Truth Leaking Out

The boots on the ground have a different view of events in Iraq than Washington elites, who gain their perspective from cocktail parties.

We know the streets, the people and the insurgents far better than any armchair academic or talking head. As military professionals, we are trained to gauge the chances of success and failure, to calculate risk and reward. We have little to gain from our optimism and quite a bit to lose as we leave our families over and over again to face danger and deprivation for an increasingly unpopular cause. We know that there are no guarantees in war, and that we may well fail in the long run. We also know that if we follow our current plan we can, over time, leave behind a stable and unified country that might help to anchor a better future for the Middle East.

A similar story on CNN.

The unit I spent the day with is one month shy of going home. The commander, Capt. Patrick Moffett, was very optimistic about progress in Iraq, and by some accounts Baquba is a real success story. Attacks have dropped 30-40 percent since last year, and the Iraqi police in the city actually are able to conduct some operations on their own.

I'm planning on going out on patrol with Iraqi forces tomorrow, which should be interesting. They don't have armored vehicles, so it's a bit dicey. But I think it's an important story. It's worth seeing them operate for myself.

I'm always incredibly impressed by the U.S. service members I meet here. They are not all as optimistic and supportive of the mission as the captain I spent time with today, but they are all dedicated to their units, devoted to their fellow troops. I think a lot of us in the states forget how difficult it is for the families of these soldiers and marines, airmen and sailors.

Meanwhile, this is the view from academics and media elites.

At Columbia, the course catalog indicates that this spring the anthropology professor, Nicholas DeGenova, who called for "a million Mogadishus" and said "the only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military," will be teaching a graduate class on "The Metaphisics of Antiterrorism." At least he isn't teaching spelling. At the University of South Florida, our Josh Gerstein reports elsewhere on this page, there's talk of rehiring Sami Al-Arian, whose lawyers conceded during a recent trial that he had "an affiliation" with the people in Palestinian Islamic Jihad. That is a deadly terrorist group.

Meanwhile, Harvard and Georgetown universities announced this week that they had received $10 million each from a Saudi Arabian prince, Alwaleed bin Talal, to fund Islamic studies. Alwaleed, the so-called Saudi Warren Buffett, has also amassed sizable stakes in Citigroup and in Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, owner of Fox News Channel and of the New York Post. The prince became notorious when Mayor Giuliani turned down a $10 million gift from him after September 11, 2001, because the gift came with a statement saying that America should tilt its foreign policy more in favor of the Palestinian Arabs.