishing officially Islamic nations and pouring money, technology, weapons, and training into them is that we have been labeled as “occupiers” being on a “Christian crusade to wipe out Islam.” Think about that. We have been demonized as “occupying Christian crusaders” (if only!) even as we have waged jihad in the service of Islam, helped Muslims spread Islam and wipe out Christians, and died for ungrateful Iraqis even as terrorists from all over the war invaded and occupied Iraq, and slaughtered and oppressed Iraqis. (And don’t even get me started on the fact that we—the United States of America—are truly being invaded and occupied by illegal aliens warring on us!)

I am woefully understating the situation when I say that the U.S. has no clue how to fight wars any longer. We have allowed our enemies to control this war and make it one of media and information—information warfare / information operations . We have chosen not to win by refusing to reject the enemies’ preferred warfare; we have chosen not to wage a kinetic warfare where we could easily defeat our enemies in months if not weeks with our superior technology, tactics, and Servicemen. And through it all we seem not the least bit embarrassed that a “coalition” of dozens of nations cannot beat a primitive bunch of troglodytes. I no longer can express my outrage about this or any of the myriad horrors which plague our once great land. Every day there is something new which is more perverse and inequitable than the last day’s wickedness. I sit here in Iraq and do all I can do to stomach the disastrous excuse that passes for “strategy” in this war—a strategy where our leaders openly say that the lives of our Islamic enemies are worth more than ours; a “strategy” where the Army Chief of Staff openly states that the “death of diversity” would be a larger tragedy than the slaughter of Soldiers (and get away with it with but a whisper of outcry from the American people). I pray that I get out of here alive so I can complete my Army contract and get away from this nonsense and betrayal.

Two final things.

First, I wonder how many people have considered how successful the September 11, 2001 Islamic attacks were. Think about what they accomplished. They thrust Islam to the center of the world; they undoubtedly caused more people to learn about Islam than would have prior to their attacks. And the attacks combined with the near non-response of the U.S. doubtlessly gained them converts. Furthermore, what response the United States did produce resulted in the establishment, enrichment, and training of the officially Islamic nations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the enrichment and training of countless other Muslim nations around the globe. Islam now stands better suited than ever to wage jihad across the world. The September 11 attacks also resulted in Muslims being portrayed as victims around the world (thanks to their leftist allies) and helped them (again, with an assist from their leftist allies) advance their jihad even as Muslims and leftists further vilified Christianity, America, and Western values. And finally the crowning achievement of the September 11 Islamic attacks: eight years after them the United States places as its leader a person whom can at best be described as an anti-American, racist, Islamic sympathizer (and who has the same name as an infamous Islamic dictator). This is stunning. It is bizarre. It is incomprehensible. Yet it is our nightmarish reality. The Islamic attacks on September 11, 2001 achieved success beyond the wildest dreams of the Religion of Peace cultists.

Finally, I would like you to know that I am willing to comment on other posts and articles that you publish, including some of your other posts that mention the debate that your three-part column on the Surge started. I am willing to comment for two reasons.


The first reason is that everyone on the Right needs to fight back against the Islamic War on the West and stop the jihad. And one of the ways to fight back is to speak out against it. The second reason is that I want to establish for posterity that I am firmly against this evil and every other evil. I will explain why this matters.

Leftists always rewrite history so as to demonize what is Right and so as to cover their real nature. They abhor the truth as much as the vilest of Muslims. And as a way to enable their rewriting of history they use political correctness to silence opponents; to vilify them so that they have no place in society. We have allowed leftists to use political correctness to emasculate us. In fact, political correctness is the leftist weapon of choice in paralyzing the Right and aiding their Islamic allies who also advance an anti-Christian, anti-Foundational America agenda. Political correctness is what prevents us from fighting back against the left, and what prevents us from fully fighting back against the jihad and ending the Islamic threat. Political correctness makes us acquiesce to the left so as to be “moderate” and “bipartisan.” Our capitulation to the left will doom us physically by allowing the Muslims and left to eliminate the last vestiges of the West and it will doom us historically as our enslaved descendants will look back and ask how we could have allowed the twin insanities of Islam and the left to control and destroy us when we easily could have defeated them both. Our descendants will condemn us for remaining idle in the face of evil . . . and the leftists of the future will use our submission and our descendants’ condemnation to manipulate history and blame us as the originators of the horrific agenda that they instituted. The future left will use our sinful surrender to pave the way for them to control and destroy civilization once more (all in the name of “progressivism” of course).

I do not want leftists to be able to do this. I do not want them to easily rewrite history in the future. I want to be a loud voice (wherever I may be) that opposes everything Islam and the left want. I want there to be no doubt that I, a Right-wing Christian, utterly reject them and their core beliefs. I want to make it all but impossible for future leftists to say that, “It was the Christian Right who enabled and supported the worldwide jihad (not to mention the global warming hoax, the sexual perverts, and the freedom hating communists)! It was the Christian Right who wanted them to take over and destroy the world!” I want to make it all but impossible for future leftists to say that atheists, humanists, and secularists (like Bruce Bawer, Christopher Hitchens, Tammy Bruce, and a few others) tried to oppose the Islamic War on the West but “could not convince the mentally inferior but numerically superior Right-wing Christians to join them!” I want to counteract the in-name-only Christians and conservatives who have bought into the “Religion of Peace” and leftist nonsense, and who will do untold additional amounts of damage to civilization and our good name with their cravenness and rejection of Truth. And that is why I am willing to comment on more of your posts.

I know I am in the minority with my beliefs but I do not care. I want to be like the 300—not just the ones who fought at Thermopylae—but the 300 who fought with Gideon against the Midianites. I want to stand for the Truth.

Keep up the good work.

Sincerely,

A US soldier in Iraq