The Toll - 7/22/07

As far as Iraq is concerned, it was a fast moving week. The Senate pulled an all nighter, Tuesday, which only resulted in the Republicans blocking a measure, for the seventh time this year, that would have changed our policy in Iraq. This latest proposal would have established a timeline for pulling out our troops.

Then, on Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid surprisingly pulled the defense bill from consideration until September, thus handing the president a two-month reprieve.

It didn’t take long for the proponents of the surge to move aggressively into the void. On Thursday, the Bush administration and military officials said that September was no longer a reasonable time in which to assess the effectiveness of the surge, that November would be much better.

And then on Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported that “evidence is mounting that military commanders favor a continuation of the buildup, which now has the troop level at 158,000, through next spring.”

It is difficult to see where this is headed. And the situation is further complicated by the fact that those who favor a pullout have ignored any strategy that would deal with the resulting chaos.

An all out eruption in Iraq could easily spread throughout an already volatile region, an area that the world’s economies depend upon for a steady supply of oil.

Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisc) has just announced that he plans to submit a resolution censuring the president for the irregularities that occurred during the buildup to the war.  However, the real challenge here, is for Congress and the administration to work out a resolution of the war itself, arguably the most difficult situation the United States has ever faced.

Given the potential impact to other countries, it would seem appropriate to accelerate the use of diplomacy. And, in that respect, while it is true that we are planning a second round of talks with Iran, we seriously need to get more countries involved.

Zalmay Khalilzad, our former ambassador to Iraq and present representative to the United Nations, wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times on Friday in which he said that the UN could "help internationalize the effort to stabilize the country." This would be a step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done in the diplomatic arena.

Our so-called enemies are not asleep at the switch. Last week, the leader of Iran was in Damascus shoring up an alliance of U.S. opponents that, according to the L.A. Times, seems to be gathering momentum.

In addition to the leader of Iran and the president of Syria, the meeting involved the leaders of Hezbollah, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.

Meanwhile, the war in Iraq continues to claim its victims. Last week, the Department of Defense released the obituaries of 19 military personnel killed in that country, ranging in age from 19 to 38.

The website, www.icasualties.org, reports that there have now been 3,632 U.S. military deaths in Iraq since our invasion in 2003, including three whose relatives are being notified today.

Total U.S. deaths in Afghanistan stood at 352, as of July 12^th, according to the Pentagon.

Among the fallen heroes was Army Sgt. Michael J. Martinez, 24, of Chula Vista, California.

Martinez was inspired to join the military by his admiration for his father, who served in the air force during the Vietnam War. Following his graduation from Eastlake High School, he was also won over by his recruiter’s argument that the army experience “could catapult him into the police agency of his choice and send him to college full time,” according to his mother, as reported in the LA Times.

Last year he was able to spend only twelve days with his son, Landon Michael, who is now one year old.

The family reported that he seemed to have a premonition of his death. He had told his wife that so many soldiers were dying or getting injured, and not being replaced, that he gave himself a month or less and he’d be dead or wounded. His wife, Ashley, said he was killed in exactly one month, to the day.

He also called her twice on the day he died. She reported that he told her, on his last call that “he just wanted me to know that he loved me, and he wanted me to keep that with me forever. Whatever happened, he’d be with me.”

He then left on what was to be his last patrol.

The Times reported that “family members note with anger that his three years of service should have ended in October - but his term was extended with orders to go to Iraq for a second time.”

His father said, “Michael didn’t volunteer to go a second time to Iraq. He was locked in.”

During his deployment, Martinez was awarded a Bronze Star and a Purple heart.

Back in Baghdad, an incredible display of normalcy briefly occurred yesterday. McClatchy Newspapers reported that police were dancing at their checkpoints as thousands of jubilant soccer fans poured into the streets after their national soccer team defeated Vietnam in a quarterfinal match of the Asia Cup in Bangkok, Thailand..

Unfortunately, at least five people were killed and 28 were wounded as the revelers fired their guns in the air, but at least, for the moment, the pall of wartime gloom was lifted.

Before the day was over, however, car bombings and shootings had returned the city to its normal level of chaos.

And today, Reuters carries the story that five Sunni tribal leaders, opposed to Al Qaeda, have been killed by a suicide bomber who drove a car, loaded with a half ton of explosives, into the house they were occupying.

UPI also reports that six police officers have been killed in Mosul, today, by an improvised explosive device, and two more have been killed by a booby-trapped body west of Kirkuk.

According to the Associated Press, American air and ground forces attacked a Shiite mosque in northeast Baghdad yesterday, and reported that they had killed six militants. Iraqi officials, however, said that the raid had killed 18 civilians, including women and children.

China View reported that we also attacked a Sunni mosque in Western Baghdad, this weekend, and detained 18 suspected militants there, including a member of Al Qaeda in Iraq.