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Mission Still Not Accomplished
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Sep 14, 2004 02:39pm |
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| Category | General |
| Media | Weekly News Magazine - TIME Magazine |
| News Date | Tuesday, September 14, 2004 06:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | With U.S. control imperiled in Iraq, the military vows to oust the insurgents from their havens. Here's what it will take
By JOHANNA MCGEARY
Sunday, Sep. 12, 2004
The U.S. military has been here before: caught in a conflict where the thing it does best—fighting—can't win the war. In Iraq today, brute force is a wasting asset, as Major General Peter Chiarelli, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, knows firsthand. On a hot late-summer day, his soldiers entered Baghdad's Sadr City slum to quell attacks from militiamen loyal to rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Chiarelli's troops came under fierce fire as dozens of rocket-propelled grenades (rpgs) pounded their vehicles, and roadside bombs blew the tracks off a tank. For four hours, the two forces battled until the outmatched gunmen melted into the shadows. "We killed folks. There's no doubt we did," says Chiarelli. He knew the fighting would soon resume, but he sent his men back into the same neighborhood to distribute food supplies and materials such as cement, nails and boards to repair homes. It was part of the military's mixed mission: to defeat the insurgents while trying to win the backing of Iraq's resentful citizens.
But these days even good intentions don't add up to much. Chiarelli last month had hoped to drain recruits from al-Sadr's Mahdi militia by hiring 15,000 Sadr City men to clean the district's filth-filled streets. When a truce between coalition forces and al-Sadr broke down, however, the work project collapsed. The state of the district helps explain, Chiarelli says, why "a guy in Sadr City feels there is no hope." There's sewage in his yard, he gets one hour of electricity out of six, and he has no job. "If someone offers him money to shoot an RPG at Americans," Chiarelli says, "I would imagine it's not a hard choice." |
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