WaPo undermining morale in the US

I read with disgust a completely irrelevant story from the Washington Post’s Sudarsan Raghavan this morning about how a bunch of privates disagree with the President’s strategy in Iraq;

Moments before he stepped into his squad’s Stryker — a large, bathtub-shaped vehicle encased in a cage — [Specialist] Caldwell echoed a sentiment shared by many in his squad: “They’re kicking a dead horse here. The Iraqi army can’t stand up on their own.”

A specialist has about two years in the Army, and although I’m sure Specialist Caldwell is a fine combat soldier, I’m equally sure he’s not brilliant military strategist. having been in combat myself, I know that a soldier only sees a tiny part of the war, not having access to all of the intelligence and the benefit of seeing the big picture.

But let’s see some other quotes;

“The general feeling among us is we’re not really doing anything here,” Caldwell said. “We clear one neighborhood, then another one fires up. It’s an ongoing battle. It never ends.”

Caldwell doesn’t see that there are perfectly peaceful areas of Iraq where there is no sectarian violence. After my time in combat, I spent most of my time asking superiors what happened.

I know what me and my troops did, but since we were exchanging fire with the enemy one minute and then setting up a rest stop the next, I wasn’t even sure if the war was still going on or not. It took me months of research and asking simple questions to sort out the entire Gulf War and figure out my place in it. And I was a platoon sergeant.

This is a useless article that highlights the fact that troops bitch. Troops have bitched since the days of Alexander the Great and they’ll bitch long after this war ends. For the Washington Post to dedicate an entire article to what a couple of privates think about the Iraqi Army is nothing more than undermining morale in the US and fueling anti-war, anti-Bush sentiments.

Someone tell me when there are Americans working at the Post again. 

Category: Media