The Mayor of Ar Rutbah: Great Read!!

[abncougar]

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3265&page=0


Amid the chaos in Iraq, one company of U.S. Special Forces achieved what others have not: a functioning democracy. How? By relying on common sense, the trust of Iraqis, and recollections from Political Science 101. Now, their commander reveals the gritty reality about nation-building in Iraq, from the ground up.

nice photo essay also!!

[abncougar]

FINE, you guys are to busy reading about captain jack, the xm8 and spy satellites to read some good stuff!!!

[ElHombre]

a good find and an uplifting story except for the last two paragraphs. that's where the entire story heads downhill.



In the end, though, we left. Although the Iraqis continued the work we started, the follow-up coalition forces did not. The distance between the locals and the troops widened. The Iraqis were eventually exposed and vulnerable to regime loyalists’ retribution and intimidation by foreign fighters. The local Iraqi security forces never developed to the point where they were stronger than the gangs of insurgents; they were never brought into a larger political or security framework of an Iraqi government so that they could be part of a collective security system. Left alone, the Iraqis simply couldn’t hold off the foreign fighters who passed through the city, using Ar Rutbah as a way station en route to Baghdad and Ramadi.

For the brief time I was mayor of Ar Rutbah, I knew we were the real revolutionaries there. Change had to come from the top down. Because we didn’t receive any guidance for governance or reconstruction, and certainly not for spreading democracy, I had to make up everything as I went, based on the situation on the ground and what I remembered from my Special Forces training and a handful of political science classes. I entered the city with only our strategic objective for Iraq in mind: to establish a free, democratic, and peaceful Iraq without weapons of mass destruction. And that is what I tried to achieve in my own microcosm of the war.

what he tried to achieve was on his own initiative. he admits to getting no help from superiors and that his sucesses were not followed up on. so pretty much all of his (and his troops along with the locals) work was undone. this is not a 'good news' piece but a tragedy.

[Miles.]

FINE, you guys are to busy reading about captain jack, the xm8 and spy satellites to read some good stuff!!!

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[Jedburgh]

Posted yesterday (http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=61016)