Some U.S. soldiers have spent so much time in Iraq, it feels like home.

[8ballrollin]

Good read in Slate:

"Officers in the Grand Army of the Tigris, as one of its senior officers calls the American force, dine with local elders at "goat grabs," greet them with "man-kisses," and routinely punctuate their own conversations with the casual "insha'allah ...."

"What is true in microcosm is also true writ large. In a war where it's nearly impossible to detect intellectual coherence, the Army's learning curve tells a clear story. In 2005, with other brigades either bulldozing through towns or hunkering down on their outskirts, the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment literally "went native," fanning out across the city of Tal Afar and planting itself in the midst of a once-hostile population center. In 2006, the First Armored Division's First Brigade Combat Team borrowed and improved the template by establishing its own outposts across the brutal city of Ramadi and "flipping" the local tribes. The 10th Mountain Division then purposefully applied the examples of both cities to southern Baghdad. Perhaps too late for the home front, but Petraeus has enshrined the lessons of these places in a theater-wide strategy that is generating obvious results."

http://www.slate.com/id/2180883

[Archaea]

Fascinating article.

Interesting quote here:

There is, of course, an obvious downside to having an army that all but qualifies for Iraqi citizenship, even apart from the tally in dead and wounded. If the well-worn cliché that the U.S. Army inhabits a different universe from the Iraqis around it is no longer quite true, the reverse certainly is: Not even 7,000 miles can fully measure its remove from American society. Having bled so much here, the officer corps has very little use for the prospect that it may "have to leave our bleached bones on these desert sands in vain," as Centurion Marcus Flavius predicted in his famous letter back to Rome. Its sense of ownership about the war grows deeper with each year the Army—and this is, at the end of the day, the Army's war—spends in Iraq. Neatly summarizing a narrative that has emerged from the ranks, the Washington Post's Thomas Ricks noted, "We in the military did what we were asked to do, but the politicians betrayed us, the media undercut us and the American people lack the patience to see it through."