AL propaganda: Turning the corner in Ramadi

[unhappycamper]

Courtesy Jack Robison

Turning the corner in Ramadi
By Sgt. 1st Class Jack Robison

Ar Ramadi, capital city of al Anbar province, has long been known to the people who fight here as the worst place in the world. I remember seeing an old friend in the dining facility in Kuwait before we got here. He asked where we were going in Iraq. When I told him, he cringed and told me he was sorry. He had never been here, but he had heard enough about it during his two tours.

Ar Ramadi is different from many other places in Iraq. You get the package deal here. The improvised-explosive-device threat is severe and constant, everything from "tomato-can" IEDs targeting dismounted patrols to enormous subsurface IEDs that will disable an M1 Abrams tank and reduce an armored Humvee to several pieces of twisted wreckage. There are so many IED cells here that it's not unheard of for an explosive ordnance disposal team to arrive, blow an IED, and then find more along the same route they came on their way back. The enemy is also very fond of improvised rocket launchers and RPGs. On any given day here, there are more projectiles flying through the air than any given NFL Sunday in Veterans Stadium. You can tell when a new shipment comes in. They're not prone to saving them for a rainy day.

Winston Churchill once said there was nothing quite as invigorating as being shot at without result. I agree completely. There is nothing as exciting as a gunfight that we all survive, and unless you've been in similar situations, you would be amazed what you can go through and come out untouched. You can be pinned down by heavy machine-gun fire and RPGs for an hour, hurling grenades and praying for the tanks or Apaches to hurry up and bring some hell down on the enemy so you can live to see your family again, and laugh and joke about it later that night.

You also can have the quiet of a nice autumn day split with the crack of a sniper's rifle and know before a body hits the ground that it's happened again. That single shot can be more frightening than any cataclysmic barrage of lead. When that happens in the battalion, the laughing stops and the bravado dries up, and you think about killing a little more than usual for a while. Even if you didn't know the fallen soldier personally, it's hard to ignore the terrible potential of a sniper on the loose. I've spent too many hours in a deer stand not to think about how easy it is for someone to be watching from a rubbled building or an open window.

~snip~

Kicking in doors and raiding random houses can be exciting and sometimes productive, but it doesn't really endear you to the population. There are times it's necessary, and the Iraqis generally understand that, but it's just as necessary to find out who might know a name or a house that will pay bigger dividends to hit. During our last sector clearance, an Iraqi man I had just questioned in broken Arabic about an IED placed while we were there actually left his house in broad daylight and walked up several streets to our location so he could let us know about some vehicles the insurgents had parked at another house when they scattered. While the guy might have shortened his life expectancy considerably, this is the kind of thing that wins against an insurgency. The insurgents can succeed without the active support of most of the population, as long as the people don't actively support us either. Once Iraqis start to participate significantly in cleaning up their own city, the insurgents are finished, whether they know it or not.

Sgt. 1st Class Jack Robison is a U.S. Army infantry platoon sergeant with D Company, 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, deployed to Ar Ramadi, Iraq, in Operation Iraqi Freedom.


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uhc note: This is from the 'For God and Country' website. Praise jeebus.