| Tuesday,
October 25, 2005
Continuing the discussion of Universities,
teaching, and education:
Dear Jerry:
It is hard to disagree with all of your response to
Mr. Divine's letter, but there lurks a chicken and egg problem. The great
expansion of our universities in the 1970s brought in a lot of what you
refer to as the 90-120 group. Suddenly, university faculty were lecturing to
students who literally could not follow what they were saying. Much of the
fun instantly went out of teaching, and many of us were left wallowing,
trying to make contact with at least half of our large lecture classes.
There has been little resolution of this issue: instead we try to find the
bright students and engage them one on one. I would never pay Ivy League
tuition for a bright son or daughter of mine, since if he or she were bright
and interested, faculty anywhere would latch onto him or her and take him or
her into the fold.
(Sorry about all the he or she and him or her stuff:
our language was another casualty of the 1970s. Feel free to edit it all
out.)
Henry Harpending
Professor Harpending is coauthor with Greg
Cochran of several papers on genetics and intelligence including the "How
the Ashkenazi Got Their Smarts" papers.
Dr. Pournelle:
I must take streneous exception to your blanket
comments about US universities, professors and teaching. I have contributed
e-mails to the discussion on your site before without reference to my
credentials or employment, but I am on the Electrical and Computer
Engineering Faculty of the University of Wisconsin, which is relevant to
this discussion.
With some exceptions, every one of our undergraduate
and graduate courses is taught by a tenured or tenure-track faculty member.
Some lecture courses have been taught by TA's who are at the top of the
talent pool, often as a way of getting that TA teacher training rather than
on account of a shortage of professors to cover the sections. Some lecture
courses are taught by adjunct or visiting faculty, people who are visiting
in some research or other capacity. Recently, we have hired a small cadre of
teaching faculty to supervise labs and teach the more hand-on lab-oriented
lecture courses. We have mainly TA's teaching lab courses, but as a
professor, I am teaching an advanced undergraduate lab in radio
communication systems. We also have TA's teaching discussion systems which
supplement what the professor teaches in lecture and offers more example
problems and elaboration on theoretical concepts.
As to having a TA teach anything in our department,
not only is the graduate student as TA getting financial support to pursue
an MS or PhD degree, that graduate student is getting on-the-job teaching
training to prepare for a career as a professor or as a manager or other
leader in industry. Furthermore, every semester, our TAs go through
intensive indoctrination and teacher training sessions, and as part of my
duties as a professor, I observe and rate TA teaching and have seen the
results of this effort. As to the competence, qualifications, or credentials
to teach as a TA, all of our TA teachers have undergraduate degrees in
Electrical Engineering or related disciplines, they have the grades or other
qualifications to be accepted into graduate school, and they obtain TA
positions after a highly selective process applied to an already refined
pool. Are you telling me that a person with the credentials to work for GM
designing cars or work for Intel designing the next generation of computers
is not qualified to teach circuits or logic design at a university?
As to notions regarding how tenured faculty occupy
themselves, the expectation is that a professor function in the academic
equivalent of a group supervisor if not a manager in an industrial settings.
Yes, a leader should lead from the front as they say in the military, but
part of a professor's job is to lead graduate students in both teaching and
research activities as part of the task of training them.
As to the "many Asian who speak with an
incomprehensible accent", we have graduate students and faculty from all
over the globe who speak with all kinds of accents. I happen to have spent
language-formative years in Park Ridge, Illinois, and I guess I speak with
that same kind of nasal-strident big-city Midwestern twang that grates on
people's nerves and will probably prevent the junior senator from New York
from ever becoming President unless she takes lessons from an accent coach.
As to "the modern US university is largely a fraud", I
challenge anyone to come up with anything fraudulent about our faculty of
professors teaching motivated undergraduates about circuit theory, electric
and magnetic fields, logic, solid-state electron physics, solid-state
electronic devices, linear system theory, probability, computer programming,
and numerical methods -- this constitutes our core curriculum -- to the
highest standards of rigor as preparation for work in industry, in
university teaching, government, or the military. Whether a degree in
Electrical Engineering constitutes an education in contrast with degrees in
Liberal Studies, I challenge anyone to identify a discipline that challenges
a student's mental faculties to the same degree -- some see what I do as
technical training and not an education, but what I teach is the
intellectual currency of our times, and any student coming out of our
program is as suited to be a leader as to be a scientist.
You are welcome at any time to visit any of my class
sessions to make a first-hand evaluation of what I do. I cannot promise you
the same celebrity treatment that Bill Gates received upon making a surprise
visit last week to Computer Science, but I am sure you have enough fans to
make it worth your while. I am also on the ABET accreditation committee, and
any feedback from you will be taken very seriously at the highest levels.
Paul Milenkovic Associate Professor Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Wisconsin-Madison
I make no doubt there are exceptions, but
I speak from considerable experience including my son at UCLA who had
calculus classes from a student who was entirely incomprehensible. And you
will note I have often said that the hard sciences are generally exceptions
to the general decline of teaching.
Unfortunately, to be a good citizen, one
needs more than proficiency in engineering. And that, I put it to you, is
not being done well. I note that the University of Wisconsin did record the
Mosse Lectures, which is a great point in its favor.
There are exceptions to any
generalization, but in my judgment the quality of education went way down
while the costs skyrocketed, and we have not seen the end of that trend, nor
of the unremitting political correctness of the modern university campus.
Dear Jerry,
>>Few "professors" want to teach nor have they much to
profess. Students are taught by grad students, many Asian who speak with an
incomprehensible accent, and few who are interested in actual teaching.
Universities dedicated to teaching are rare.<<
My daughter graduated from h.s. in June and is now a
freshman at Florida Gulf Coast University. This is a fairly new school in
Fort Myers in SW Florida and is part of the Florida state university system.
Certainly not a 'name' school of any kind. We toured the campus last spring
during our university shopping trips. I asked our group guide just one
question compared to the average 4-8 other parents asked,
Q. "What percentage of the undergraduate classes are
taught by graduate assistants rather than full time faculty?"
A. "There are no graduate student teaching positions.
The professors teach all the classes."
Which answer pleasantly surprised me, I'll admit. And
so far it's proved to have been an honest answer, too. Whether this holds up
through FGCU's planned rapid growth over the next few years will be
interesting to watch.
Best Wishes,
Mark
As I say, there are exceptions. If one
cares to look it's still possible to find a good school. It's just hard to
do.
Universities dedicated to teaching aren't that great,
either. Unless you say 'no' loudly from time to time, dig in your heels, and
if necessary go on strike, they become very similar to high schools-- fifty
to sixty hour weeks, stultifying educational bureaucracies, and no time to
keep current in your subject. Faculty at research universities retire in
their seventies, but faculty at teaching universities tend to take early
retirement, both in America and England.
I had a chat with the mayor and his assistant on
Sunday after church and discussed the problems as they see them. Most local
people are working class, vote Labour, but are very socially conservative.
Their children, although smart, would never think of going to college or
university--it's just not done. I run into self-fulfilling prophecies all
the time. I get these kids and find they have already decided what marks
they want and proceed to work at that level. No ambition. A passing mark in
the UK is a 40, and that's what they aim at. I set and mark exams based on
American expectations (i.e., a 70 is a low C) and find my classes average
45.
Criticising American universities for the state
America is in is the sin of suboptimisation. They're only a part of the
system and not necessarily one that has much control over the outcome. My
experience is that American computer science graduates are better prepared
for the real world than most European graduates, so they must be doing
something right.
-- "If they do that with marks and grades, should they
be trusted with experimental data?"
Harry Erwin, PhD
==
Subject: piling on re: education thread
Jerry,
Here is a timely editorial in Machine Design regarding
education. Its nothing that hasn't been said at your site before, yet still
true:
http://www.machinedesign.com/ASP/viewSelectedArticle.asp?strArticleId=59353&strSite=MDSite&Screen=CURRENTISSUE&CatID=3
Thanks for what you do at Chaos Manor,
Jim Laheta
And see below, for other views, including
a letter from a Young Jacobin
===========
w
f
======================
More letters from
Iraq. This is a long section:
10 October 2005
I've got a little time and I'm in the writing mode so
here I go with another meandering letter from here.
It's five days to go before the Constitutional
Referendum and it's starting to get a little nuts here. We've got nightly
conference calls with the Corps Election Cell to discuss what's going on,
we're updating e-mails on the latest every hour, and generally getting into
the last-minute frenzy.
Today I attended the Independent Election Commission
of Iraq national committee visit to Salah Ah Din province. The locals
managed to fill 130 seats in the auditorium of sheiks, elected officials,
and other local leaders. According to one of the State Department folks
traveling with Mr. Adel Allami, the IECI national electoral Chairman, it was
the largest turnout yet for a trip.
The meeting was held at the Salah Ah Din
Rehabilitation Hospital, located just outside Tikrit. The hospital, which is
in pretty rundown shape, was built during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 to
treat soldiers injured in battle. It was Iraq's version of Walter Reed Army
Hospital. It turns out one of the guys we hire to help us with local media
and Iraqi relations -- Dr. Sa'ad Salih, a former Iraqi Army dentist -- was
the commander of this place. He was a one-star general in the Iraqi Army and
in charge of 470 staff. Pretty impressive, I think. He was about to make
major general, but then the invasion came, he told me today.
Dr. Sa'ad is kind of an interesting guy. He's been
working for the US Army as a contractor since 2003. He speaks excellent
English and is an amateur archeologist. Of course, I'm also convinced he's
probably ratting us out a bit as well since he's still alive.
In any case, the hospital was secured with Iraqi
Police Service, the Facilities Protective Service -- think rent-a-cops with
AK-47s -- and US infantry in the outer cordon and with a couple of snipers
on the roof. We also had a couple of AH -64s in the area all day. Nothing
says love like a helicopter gunship overhead.
Today I rode out with a squad from an MP company. It
was the first time I'd ridden with these guys. They were pretty aggressive.
When one civilian vehicle didn't move over fast enough they put two rounds
in the road in front of the car. The car moved over. Of course one reason
for the extra aggressiveness was the morning intel report that said there
was a threat of an SVBIED connected with the conference today.
The TC of the vehicle today was Sgt. Jane [name
changed -- PN]. She's the MP squad leader and was second in command of the
three-vehicle section that was ferrying myself and other division types to
this meeting. Her platoon leader, another woman, was in overall charge.
I got a kick out of Sgt. Jane. She obviously has her
sh*t together but she was prepared for a day of sitting around waiting for
us. She had copies of "Cosmo" and "Glamour" for her reading pleasure tucked
underneath the radio, in between the spare machine gun ammo cans, and under
the smoke grenade in case they have to call for a dust-off. She is also
quite pretty, but when her gunner asked if he should shot anything that
moved replied, " You know the drill, ROE mother****er." ROE stands for Rules
of Engagement. Those tell us when we can and cannot shoot something.
The meeting was interesting, although I missed a lot
of it. My designated translator today -- a Jordanian-American lady -- is a
really poor spoken translator. She just missed a lot and would just
generalize. I started off sharing her with an LA Times reporter the State
Department brought in, but he wandered off to her colleague when he realized
she wasn't very good. Still, Governor Hamad and the Provincial Council
Chairman Sheik Rashid both encouraged everybody to vote and said there was a
lot of good stuff in the constitution. They listed the usual Sunni litany of
faults -- federalism, resource sharing, Arab identify -- and today and the
day before I heard a new one: passing on citizenship through the mother.
Somehow it is un-Islamic to pass along citizenship through the mother and
this is in the constitution.
The audience asked lots of questions. Some was pretty
basic -- When will the polls be open? Some questions were surprising to a
westerner: a woman asked if her husband could go and vote for everybody in
the family. Of course, the Sunnis boycotted last time so they are out of
practice.
Since it's Ramadan -- which means no eating, no
smoking, no sex, no drinking water between dawn and dusk -- there was no
goat-grab at today's meeting. We brought along bottled water and MREs for
the western press and Americans and during a break we huddled in one room
while our media colleagues ate MREs.
One thing I did get a kick out of was when the school
next door let out. Like many Iraqi facilities, the Rehab Hospital is a
self-contained entity; there is housing for the employees on the grounds.
I was standing outside enjoying the day, when the kids
started walking down the street. The little girls looked adorable in their
matching school uniforms. I noted a lot of them had the Coalition-donated
backpacks -- with the Iraqi map logo -- on their backs.
As soon as the kids saw the American Humvees parked
outside the building they went nuts. They all went over and started talking
to the GIs. Of course they wanted stuff, but it was fun to watch.
One little boy ran back, and grabbed his sister by the
hand, and then he gestured and they both took off running to join the crowd.
When it was time to leave, Sgt. Jane had acquired a fan club of four little
Iraqi boys who were talking to her and hoping to get pens and candy and
stuff. Female soldiers are still not an Arab thing so I think they enjoyed
the curiosity value as well.
Be it World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, and now
Iraq; US soldiers like kids and kids sure seem to like US soldiers. It may
be that we do have "stuff" but the average GI is a pretty friendly guy,
especially where children are involved.
Well this has been kind of a meandering letter. It was
mostly just a chance to share some observations and get them down for myself
before I forget.
In about 30 more days I should be a civilian again. I
am looking forward to that. Oh yes, for all you New York residents, thanks,
I intend to take full advantage of every property tax break I can get with
my new "combat veterans status". You'll get to pick up the slack (grin).
Your Pal
==
19 October 2005
Iraq
Hello All:
I sat down and wrote a lengthy e-mail the other day,
ruminating on many things, and my computer ate it. So I'm going to try to do
it again. I will probably leave something out, but then again, it probably
wasn't important.
The big event here was the referendum. It was 36 hours
of staff hell, not unlike covering election night for a newspaper, only it
lasted longer.
On Friday, the day before, I left at noon to go brief
the commander of an airborne division on some exciting new Civil Military
Operations stuff, and everything was under control. The brigade liaison
officers were going to report on the flow of ballots to polling centers and
all was a well.
When I came back just before five, everything was in
crisis mode. For some reason my elections guy had contracted a serious mind
fart and dropped the ball, the LNOs were not reporting, and the G-3 script
writer hadn't written the information correctly. Unfortunately I bore the
brunt of the disaster. I eventually managed to track down the information,
and stepped in to write the script and get it to the CG in time. But I still
got to stand at parade rest and be dressed down by my boss. Not a fun way to
begin the weekend.
The day was tense because it wasn't just me who
incurred the wrath of the chief of staff. The brigade liaison officers
didn't know enough about what their units were doing so it was a long,
unhappy night.
In any case, the voting itself went well. There were
very big turnouts in Salah Ah Din, Kirkuk, and Diyala provinces. The Salah
Ah Din turnout was almost 74 percent of registered voters. Of course, most
of those people were voting no, but that is still a good thing.
I had hoped to go out to the local Provincial Joint
Coordination Center with my friend the Political Advisor -- and his personal
security detail -- to watch the votes being tallied, but after Friday
night's fiasco it was pretty clear I needed to keep my butt solidly fixed in
the TOC. After we got through the first phone conference with the corps
commander at 1000 in the morning things went better. By the end of the day I
had gone from "dumb sonofabitch" to "good job."
I like the chief of staff, and I respect the chief of
staff, but he goes from saying everything's okay to calling you a dumb
mother****er in about 10 seconds flat. The regular Army is the only place
you can still do this.
So in the end, the Iraqis voted and on Tuesday the
voting tally sheets got put on an airplane and flown to Baghdad. Now they
just have to announce the formal results.
Some of the Sunni's we deal with are very depressed
that the constitution passed despite their "no" votes. Of course, they have
only themselves to blame because they decided to boycott the vote in
January.
I personally believe they are also being a little
disingenuous when they talk about the constitution breaking up Iraq. It
seems to me that for almost 35 years, Iraqi was a concern run by the Sunni's
for themselves -- with the assistance of Saddam -- and the Shia and the
Kurds didn't get a hell of a lot out of it. Maybe if the Sunnis hadn't spent
so much time killing Kurds and keeping the Shi'ites down then there would be
more loyalty to the idea of Iraq.
So now they're all upset. Hopefully that will
translate into voting in December and not more bombs.
I also wanted to mention very briefly the famous -- or
infamous -- interview that President Bush did with the folks from the 42nd
ID. I know three of the people pretty well who were in that ten-person
group, and I know that they weren't coached to give any particular answers.
The soldiers did decide among themselves who would answer which kinds of
questions and they thought hard about what they wanted to say.
We watched that interview in the DMAIN as it took
place and I remember thinking: "God, that captain is smiling like a moron,"
and "Geeze these guys look like they are reading from cue cards." They were
not, of course, but they were nervous as hell and the first few folks just
said what they wanted to say without responding to the president's actual
questions.
It got better when they went to the captain working
with the Iraqi cops. He actually answered the question. Then it got better.
The Public Affairs Officer came in to see how it looked. I told him the guys
were looking like they were reading from cue cards. He hit me on the
shoulder.
The bottom line with all this is I don't think there
was any conspiracy. The soldiers actually said what they think. Those guys
actually believe in their mission, especially the guys working with the
Iraqi Army. They folks they had on TV, for the most part, belong to our
MITTs (Military Transition Teams), they work with the Iraqis on a daily
basis and they know their pluses and minuses. For the most part, the MITT
guys I know say the Iraqis are coming along. They have problems, of course,
and they are not the 82nd Airborne, but as somebody pointed out once, they
do not have to be the 82nd Airborne. They just have to be better than the
Sunni insurgents.
In our AO we've got some encouraging signs. Iraqi
units are getting better and doing more and more of the fighting. They are
definitely taking more of the casualties than we are. On Election Day three
Iraqi Army soldiers escorting recovered ballots and tally sheets were killed
in the line of duty.
Now the next event is to hand over the job to our
replacements. Then we can go home. My counterpart was here for Referendum
Day and is coming back over in two more days for another stint. When we did
our Relief in Place we basically sat next to our counterparts for a week and
then they sat next to us and watched us.
In our RIP will be harder because they are standing up
a brand new FOB 12 miles up the road, while we are still running the FOB
here. When we leave, our FOB will be shut down and turned over to the Iraqi
Army to secure. Bottom line: It makes it tougher to do the battle handover.
All of this, though, is a good sign. In about three
weeks I should be back at my US location. I am looking forward to seeing my
family again and getting off active duty after a year and a half away from
home.
Tonight the Iraqis are celebrating Ramadan. The loud
speaker at the mosque is going full-bore and every now and then gunshots
erupt. It's "happy fire." These folks haven't seemed to have figured out
that a bullet that goes up happy can cause a problem when it comes down.
It's cool outside and the moon is almost full and casting a lovely light
over the Tigris. This place almost seems nice.
Today we had a couple of demonstrations of people
protesting the Saddam trial. More power to them. As long as there's no
shooting, its a good thing.
Take care.
Your Pal
===
25 October 2005 Iraq
Hello all:
I figured I'd send one more e-mail while I had the
chance. In a few days we'll be turning over the last of our TPE ( Theater
Provided Equipment) computers to our replacement division's Civil Military
Operations section and I will lose the ability to send unclassified e-mails.
I wanted to thank everybody for the e-mails over the
past ten months. They've been appreciated more than you know. It's good to
have a connection with home when you are away. The infantry division has to
spend one more day in complete control of the area dubbed Multi-National
Division - North Central and then we turn the responsibility for day-to-day
operations over to the airborne division replacing us. Our final Transition
of Authority occurs soon and then I don't have to care anymore.
Our challenge then will be to get back home and get
demobilized. Soon after TOA we'll fly out of here in Chinook helicopters to
the closest APOD (Arial Port of Debarkation) and catch a C-130 going south
to Kuwait. In Kuwait we get our gear checked by customs during a 36-hour
layover and then head back to our home base.
I just wanted to share a couple of observations as my
time here trickles down to a week.
I've always been skeptical of the claims that the
press distorts reality. In most cases, I think, people get upset because
reporters do not automatically reflect their point of view. For the most
part, I think the reporting on Iraq is accurate. I think the reporters here
are doing the best they can to tell a complicated story. The problem, of
course, is you're compelled to lead with the car bomb de jour or the latest
US death. It tends to distort reality.
I think the real distortion of what is happening here
occurs when the talking heads and the opinion mavens get involved. My take
is that if you hate George W. Bush then nothing good can happen in Iraq, and
it is all bad. I think that colors the perspective of most of the chattering
classes. They've got to justify their opposition to George Bush and the
decision to invade Iraq by finding disaster everywhere. Of course, the
opposite can be true, but I think the truth is closer to the middle.
Take the issue of casualties, for example. We'll reach
the 2,000 US deaths mark here before I get home I am sure. It is a dangerous
place in some places.
The death of a soldier sucks. When you're sitting in
the TOC and you find out there's been a KIA the whole place gets depressed.
Everybody feels it. I've been to the memorial ceremonies; big tough guys
cry. Heck, we feel it when Iraqi soldiers and cops get killed.
But it has to be put in perspective. I've read
newspaper columns were they talk about high casualty rates in Iraq. That's
nuts. In 2003 there were 1,403 deaths on New York State highways. The
average death rate in Iraq is about 650 soldiers a year. Out of the 23,000
soldiers in Task Force Liberty, we have had 53 soldiers killed. That is a
0.23 percent death rate, that is very low, much lower than Vietnam. No
soldier wants to die but it is part of the risk.
Hell one of our battalion commanders, five days short
of turning over his command, got hit in an IED ambush on his way to a
meeting and is now in Germany with a bad shoulder injury. He's a good guy
and I hope he pulls through. A Navy guy assigned to our ACE (the All Source
Collection Cell) was outside taking a smoke break when a mortar round landed
and lost his legs. These things happen.
But I think you've got a statistically higher chance
of getting killed driving down the New York State Thruway. It's just that
driving on the Thruway is a risk people accept.
There was also the big stink about three-to-one
trained Iraqi battalions. A lot of that had to do with the way we evaluate
the Iraqi Army. As the IA has gotten better trained, the standards have
gotten tougher. When we got here in January the best the Iraqi Army was able
to do was company level ops. They are now taking over parts of the battle
space and running brigade-level operations. Our challenge has been to take
an army that was trained to do little more than check point operations and
turn it into one that can conduct cordon and search ops and take on the
insurgents on a one-to-one fight.
This is an army that fought for eight years against
Iran and didn't get much of anywhere, and an army that got totally stomped
in Kuwait. Their junior officers pretty much lacked initiative and their
conscript troops didn't have a lot of will to fight.
We've had to teach them basic staff skills -- how to
do strength accounting, how to order supplies, how to plan an attack -- that
they really had a pretty poor grasp on, and teach them tactics above "stand
here and shoot." It is working slowly. The new Iraqi Army is all volunteer
(admittedly because there aren't many other jobs) but at least these guys
chose to be there.
The Iraqis are getting better and I think that's
illustrated by the way the insurgents attack them. Just as the bad guys
don't take on US troops in a fire fight, the insurgents have stopped
mounting force-on-force attacks on the IA. They're losing and they don't
like it.
This continues to be a war of car bombs and inaccurate
mortar rounds. The car bombs cause lots of casualties and they make it
necessary to have a lot of safety precautions, but they can't defeat an
army. And again, most of the casualties are Iraqi civilians. Our casualty
rates have stayed low.
I spend most of my time looking at reports on Iraqi
governance. We've seen a big change in the last ten months. Local councils
that couldn't figure out how to hold a meeting are getting things done.
Iraqi's are learning the art of politics and using TV and the media to lead
and sway people. One of the things our division can take credit for is
bringing together the local governors in our region -- two Kurds, a Sunni,
and a Shia -- on a regular basis. These guys are learning to talk together
and problem-solve together and even reach out to each other for help. When
Kirkuk province needed Arabic copies of the Iraqi constitution, the Kurdish
governor called the Sunni governor of Salah Ah Din province and got extra
copies in Arabic shipped to him.
Their government isn't as sophisticated as our
government but they're slowly learning to do things for themselves on a
local level. This is revolutionary in an Iraq which has always been
dominated by a strong central government. The local governments had no power
and the utilities are run by director generals answerable to a boss in
Baghdad. This would be like having the local sewer department back home run
by a guy who reports to somebody in Washington D.C. It makes it hard to get
stuff done, but things are changing. It is going to take a while, though, to
change a whole way of life and 35 years of people with initiative getting
shot for showing it.
One of the things we've done here is create a
satellite TV station that allows a moderate Sunni viewpoint to be broadcast
across the Middle East by local entrepreneurs. Their news coverage is a
counter to the Al Jazzera all-bombs all-the-time stuff that is shown
throughout the region -- to the disgust of most Iraqis. During the
referendum period the sat TV reports were picked up by Egyptian stations
looking for something different. This is significant because it allows the
Sunni Arabs who want to work things out peacefully a way to get their
message out and compete with Zarqawi and the other mad bombers.
Of course there are a bunch of Sunni Arabs that just
don't want to face the fact that they don't run this country anymore.
They'll be fighting the majority of Iraq after we leave.
One thing I always find interesting in reading on-line
are the persistent themes that if only the Coalition troops would go home,
things would be peaceful. I've learned (both from experience and from
reading about the culture) that it's a pretty consistent Arab trait to blame
somebody else for your problems: It isn't Iraqis blowing up cars by mosques
it's "foreigners." It's not Iraqi's killing each other, it's because of the
Americans, etc.
We've heard these comments a lot and the polls of
Iraqis find that is a pretty consistent theme with them. But the educated
elites -- Sunni, Shiite, Turcoman, and the Kurds -- still want us around.
They realize that, in many ways, the fact that the US and UK still have
large troop presences around is what keeps the low-level civil war that is
currently being waged from turning into an all-out one.
It's US eyes on them that often keeps Shi'ite soldiers
from really roughing up Sunni Arabs who are hiding insurgents. The Turcoman
and Arabs in Kirkuk are continually asking us to protect them from the
Kurds, etc. I think if we did leave, the Sunni's would regret if bigtime
because the Kurds would kick their butts.
The economy here still sucks. The oil infrastructure
is so old, it breaks. When it doesn't break it's getting sabotaged; not by
the insurgents but by guys who are siphoning off oil for their own use, or
by oil security guards who figure if they don't blow up the pipeline every
now and then , they'll be out of work.
In the same vein the power lines keep getting blown up
by guys who want work rebuilding them.
It's a screwed-up situation, but that's because the
top-down Stalinist economy here has sucked much of the life out of the
ability of people to make money. We're doing what we can. We've opened
business centers to provide loans for people who want to get into business,
we're paying for OJT programs, and we've sunk a lot of money into
infrastructure. But there's a lot to be done.
So overall, I don't think the situation in Iraqi is
great, but I do think it is getting better. Yes the insurgents are making
bigger bombs and they're more sophisticated than they were in May 2003, but
the Iraqi government is further along and so is the Iraqi Army. This kind of
stuff takes time. I think the concern of most military people (and I guess I
am one for a little longer) is the civilians back home will lose their nerve
and will to fight long before the soldiers do.
Most people here -- at least from what I can tell of
the guys in the line units I've talked with -- believe in the mission. They
think we're doing okay. They're not despairing as much as the cable TV talk
show pundits are. Most of those folks, I think, have never worn a uniform in
their life: their take comes down to US domestic politics and how much they
hate or like George Bush.
Whether or not we should have gone into Iraqi is, I
think, a moot point. We did. There were no weapons of mass destruction.
But the Kurds I talk to still thank us for liberating
them. The Shi'ite Arabs still seem pretty happy to have Saddam gone. Sure
the Iraqis want more electricity, and more security, etc. But they don't
have electricity and they're getting blown up because about 20,000 Sunni
Arabs, assisted by a bunch of passive supporters, is shutting down the
power, and blowing up the oil, and setting off bombs.
In any case, enough rambling from my end. I hope to
see a bunch of you within a few weeks. Thanks again for the e-mails. I've
really appreciated them.
Your Pal
The entire series is on a
special reports page.
===
Subject: Letters from Iraq
I’ve been reading the letters from the officer in
Iraq. It has been very interesting, and my “gut” says he provides us with an
accurate portrayal of the situation there.
Unfortunately, the real cost of this war to our
economy. We simply can’t afford it. There are obviously other places in the
world we could invest huge amounts of money and try to fix as well. People
in those other places are also deserving of our help, but we do so at the
expense of our own standard of living and ultimately the happiness of our
people. I’m simply not in favor of doing that, and I think I’m in the
majority or will be soon. Your correspondent is correct about people at home
losing the will to fight, but that’s what a democracy is about, isn’t it?
Especially when there was never any compelling reason for us to be there in
the first place.
Steve Crandell
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