Troops Support Staying Until Finished in Iraq

Obviously not from the MilTimes.

With a potentially historic U.S. midterm election on Tuesday and the war in Iraq a major issue at the polls, many soldiers said the United States should not abandon its effort here. Such a move, enlisted soldiers and officers said, would set Iraq on a path to civil war, give new life to the insurgency and create the possibility of a failed state after nearly four years of fighting to implant democracy.

"Take us out of that vacuum -- and it's on the edge now -- and boom, it would become a free-for-all," said Lt. Col. Mark Suich, who commands the 1st Squadron, 89th Cavalry Regiment just south of Baghdad. "It would be a raw contention for power. That would be the bloodiest piece of this war."

The soldiers declined to discuss the political jousting back home, but they expressed support for the Bush administration's approach to the war, which they described as sticking with a tumultuous situation to give Iraq a chance to stand on its own.

Leading Democrats have argued for a timeline to bring U.S. troops home, because obvious progress has been elusive, especially in Baghdad, and even some Republican lawmakers have recently called for a change in strategy. But soldiers criticized the idea of a precipitate withdrawal, largely because they believe their hard work would go for naught.

The troops are like most people. They don't want to walk away from a project half done. I'm thinking there is likely to be more to their incentive considering that they have had comrades die for this project. I doubt you'll see many articles like this one.

I'm sure there will be commentary somewhere in the blogsphere about the troops being to close to the trees to see the forest. But then, the appropriate counterpoint would be that they, being across the ocean, are to far from the forest to see it at all.

With the coming elections, I really have a certain level of dread that the Vietnam quagmire comparison will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the Dems get to control the purse strings, you can be assured that there will be a lot of push to close down Iraq irrespective of any likelihood of success. And with what the Dems have been able to put forward as alternatives, I'm frankly not confident that they won't go down that path.