« Wish You Were Here! (& Caveat) | Main | Radio Interview »

Fallujah Police Officers eat lunch at the Jolan Precinct.

I've returned from my Police Transition Team embed and have a couple of pieces on deck. In the meantime, please read Michael Totten's "Anbar Awakens Part I: The Battle of Ramadi":

"Al Qaeda struck out three times," said Major Peters. "Strike One: They killed a Sheikh and held his body for four days. Strike Two: They executed young people in public. Strike Three: They attacked the compound of another sheikh. The people here said enough. They aligned with us because they realized Al Qaeda was the real enemy. They didn't like Al Qaeda's version of Islam at all."

Credit for purging Ramadi of Al Qaeda must go to Iraqis themselves at least as much as to the American military. The Americans wouldn't have been able to do it without the cooperation of the people who live there, and the Iraqis wouldn't have been able to do it, at least not so easily, without help from the American military.

Ramadi and Fallujah are very different cities, but in that aspect they are much the same.

And also read MIchael Yon's "The Ghosts of Anbar, Part IV":

Fortunately, everyone had gone in easy and not blown doors off with explosives. Those mistakes also happen sometimes. Sometimes our own guys blow down doors to the wrong homes. Back in the early days of the war, this might have seemed like an innocent "Oh well that’s war" type mistake, but after spending all this time with Iraqis I now see that it was in part actions like that which also blew open the door in Iraq for al Qaeda to come in.

Counterinsurgency is all about perception. Perception is how reality gets interpreted by people. It can be shaped, cajoled, hardened or distorted by innumerable influences.

Posted by Bill at September 10, 2007 07:03 PM | TrackBack (0)

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.indcjournal.com/cgi-bin/mt/dafrules/tapaz.cgi/2997

Comments

Posted by: Neiman Marwany at September 19, 2007 12:06 AM