Recommend Article: "The War As We Saw It "

I highly recommend an article published 8/19 in the NY Times and republished at TruthOut. The article is by seven soldiers from the 82nd Airborne serving in Iraq and is titled "The War As We Saw It." The honesty and eyewitness account is refreshing and heartbreaking; however, even more stunning is that active duty forces have gone out on a limb to write this article.

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the "battle space" remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers' expense.

Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray and Jeremy A. Murphy are the authors. They point out the error of trying to look at Iraq, and the security situation in Iraq, from an American perspective. What matters is not that Americans can walk the streets, but "the experience of the local citizenry." Security and the future of Iraq lies in the experiences of Iraqi's, and that has not been secure or improving.

Likewise, they point to the complexity of the environment that U.S. forces are in. Different factions are supported in different areas and at different times. The shifting alliances of the U.S. inside Iraq merges with the struggles for power and revenge across the country combine with the inability to enforce basic laws to create a constantly shifting (and threatening) environment which the troops operate in daily.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, "We need security, not free food."

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are - an army of occupation - and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.