Weekend Reading

Here’s a link to some very special reading in the New Yorker Magazine about the winding down of the war in Iraq.
by Charlie Leck

Dexter Filkins’ piece in the New Yorker Magazine about the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is quite short and it won’t take you more than a few minutes to read. It’s also exceedingly well written and it will raise amazing questions for your mind and significant emotions in your heart. Here’s where you can find it!

What happened in Iraq anyway? Does any good come out of it?
Nearly 4,500 Americans lost their lives in the war. More than 32,000 were wounded and injured there – some extremely seriously. Troops from other countries died also. For what?

Filkins, who spent almost four years in Iraq, crosses his fingers as he answers the question – not because he is fibbing, but because he is hopeful that his most ideal sketch of an outcome will prove correct. Yet, he talks of all the possibilities and you should not miss reading his essay.

The writer is receiving significant criticism for being too optimistic and hopeful. I wonder what else we can do after a decade of scorching so many parts of the nation. Will we ever know how many Iraqis lost their lives – perhaps hundreds of thousands? Lordsy, can’t we hope, for this price, that something wonderful will now happen there – that democracy will blossom and that people will learn to respect one another and be more tolerant about each other’s differences?

About Dexter Filkins

“Dexter Filkins joined The New Yorker in January of 2011, and has since written about a bank heist in Afghanistan and the democratic protests in the Middle East. Before coming to The New Yorker, Filkins had been with the New York Times since 2000, reporting from Afghanistan, Pakistan, New York, and Iraq, where he was based from 2003 to 2006. He has also worked for the Miami Herald and the Los Angeles Times, where he was chief of the paper’s New Delhi bureau. In 2009, he won a Pulitzer Prize as part of a team of New York Times reporters in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2006-07 and a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 2007-08. He has received numerous prizes, including two George Polk Awards and three Overseas Press Club Awards. His 2008 book, “The Forever War,” won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Nonfiction Book, and was named a best book of the year by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, and the Boston Globe.”

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Listening to the Military

I, uh, think I heard you. What’d you say again?
by Charlie Leck

Two days ago the President of the United States used his veto power for only the second time of his nearly 7 years in office. That may be a record.

He vetoed the bill passed by the Senate and the House that would have set a time-table on bringing our troops home from Iraq. In doing so, the President said that it was important to listen to the recommendation of the commanders in the field rather than imposing the will of politicians on those leaders.

The President is not much of a listener and he has a lousy memory. It was not so long ago that President Bush was advised by his military commanders that his “surge” policy would not work; so, the President got rid of those guys and installed new commanders.

Just who do we listen to, Mr. President?

I wish you’d listen to me, sir. Let’s end this debacle – this war begun with untruths and half-truths – this war that should never have begun – this war that has killed untold thousands of innocent victims and thousands of our own soldiers – this war of utter stupidity – and bring home our troops. That, sir, is the way to support the troops. Get them home! You told us four years ago that you had accomplished your mission, sir. Since then we’ve lost over 3,000 American military personnel.

Appended on 4 May 2007:
A Newshouse News Service column today by David Sarasohn was of the same theme as what I wrote above and also posed the same argument that "the surge" is a plan of a civilian administration and not a military strategy. Sarasohn wrote: "Yet the surge plan was devised in Washington... by civilians, guided not by military necessity but by calculations of how many additional troops could possibly be available... Petraeus was then brought in to try to make it work."

I've had a few responses to this post, claiming I am not supportive of the troops. Actually, that's not true. I support them more than most when I say let's get them out of harm's way. I don't buy the claim that it would be a disaster to pull them out -- a disaster to the troops and to the Iraqui people. I'm old enough to remember the same claim about Vietnam. It didn't prove true and Vietnam quickly settled into a productive peace time. So, will Iraq. They'll have some serious civil squabbles, but the whole situation will settle down and that nation will be better off without our interference.