Operation: Comic Excess

So we have officially reached the point where we are redundant here.


I'll take a moment to let that settle with the 4 people remaining who still think we are needed.


I am not saying that we are not doing a good job here, nor am I saying that our current mission is unnecessary. It is very necessary. In November 2009, the Government of Iraq signed a Combined Security Agreement which basically outlined a plan to transfer the operational control of Forward Operating Bases, Checkpoints, and basic "Department of Defense" jobs of Iraq to Iraqis. It was supposed to be a 24-month process, and with the beginning of May now officially upon us, we are 18 months in... or 6 months out. Time to start the process of finishing the transfers (which should, in a nutshell, give you a basic idea of government oversight and redundancy we wade through here on a daily basis). But, as usual, I digress: with the Combined Security Agreement set to expire throughout the year, we are needed more than ever. But we are needed not to check vehicles or go on foot patrols. No, we are needed to prove that we are not needed. Muhammad Q. Public needs to see that Americans here are just punching a time clock, that the Iraqis are the ones who are keeping the peace, securing the borders, and generally putting the bad guys behind bars.

Stupid? Probably. But of note: he is wearing a back harness. So, you know, safety first...

So we are fighting the good fight. And as I have said before, most Iraqis are pretty much ready for us to leave. Sure, there still might be a few people up in our government and their government that are a little uneasy about us finally leaving, but I am sure that has to do more with some "occupying the country" Stockholm syndrome and less with their overall readiness or ability to take on the mission. A good example: we trained Iraqis to search every suspicious vehicle that passes through the many checkpoints one their roads. So when a suspicious vehicle passes by, they stop it. Boom. Check and mate. Of course, when the vehicle is suspicious because it is driven by an American and has no other markings, we get miffed when they pull it over. Um... hello? We trained them to do exactly that? I don't know about you, but it seems there are a number of people that are treating this like the Iraqis are some velvet-clad pimp that slashed our face with a razor after a slow night of trickin' rather than accepting the fact that we have been training them to do our job... and now they are and in fact, doing it quite well.

Looking right at you, Donnie.

It just seems odd: we need to leave because Iraq needs to be stable without us and has been proving for some time that their stability is no longer nested in our presence... however, we are worried that if we leave, there can be no stability. Aside from the fact that our foreign policy seems to be written by fans of zero sum riddles, there appears to be a leap of faith required by every man and woman here. Let them do the job. We have spent 6 or 7 years not trusting Iraqis to get the job done and then set ourselves up for failure by asking that opinions developed over 84 months be replaced in less than 24. Is it still dangerous here? Absolutely. Going outside the wire still causes the hair on your neck to stand up and gives you a heightened sense of your surroundings. Its not like we're facing terrorists from some nebulous Eastern Bloc nation sharing its borders with Borovia and Madeupbullshitistan. There are honest-to-God bad people here. But there are also honest-to-God bad people in America. Their presence alone should not be the justification needed to stay here and should not, taken as a specific event, be the reason we cannot trust the Iraqis to get the job done when dealing with them.

Pictured: Our new enemy. It's a retro thing I assume...

Our presence here has certainly done a lot of good. But the truest test, in my mind, is how we can leave while still trying to do good. The comic excesses of our desire to stay here cannot outweigh the Iraqis desire that we leave. I know it is a somewhat-common rant of mine. But it is important. No one likes throwing a party and inviting exactly twenty people only to see twenty-one people show up... and every day, it seems more and more like we are that twenty-first person.