The Washington Post has an insightful article on the plight of U.S. soldiers in the Euphrates Valley in Anbar province.
It is datelined from a town called Hit:
.. . "Nobody wants us here, so why are we here?
That's the big question," said Maj. Brent E. Lilly. Lilly leads a Marine civil affairs team that has disbursed many thousands of dollars for damage claims and projects in Hit, but is still mortared almost daily. "If we leave, all the attacks would stop, because we'd be gone."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
The BIG scoop embedded in this story is that US forces are
abandoning wide areas of Anbar province.
The more fundamental question addressed, and essentially answered in this GREAT piece of journalism, is the CATCH 22 of it all.
The U.S. military is in a town called Hit supposedly to provide SECURITY.
But our BEING there is causing insecurity.
Current policy: Stay till we provide stability.
Problem: Our PRESENCE is causing INSTABILITY.
Houston, we have a problem.
More from WaPo:
In Hit, U.S. forces and their Iraqi counterparts are the target of most of the two dozen attacks -- road bombs, shootings and mortar fire -- each week. Residents are quick to argue that the American presence incites those attacks, and they blame the U.S. military rather than insurgents for turning their town into a combat zone. The Americans should pull out, they say, and let them solve their own problems.
Increasingly, the U.S. military seems eager to oblige.
While senior U.S. commanders have indicated that troops will be required to stay longer in Anbar than elsewhere in Iraq, they have already begun cutting back forces in some smaller, less strategic towns along the Euphrates.
... U.S. troops have been ordered recently to leave other regions in western Anbar to reinforce Baghdad.
You can understand the horror of Iraqi villagers. The U.S. military is setting up a camp. Oh boy, we will be attacked now. Gee how nice of them to provide "security."
Such is the brutal cycle of insurgency/counter-insurgency.
Bravo to Washington Post reporter Ann Scott Tyson for this piece. Quite well done.
At any rate, I don't want to lift more from this story, but it is good.
Please read it. It illustrates the complex dynamics of a town under occupation.