For Marines, a Frustrating Fight
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| Sun, 10-10-2004 - 11:36am |
By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 10, 2004; Page A01
ISKANDARIYAH, Iraq -- Scrawled on the helmet of Lance Cpl. Carlos Perez are the letters FDNY. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York, the Pentagon and western Pennsylvania, Perez quit school, left his job as a firefighter in Long Island, N.Y., and joined the U.S. Marine Corps.
"To be honest, I just wanted to take revenge," said Perez, 20.
Now, two months into a seven-month combat tour in Iraq, Perez said he sees little connection between the events of Sept. 11 and the war he is fighting. Instead, he said, he is increasingly disillusioned by a conflict whose origins remain unclear and frustrated by the timidity of U.S. forces against a mostly faceless enemy.
"Sometimes I see no reason why we're here," Perez said. "First of all, you cannot engage as many times as we want to. Second of all, we're looking for an enemy that's not there. The only way to do it is go house to house until we get out of here."
Perez is hardly alone. In a dozen interviews, Marines from a platoon known as the "81s" expressed in blunt terms their frustrations with the way the war is being conducted and, in some cases, doubts about why it is being waged. The platoon, named for the size in millimeters of its mortar rounds, is part of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment based in Iskandariyah, 30 miles southwest of Baghdad.
The Marines offered their opinions openly to a reporter traveling with the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines during operations last week in Babil province, then expanded upon them during interviews over three days in their barracks at Camp Iskandariyah, their forward operating base.
The Marines' opinions have been shaped by their participation in hundreds of hours of operations over the past two months. Their assessments differ sharply from those of the interim Iraqi government and the Bush administration, which have said that Iraq is on a certain -- if bumpy -- course toward peaceful democracy.
"I feel we're going to be here for years and years and years," said Lance Cpl. Edward Elston, 22, of Hackettstown, N.J. "I don't think anything is going to get better; I think it's going to get a lot worse. It's going to be like a Palestinian-type deal. We're going to stop being a policing presence and then start being an occupying presence. . . . We're always going to be here. We're never going to leave."
The views of the mortar platoon of some 50 young Marines, several of whom fought during the first phase of the war last year, are not necessarily reflective of all or even most U.S troops fighting in Iraq. Rather, they offer a snapshot of the frustrations engendered by a grinding conflict that has killed 1,064 Americans, wounded 7,730 and spread to many areas of the country.
Although not as highly publicized as attacks in such hot spots as Fallujah, Samarra and Baghdad's Sadr City, the violence in Babil province, south of the capital, is also intense. Since July 28, when the Marines took over operational responsibility for the region, 102 of the unit's 1,100 troops have been wounded, 85 in combat, according to battalion records. Four have been killed, two in combat.
Senior officers attribute the vast difference between the number of killed and wounded to the effectiveness of armor -- bullet-proof vests, helmets and reinforced armored vehicles, primarily Humvees -- in the face of persistent attacks. As of last week, the Marines had come upon 61 roadside bombs, nearly one a day. Forty-nine had detonated. Camp Iskandariyah was hit by mortar shells or rockets on 12 occasions; 21 other times, insurgents tried to hit the base and missed.
Realities on the Ground
Several members of the platoon said they were struck by the difference between the way the war was being portrayed in the United States and the reality of their daily lives.
"Every day you read the articles in the States where it's like, 'Oh, it's getting better and better,' " said Lance Cpl. Jonathan Snyder, 22, of Gettysburg, Pa. "But when you're here, you know it's worse every day."
Pfc. Kyle Maio, 19, of Bucks County, Pa., said he thought government officials were reticent to speak candidly because of the upcoming U.S. elections. "Stuff's going on here but they won't flat-out say it," he said. "They can't get into it."
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20794-2004Oct9.html

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/international/asia/10vote.html?oref=login
"What about Auntie?" asked Abdul Basir, the school teacher polling officer, a reference to the one female candidate, Dr. Masooda Jalal.
"Auntie is busy cooking bread!" came back the answer from behind the voting screen, a quip about Dr. Jalal's chosen symbol of a wheat stalk and the Afghan flat bread.
"You should look at the photos and select who you like," Mr. Basir said, to the next voter.
But the laughter died down when the men of Tarinan were asked if their female relatives were voting. "They did not come to register them, so they have no voting cards," said Mr. Shirin, looking embarrassed.
But the real reason was the strict tribal culture that does not allow women to take part in public life, and barely to leave the house. "It's not in keeping with our culture," Abdul Mahmud, 37, a tractor driver, said firmly. "Women have not seen anything, and anyway they do not want to leave the house," he said.
Few women here or in the nearby village of Bayanzai were voting, and there were no female election teams in the district at all. Three women shrouded in burkas walking from Bayanzai to their home nearby complained that they had wanted to vote but their men had not allowed it.
"We wanted to vote but they do not let us, so what can we do?" said one woman, a mother of eight, who declined to give her name, saying her husband would forbid it. "If everyone likes Karzai, so do we, and we would like to vote for him. He is from the same place as us," she said.
"People are talking about it, we know all about the election," she added, before hurrying on.
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