Some U.S. soldiers have spent so much time in Iraq, it feels like home. - cougarguard.com — unofficial BYU Cougars / LDS sports, football, basketball forum and message board

8ballrollin · 12-27-2007, 06:24 PM

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

12-27-2007, 06:24 PM	#1
8ballrollin Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: WA Posts: 1,287	Some U.S. soldiers have spent so much time in Iraq, it feels like home. 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