As the world watches the American election process this year, one wonders how the soldiers are feeling. How DO we feel about the changing tides, about losing our current Commander In Chief? What, do we feel, must be done in 2009? As military personnel, our opinions matter little. In fact, military personnel are not supposed to share their opinions with the public at all. After all, the military is only the might of a political machine; we are not the brains of the function, merely the muscle.
Most civilians will say that it is time to pull our troops out of the war. If Iraq and Afghanistan were truly only military operations this may well be a plausible demand. However, being that the politicians on Capitol Hill have gone and changed the government in one of our occupied countries and are making attempts to change the other, a full and entire withdrawal makes little, if any sense what-so-ever. In every country that America has had any military coupe up to this point, there has been some military left in some capacity. The only exceptions have been———– and Vietnam. Both of which, unfortunately, have turned to genocide and/or civil war after full troop withdrawal.
For the most part, the military who are permanently on post in theatre feel that there needs to be some military left on the ground. The stability that is seen in the majority of the Iraqi provinces seems to be spreading; however, the country as a whole is still very fragile. Peace keeping missions are on the rise regardless of military branch. There is more of a push to “smooth-over” past “wrongs” by using the military as humanitarian aide. In this sense, the U.S. can no more leave Iraq en-mass than a human can stop breathing. The end product of both will be death. This, of course, is not to say that the military has stopped counter-insurgent measures. There are still plenty of units that kick-in doors and destroy road-side bombs. However, the numbers of troops doing so has decreased dramatically.
In fact, to leave now while these countries are only just beginning to rebuild would create hardships throughout the country. All the Iraqi and Afghani civilians and towns that have helped American forces in return for food, water and medical supplies would be in grave danger should the military completely withdraw. These towns and civilians have been targets for the duration of the War on Terror, looked down upon as traitors to Islam and Iraq. They will be killed for pointing fingers at the very people who plant the Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and shoot at U.S. troops.
Should America withdraw her troops completely, Iraq and Afghanistan could easily dissolve into civil war and self-destruction. Should these countries reach that point, they will not blame themselves, but America. America was helping and the civilians will understand only that things were fine while the Americans were here. Things may not have been great but they were okay. Now that the American troops are not here things are not fine any longer. Thus, it is only logical to believe that it was the withdrawal of the troops by the Americans that caused the mess that the countries may find themselves in. It is at this point that America finds itself with even more people who hate her and her citizens.
Here in Iraq, there are those who hate that we are here and those that love that we are here. For now, those that hate that we are in their country are fewer in number than those who love it. The troops who travel off post tell stories of their convoys regularly getting waved at from the road-side and soldiers getting hugs from children as they pass through towns on foot. Adults who scowled from the side of the road in 2003 now smile and nod at passing military vehicles. Again, this is not a country-wide phenomenon, but the frequency of occurrences has increased.
This “War” has evolved into a very different thing over the last 5 years. And as young as Iraq’s “new government” is, 5 years is short indeed. Politicians and Civilians, alike, need to understand that an all out withdrawal may well bring home family and friends from “over there,” but for how long will those family and friends remain safely at home before they are sent back to neutralize an even worse situation? Governments take generations to grow and stabilize.
Iraq and Afghanistan have been operating under religious governances for millennia, what makes anyone think for a minute that a democracy can take root in less than 5 years? Truth be told, the military presence in Iraq, at least, may be as long as a century. After all, what sense does it make to install new “software” and not keep someone there to trouble-shoot problems? The countries youth needs to grow up understanding the new government’s processes. They need to learn to respect themselves as well as the other sects (Sunnis, Shiite, and Kurds) before America should feel remotely comfortable to conduct a full withdrawal.
Both those who remain on post and those who leave posts on a regular basis see this dilemma day in and day out. And each day that passes by the troops wonder what next year has in store for us.