This one is for Sarge and those that want more stories from Iraq. I found this on Foxnews.com, but it is from Michael J. Totten.
In short it is a story about the last marines in Fallujah, yes Fallujah, the same city that was according to the press and liberals in our government and abroad, the biggest example of the failure of the Bush Administration’s Iraq plan. Here are a couple of pieces of his story… I have added the bold for emphasis
FALLUJAH – At the end of 2006 there were 3,000 Marines in Fallujah. Despite what you might expect during a surge of troops to Iraq, that number has been reduced by 90 percent. All Iraqi Army soldiers have likewise redeployed from the city. A skeleton crew of a mere 250 Marines is all that remains as the United States wraps up its final mission in what was once Iraq’s most violent city.
“The Iraqi Police could almost take over now,” Second Lieutenant Gary Laughlin told me. “Most logistics problems are slowly being resolved. My platoon will probably be the last one out here in the Jolan neighborhood.”
“The Iraqi Police in Jolan are very good,” Second Lieutenant Mike Barefoot added. “Elsewhere in Fallujah they’re not as far along yet. Theoretically we could leave the area now and they would be okay, except they would run out of money.”
Ok we are looking at as he says a 90% decrease in US Troops in the city that the liberals once said could never be controlled. And get this, most of the people who are over there training the Iraqi Police are from TEXAS…
The Marine Corps runs the American mission in Fallujah, but some of the Police Transition Team members are Military Police officers culled from the Texas National Guard. “We’re like the red-headed stepchild of units,” one MP told me. “We’re from different units from all over Texas, as well as from the Marine Corps.”
One Texas MP used to be a Marine. “I decided I would rather defend my state than my country,” he said jokingly. “But here I am, back in Iraq.”
After I adjusted my embed to focus specifically on Police Transition Teams, I was nearly surrounded by young men from Texas. Many seemed to instinctively understand Fallujah’s infamous provincial “nationalism.”
“Fallujah pride is like Texas pride,” I heard from several MPs who, unlike Iraqis from Baghdad, didn’t think that was a bad thing.
Like Texas pride, now how about that. I do not know about you but to me Texas Pride is about being independent, self sufficient, and willing to take the hard road to success. Yes sometimes it also generates a stubborn streak that would make a mule blush, but that is what makes us as Texans special, and I guess if you can relate to those that you are working with, then you will work better with them and see top notch results.
Training Iraqis to replace Marines is a lot less dangerous than fighting a war, but it’s harder. Every single American who has an opinion one way or the other told me it’s harder. Iraqis are not lumps of clay or blank slates that can be hand-molded or written on. They are human beings with their own complex history and culture. Most recently they were the brutally micromanaged subjects and enforcers of the regime of Saddam Hussein. If the Americans fail to field an effective local police force, Fallujah may go the way of Somalia and Gaza all over again – and next time there may be no one to save them.
Maybe it will work, and maybe it won’t. The Iraqis lag more than a hundred years behind their teachers. “They’re where the American police were in the late 18th and 19th centuries,” said Lieutenant Brandon Pearson, a resident military expert in American Criminal Justice. You can see the broad outlines of what he means in old American movies that take place on the Western frontier in places with names like Dodge City. Corrupt lawmen sometimes sided with bad guys while decent, yet weak, lawmen cowered while gunslinging thugs terrorized entire communities.
This story is just one more piece of evidence that we need to make sure that when we leave those that we leave behind have been taught up as much as they possibly can be taught and making sure that they can call on us for assistance if or when they need it, and then we walk away, always keeping an eye on things, but staying out of their way. The story goes on to tell even more…. Read it you will find it interesting
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