Monday, October 08, 2007
Michael Totten on the best police force in Iraq
Please read Michael Totten's latest -- and for the time being, last -- dispatch from Iraq. It is wonderful. Every paragraph is a gem, but here are a couple of bits I particularly enjoyed:
On the Kurds in Kirkuk
I had a much better experience when I embedded, so to speak, with the Iraqi Police in Kirkuk. I trusted the Iraqi Police in that city enough that I was willing to travel with them without any protection from the American military, even though Kirkuk is still a part of the Red Zone. Kirkuk, though, is an outlying case. The Iraqi Police there are Kurds. The Kurds of Iraq are the most pro-American people I have ever met in the world. They are more pro-American than Americans. There is no Kurdish insurgency, and the only Kurdish terrorist group – Ansar Al Islam, which recently changed its name to Al Qaeda in Kurdistan – is based now outside a town called Mariwan in northeastern Iran.
The tedium of peace in Ramadi
There wasn't much dramatic to see or do. Counter-insurgency soldiers often go into hostile areas looking for fights that draw combatants into the open where they can be captured or killed. But the Americans and Iraqis couldn't find a fight in Ramadi now if they tried. So they do not try.
What can I say about Iraqis and Americans who cooperate with each other professionally and have their act together while ironing out minor problems? Peace is much harder to cover than war. Not much of note happens. Once again, I understood why war correspondents write off Ramadi as boring and why major networks don't broadcast from there. (emphasis added)
Talk to the women
“All your reporters are men,” he said. “Every reporter I have seen in Ramadi is a man. You should send American women so they can talk to our women. Someone needs to find out what they think about what's happening here.”
Counterinsurgency happens.
CWCID: Glenn Reynolds.
2 Comments:
By 
Doug, at
Mon Oct 08, 09:40:00 AM:
Hope the message gets to Laura Ingraham.
By 
, at
Mon Oct 08, 10:31:00 AM:
send CODE PINK STINK over there and let them solve the problems
