…but they seem to be all out of gum: (Link thanks to LC Xystus)

MUQDADIYAH, IRAQ – In the fertile “bread basket” of central Iraq’s Diyala valley, roadside-bomb attacks have nearly stopped.

Looks like the “freedom fighters from other countries” have deserted St. Cindy of the Spotlight and picked up basket weaving or, better still, subterranean daisy pushing.

The breadbasket borders the notorious “Sunni triangle,” the mainly Sunni Arab swath of north-central Iraq where the insurgency started in 2003, and where it has proven most enduring ever since.

Yet Diyala province could be among the first areas handed over to full Iraqi security control. Planned reductions of US-led coalition forces, which numbered 161,500 in July, might begin as early as next year - depending on political conditions, as well as the readiness of Iraqi military units, US commanders say.

About 79,900 Iraqi Army soldiers and national guardsmen have been counted as being “operational” in August, according to the Brookings Institution’s Iraq Index. The stated US goal is to train another 18,639 troops.

“In the Sunni triangle, Diyala is well ahead of the others,” according to Col. Steven Salazar, US brigade commander for northeastern Iraq.

Iraqi troops still rely heavily on US support, from planning raids, to stand-by air support in case things turn bad, to detainee processing. But the Iraqi 2/2 Battalion is ready for its training wheels to come off, most US liaison officers say.

Theya agrees: “Right now we have the ability to do this on our own.”

The first and most useful step would be for us to get our hands off “detainee processing”, if you ask us. Somehow we get the feeling that the Iraqis, not being encumbered by a bunch of bleeding heart pansies who never met an enemy they wouldn’t love to shack up at the nearest five-star hotel, are more, how shall we put it, “efficient” in that particular area.

The 2/2 is hardly like an American battalion. Its troops conduct patrols in unarmored pickup trucks, and the chain of command is still too top-heavy, in the American view.

However, an Iraqi formation can fight the insurgents in an efficient manner, Theya says. “We have a dialogue with people. If I find an explosive device, we’ll close the road, and also close all the shops along it,” he says. “So if people work with us, they help themselves.”

Similar tactics by US troops tend to feed local hostility. Iraqi soldiers are inherently less provocative, Theya says, citing cultural affinities among all Arab Iraqis, whether Sunni or Shiite.

Only natural. No matter how much you appreciate the foreigners helping you get rid of a tyrannical regime, it still makes one heck of a difference in attitude once you start seeing your own guys filling out the uniforms in the streets. In Denmark, our gratitude towards the English and the Americans for getting Hitler off of our backs was huge, but nothing quite beat the feeling of seeing your own citizens take over control and prove that they were up to the job.

That’s not, contrary to what the defeatist and seditionist Loony Left say, the same as “hating the occupiers.” It’s called pride, and a people without pride is a people destined for the ash heap of history.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 31st, 2005 at 9:30 am and is filed under Occupation of Iraq, War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.