The Wisdom of Soldiers

Among the many intelligent and forceful criticisms of the mere tricious Baker-Hamilton report, THE SCRAPBOOK's favorites have been from soldiers, ranging from lieutenant colonels to sergeants (THE SCRAPBOOK, a former private first class, has a soft spot for sergeants).

First, listen to T.F. Boggs, a 24-year-old sergeant in the Army Reserves, back home from his second deployment to Iraq:

"After watching the Iraq Study Group press conference today, I am a firm believer that all politicians are idiots. Okay well not all of them but they all have a problem understanding reality. . . .

"The Iraq Study Group's findings or rather, recommendations are a joke and could have only come from a group of old people who have been stuck in Washington for too long. The brainpower of the ISG has come up with a new direction for our country and that includes negotiating with countries whose people chant 'Death to America' and whose leaders deny the Holocaust and call for Israel to be wiped from the face of the earth. Baker and Hamilton want us to get terrorist-supporting countries involved in fighting terrorism! If I am the only one who finds something wrong with that, then please let me know because right now I feel like I am the only person who feels this way.

"Not only are the findings of the ISG a joke but the people who led the group (Baker and Hamilton) treat soldiers like they are a joke. One of the main recommendations of the ISG is to send more troops to Iraq in order to train Iraqis so they can secure their own country. But they don't feel that we are doing a good job of that right now because training Iraqis isn't an attractive job for soldiers to do because it isn't a 'career advancing' job. As someone who trained Iraqis from time to time I take personal offense to this remark. In my experience soldiers clamored for the chance to train Iraqis. . . .

"I feel like all of my efforts (30 months of deployment time) and the efforts of all my brothers in arms are all for naught. I thought old people were supposed to be more patient than a 24-year-old, but apparently I have more patience for our victory to unfold in Iraq than 99.9 percent of Americans. Iraq isn't fast food--you can't have what you want and have it now. To completely change a country for the first time in its entire history takes time, and when I say time I don't mean four years.

"Talking doesn't solve anything with a crazed people, bullets do, and we need to be given a chance to work our military magic. Like I told a reporter buddy of mine: War sucks but a world run by Islamofascists sucks more." (This and more from Sgt. Boggs can be found at his blog, boredsoldier.blogspot.com.)

Then there were these thoughts emailed to a friend from an active-duty Marine lieutenant colonel now serving in Iraq:

"From what I see here in Iraq, the rats are abandoning a sinking ship. Rummy has cut/run, and us slobs out here are on our own. Saw the Iraq Group's recommendations. Sure would hate to be one of these 'embedded' trainers in an Iraqi unit when the support of U.S. forces leave. Can you say POW???

"These clowns, especially Hamilton, are clueless. Either we stay and fight, or we leave with everyone. We lose Marines everyday. It sucks. But we're kicking the sh-- out of the Muj when it comes to combat. They don't have a chance if they stand and fight. IED's are their only real hope. I see only a small slice of the war, but for my money, more troops is the answer.

"It's a shame to think that after all the blood and effort here, we're going to walk away with our tails between our legs, just so that the Dems can say 'I told you so,' and get their man/woman in the White House in '08."

True, they don't offer 79 recommendations, but we'll stack the wisdom of these two up against any number of Washington eminences.

Utter Abstractions at Columbia

The December 11 issue of the New Republic contains an essay by Andrew Delbanco, a professor at Columbia University and biographer of Herman Melville, on a recent course he taught on "war."

Delbanco is a graceful writer, and some of the texts he uses in his class, like Max Weber's "Politics as a Vocation" and John Keegan's The Face of Battle, deserve to be read and studied. But what struck us about Delbanco's essay was his complaint that most of the students and professors at Columbia, and at our elite universities in general, are insulated from the realities of war: "For the vast majority of students and faculty in places like Columbia--it's different for support and maintenance staff, who are more likely to have friends or family in the line of fire--war is an utter abstraction rather than an imaginable fact."

You gotta love the elitism dripping from asides like "it's different for support and maintenance staff." Still, though, Delbanco is right. The academy is isolated from war and the warrior culture.

But here's the thing: Delbanco never mentions in his essay that in Columbia's case (as with many other elite universities) there is a simpler explanation than social class for the situation he laments. Columbia banned the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) from its campus in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam war. And as recently as May 2005, Columbia's Senate (an advisory panel of faculty and students) voted 53-10 to keep Morningside Heights pristinely military free.

"Bad Guys Are Winning"

We saw the above headline in the International Herald Tribune last week and reached for our smelling salts: Holy smokes, we thought, they finally realize we're at war. Then we kept reading: "Spam is back--in our inboxes and on everyone's minds."

Oh. Somebody better alert the jihadists not to start sending junk emails--because if they did that, the media might finally roll up their sleeves and join the fight.

Mr. Invisible

James Baker "likes to be the man behind the scenes," writes Evan Thomas in the December 11 issue of Newsweek. Curiously, the issue features on its cover . . . a full-length exclusive Newsweek photo portrait of Baker and his Iraq Study Group co-chairman, former Indiana congressman Lee Hamilton, to whom, Thomas writes, Baker is "very deferential," for example refusing "to be photographed" without Hamilton present.

Last Word on Baker-Hamilton

Among other things called for by the Iraq Study Group, noted columnist James Lileks last week, was this list of desiderata:

* Syria's full adherence to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 of August 2006, which provides the framework for Lebanon to regain sovereign control over its territory.

* Syria's full cooperation with all investigations into political assassinations in Lebanon, especially those of Rafik Hariri and Pierre Gemayel.

* A verifiable cessation of Syrian aid to Hezbollah and the use of Syrian territory for transshipment of Iranian weapons and aid to Hezbollah. (This step would do much to solve Israel's problem with Hezbollah.)

* Syria's use of its influence with Hamas and Hezbollah for the release of the captured Israeli Defense Force soldiers.

* A verifiable cessation of Syrian efforts to undermine the democratically elected government of Lebanon.

"All conducted under the watchful eyes of unicorns, of course," concluded Lileks.