IRAQ: Five years on, two views of Baghdad

When you walk the streets of Baghdad, the results of five years of war are inescapable.

U.S. airstrikes and insurgent bombers have ripped huge, gaping holes out of office blocks. Miles of concrete blast walls separate Sunni from Shiite neighborhoods and encase markets, police stations and government offices. Convoys of armored SUVs with machine guns at the ready careen down streets choked with traffic. Iraqi soldiers armed with AK-47s stop you at every turn to check your ID or search your car for bombs. And U.S. military helicopters roar overhead.

But step into one of those helicopters and another side of the city emerges. The dust and grime soften in the pink glow of the sun as it sets over the Tigris River, and signs of normalcy appear amid the debris.

Rowdy soccer games are played on the edge of Sadr City, the vast Shiite Muslim slum where a major uprising was fought in 2004. The maze of narrow shopping streets that wind around the glittering Kadhimiya shrine are teeming with people. Cars buzz down Haifa Street, scene of endless gun battles between Sunni insurgents and U.S. soldiers. And sheep graze under an overpass, waiting to be sold for slaughter.

A couple of times a week, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, will ask his pilots to give him a bird's-eye tour of the city. If you happen to be riding in the helicopter behind him, you can tell that something has caught the general’s eye when the pilot suddenly banks hard to the right to come in for a closer look.

A year ago, the view was very different, Petraeus’ spokesman, Col. Steven Boylan, said after a recent tour. Plumes of smoke billowed into the sky from the latest car bombing. The markets were empty, and horrendous lines snaked around the gas stations.

"What it does for him, when we have had a rough day, on the way back ... he will take a tour and remind himself of what we are about and what we are doing," Boylan said. "It doesn’t always look that pretty on the ground, but when you get up above everything, you can see the bigger picture.... You can see that the city is alive."

A few hours earlier, Petraeus had been discussing with journalists the loss of eight U.S. soldiers in a single day March 10 after a period of diminished violence. Five of them were killed by a suicide bomber as they chatted with shopkeepers in Baghdad’s upscale Mansour district, something they do every day to forge closer ties with the communities they protect.

"That was really heartbreaking," Petraeus said. But pulling soldiers off the streets is not an option any more.

"To secure the people," he said, "you have to live with them."

— Alexandra Zavis in Baghdad

Photo: A view of Kadhimiya shrine from a U.S. military helicopter. Credit: Col. Steven Boylan/MNF-I

Comments

[Timothy]

This war needs to end NOW! After seeing this video im convinced the Iranians defeated us. Its a lost cause. Did we really think we would have more influence on majority Shia Iraq than the Shia Iranians?

http://irannegah.com/Video.aspx?id=506

[Food4Thought]

so think about this...

2,800 people died in 9/11 at the hands of Al Qaeda

4,000 soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So more Americans died trying to stop the deaths of Americans?

Wouldn't it have made more sense to spend the $1trillion from the wars on securing our domestic borders to make sure another terrorist act could never occur, instead of flaming more hatred in the middle east against America?

[GW]

This Texas Moron is so out of touch. He believes we have won in Iraq, like he stated we won in Vietnam. Get real we have not won a war since WWII. Like all wars what a huge waste.

[warren castelino]

5 years later, and the illegal war in Iraq continues, for nothing more then lining the pockets of the elite. One million Iraqis vanquished four million displaced. Now neighborhoods are walled off semi fortified enclaves, we are paying the sunni resistance not to shoot at us anymore, the mahdi army has a cease fire to purge out rouge elements, so the violence is down. Are we suppose to be ignorant enough to attribute this to the surge? A whole country destroyed for what? So oil companies can steal what’s not theirs, so the military can build a base the size of Vatican City. After years of the most brutal economic sanctions that left over a million Iraqis dead, the “soft target” the Clinton regime made for the next war criminals in the white house is overshadowed by the will and strength of the Iraqis to resist an occupying force.

[Po WIn]

Nulla poena sine lege is Latin for "no penalty without a law"; it refers to the legal principle that one cannot be punished for doing something that is not prohibited by law. In short, the United States is above international law. The United States has refused to ratify the International Criminal Court for crimes against peace and crimes of aggression amidst its panoply of human rights violations. We will go unpunished, continue to contribute to senseless casualties and go against our waning sense of values. I am saddened that my tax dollar has helped foster unnecessary bloodshed: no WMDs were unearthed; it has now been clearly established that no connection existed between the deceased Iraqi dictator and the events of 9/11. And, no future presidency can assuage the anguish of wounds beset by this War.