This one’s a bit long, but worth the read. This guy’s no Krauthammer, but I think you’ll be able to really get the feel of what’s going on in Iraq from the inside. The letter was actually printed in the New york Post about a week and half ago.
I tried to post this before, and may have entered it incorrectly as just a headline. If so, please forgive my inadverdant double-post. Also, please forgive the length. It turns out that this letter was longer and already cut down to size by the Post’s editor. As such, leaving out any of the paragraphs make it seem disjointed
March 19, 2004 -- On a cloudless day in January, my entry to Baghdad on a C-130 was marked by a fuselage-shuddering, steep descent from high altitude to the tarmac at Baghdad International Airport - or BIAP, as we say here. It has to be that way, every time, for the safest, quickest way to the ground.
This is a dangerous place. I am United States Marine - so I know I am in the right place.
You know, its one thing having an airport’s name go from Idlewild to John F. Kennedy. But on my watch here as a U.S. Marine, I will be damned if I allow this airport ever to change back to Saddam International Airport. Let that be a symbol of the fact that there will be no rollback. We will not falter or leave before the job is done.
That job, in simple terms - to a dumb Marine like me - is to achieve a great and important thing here in Iraq.
We are doing this as part of a world team called the Coalition, with the Iraqi people who will very shortly be the team’s owners and managers. When the Iraqis take over, the Coalition will become a coach for a long while - and then we step off and leave it all to them.
The liberal press chooses to miss that this is not solely a U.S. effort, but a Coalition effort. While we are the star players, you can’t win a game with just the star players. We have a great team here, and we will succeed - despite the efforts of an evil, cowardly and extremist resistance.
The fight goes on here, and it goes very well. But the going can be slow. The Iraqi people - who are counting on our assistance - are fervently trying to rebuild under constant threat from the few, but deadly, international malcontents and disaffected insurgents.
Essentially, these insurgents are anachronisms in a country that will no longer be hospitable to their vile, cowardly kind. They just don’t know it yet.
They say we are coming up on a one-year anniversary for our presence here in Iraq. As a Marine and a New Yorker, I disagree. This is really a 14-year anniversary. I enlisted in the Marines in 1990, giving up a safe, normal life - I was going to be a New York City school teacher - to be a part of righting the wrong that Saddam Hussein committed.
I left active duty service after my ninth year in the Marines. Then the call came on 9/11. I volunteered and was out of the U.S. for Operation Enduring Freedom in less than two weeks.
Now, here I am at Camp Victory in Iraq, supporting the First Marine Expeditionary Force and all of the Coalition in a job that I really can’t discuss here - but it is the most important I have ever done.
The Marines have just arrived and are holding down the entire Western Sector of Iraq. The Marines have their hands full - but nobody is more capable and up to the job.
The Western Sector in the Al-Anbar province is the largest, most dangerous and most diverse region of the country. Here, the Marines must balance duplicitous Syria and Iran to the North and West with highly volatile cities such as Fallujah and Ar-Ramadi closer to Baghdad. We haven’t been here long on this second trip to Iraq, but I can tell you we are doing spectacularly.
I want New Yorkers to know that the Marines have our part of the situation well in hand. We have never been better trained with better experience. We are at our finest at the right time - as usual. We all know the mission - from lance corporal to general.
This place and what we are doing here is more closely linked to terrorism - and American and world security - than I will ever be allowed to discuss. We wouldn’t be out here giving it everything we have if it weren’t important.
Not a day goes by out here that I don’t think of the cops, firefighters and regular New Yorkers who died on 9/11.
As New Yorkers and as Americans, please stand behind our leaders - and us here.
We can do any job on earth and have already accomplished more in Iraq than we had any right to expect.
By the way, Marines are pretty easy to thank when we come home and you see us: Buy us a couple of beers, and we’ll call it warmly appreciated.
Semper fidelis.
Capt. Adam J. Becker
U.S. Marine Corps
Baghdad |