The surge

Someone asked yesterday what people around here think of the surge in troops. Apparently it’s getting bad press at home. I suppose you can tell, from that last statement, exactly how connected I am to the news that’s going to people in the States. I actually missed the whole Boston “black box” marketing scheme, which a marketer by trade that I know here declares is brilliant, and all the other (more typically military types) think is a horrifically stupid way to get publicity. But then, I’ve found that I just can’t watch cable news anymore; the stuff that’s on about the war is too much and upsets me, and all the U.S. stuff seems frivolous and not worth wasting time on. Besides, I get very angry being told what I can and can’t eat (e.g. trans fats).

Anyway, back to the point. The surge. Well, the first reaction that I had to that news was relief that finally, someone had decided what to do. We’d been in a holding pattern here for a while, after the elections and the instatement of a new Secretary of Defense. Through the holiday season, we suspected that the top leadership would be changing, but until we actually went through the change, we wouldn’t know what the trickle-down effect of that change was going to be. So as things have proceeded through, and one general after another is being switched out, our path forward is getting a little clearer.

This has been exacerbated, in my own department, by the fact that our particular leadership has been switched out, and we’re in the middle of a reorganization that is causing a lot of the second-tier leadership a lot of worry and upset. (We on the bottom of the totem pole shrug and figure it’ll look about the same way, at our level, as it did before.) So my immediate reaction to the surge was just plain relief at someone having made a decision after seemingly dangling the fact that they were thinking about changing stuff over our heads for a long time.

As far as the surge itself? I think that it’s going to be reacted to differently by the different groups of people out here. At the Embassy, we headquarters types will be looking at something pretty similar to what we’ve always had going on. There will likely be more people around the grounds, and living quarters will be packed, but they’re not sending large numbers of soldiers to boost the ranks in the HQ. I suspect that the people reacting to it the most are the “outside the wire” troops, Army and Marines, who are clearing neighborhoods in Baghdad with the Iraqi Security Forces, and trying to get a foothold so that reconstruction projects can be finished.

And according to one Iraqi blogger, even the news of the surge had some real results. You see, part of the doctrine announced with the surge was a change; it concentrated on clearing out and holding ground, and making sure that you’re not clearing a neighborhood one week so that the insurgents can move back in next week. I think this will help restore a sense of purpose to the American troops around here; it’ll be good to actually get moving to do some real work. Yeah, I guess when it all comes down to it, the military tends to be peopled with individuals who prefer action to deliberation, so the fact that we have a decision and a direction is something we’re pleased about.

As to whether that decision or direction was the proper one, I suppose time will tell. I guess that, all in all, you tend to leave it to the diplomats and politicians to do the debating over the good and bad of it. Honestly, I just want to do a good job of what is in front of me. In the decisions that I make, day by day, I try to do the right thing. And second-guessing national policy serves me no purpose here; good heavens, as a junior officer I have a hard enough time even making a point for formatting a presentation in a way that makes sense to me! I guess that I’m here because, once everyone has done their debating, someone needs to act to make sure WE DO SOMETHING. That’s why I joined the military, after all.

February springtime

If the groundhog came up in Baghdad yesterday, he definitely saw his shadow. It was brilliant and blue-skied and warm… Somehow I suspect, however, that seeing his shadow doesn’t doom us (treat us?) to six more weeks of winter here. Like I said, it was brilliant, blue-skied and warm. And if this is happening in the first week of February, what does that imply for the next few months?

I suspect that February, or perhaps just the first part of it, will be what I think of as “spring”. The rest of the months here will feel like summer again… though the heart of the Iraqi summer, from all accounts (I didn’t get the opportunity to experience it, thank goodness!) is another thing entirely… I suppose that, like in Arizona, summer here can be divided into at least two distinct seasons. (In Tucson, it’s “the hot-dry” from April through early July and “the monsoon” from late July through late September.) But, happily, I won’t be here to comment on the summer months. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to 120° (F) days, anyway! Even if it’s soppingly humid in the Southeast, it rarely climbs over 100° in Montgomery, AL.

We’re expecting rain for the next few days, I guess as a holdover from rainy season. This morning it was sprinkling as I walked in to work, but nothing major. (I hope it doesn’t develop into something major, because I didn’t wear my rain jacket in and I hate walking through torrential rain.) It’s funny; we have a daily “status of how things are” report that contains all sorts of interesting (classified) information. One of those is a weather report for various parts of Iraq, and it amuses me to find that THIS weather report is classified. (I suspect because it usually contains other information related to military operations.) However, rest assured, I am not violating OPSEC or INFOSEC to tell you that we’re expecting rain, because this comes from sources other than military!