Michael's Dispatches
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- Published: Wednesday, 05 December 2007 00:00
I made this photo last week in northern Iraq. Iraqi and American commanders told me that al Qaeda tried to destroy the bridge.
05 December 2007
Near Stonehenge, Great Britain
In the recent dispatch, Men of Valor Part II, I wrote the following:“ . . . by systematically and in relatively short order demolishing Iraq’s government infrastructure, firing its staff en masse, disbanding its army, our combined militaries in Iraq could only accomplish the mission by rebuilding the country from scratch.”
As a writer, I could have used more precision with the six key words. I have seen the extent to which Coalition forces spend great energy and suffer risks to avoid destroying Iraq’s physical infrastructure. Yes, many Iraqi government buildings stand with shattered concrete and twisted rebar, hollowed by our bombs and missiles; but the vast majority of Iraqi infrastructure was intentionally spared. In fact, US forces have been (and are) forbidden to attack infrastructure. Our people use lethal force to protect Iraqi infrastructure.
Al Qaeda, in particular, however, has made a point of destroying as much critical physical and human infrastructure as possible. Despite spending enormous energy trying to win their war in Iraq, it seems safe to say that al Qaeda has lost or will lose in Iraq. Yet even on the ropes, al Qaeda is still dangerous. They still blow up bridges and attack power stations. But so many groups have turned on al Qaeda that they are having a difficult time just breathing. They are still present and dangerous, but even Ansar al Sunhah has turned against them. When a group as crazy as Ansar al Sunnah turns against al Qaeda, AQ must be evil.
Even criminal gangs—like local mafias—who feed off the chaos al Qaeda drags around like a fetid shadow, are now feeding information about them to American forces.
The government infrastructure that I referred to as being “demolished” was of the human order. It was as if we spared a fleet of Iraqi aircraft, but disbanded the crews while they were in flight. The crews mostly parachuted out and landed in places like Syria. Subsequent to sparing most of it, a lot of the infrastructure has fallen to crooks and insurgents at worst, or is just succumbing to natural entropy.
To state it plainly: Coalition forces are not the cause of most of the physical destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure. That lights are out so often is not always a surprise, either. This photo is a familiar sight for our soldiers. While much of Iraq’s infrastructure is actually quite good, even the best of their infrastructure is not what we are used to. Nevertheless, Iraq is improving. We must—must—pour on the juice in helping Iraq to stand as quickly as possible.
On a slightly different topic, these new gigantic MRAPs (big bomb-resistant trucks) that are being fielded in Iraq seem to be largely ill-conceived. I do not possess that level of expertise, so I’m not making any recommendation on the MRAPs. But I can say that soldiers in Mosul and Baghdad seem to be viewing the MRAPs with a jaded eye. Yes, the MRAPs are said to offer much greater bomb protection, but given that they seem as tall as a double-decker bus in London, the MRAPs simply cannot travel down many of the roads in Baghdad or Mosul, where they would only rip down power wires like those depicted above.
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Michael Yon
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