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Battling With Sadr for Iraqi Soldiers' Hearts
U.S. troops with the team training the Iraqi army's 2nd Brigade, 6th Division patrol a Baghdad neighborhood. Most of the Iraqis they work with are Shiites.
(By Nancy Trejos -- The Washington Post)
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Ojeda put it more bluntly: "He's just another terrorist leader. He's just another bad guy."
Sgt. 1st Class Eric Radecki, 36, of Sacramento, a father of two who fought in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, said he believes that U.S. leaders have to engage in talks with Sadr.
"He's not some sort of Osama bin Laden sitting in a cave in Afghanistan," Radecki said. "He goes to parliament."
Some of the soldiers said they were frustrated that Sadr City, which is about 1 1/2 miles from their base, is off-limits.
"Personally, I feel we should be there," Buckingham said. "That's the root of where everything is coming from. That's the bad of Baghdad."
As the war approaches its fifth year and the death toll mounts, some of the troops said they wonder whether it was a good idea for the United States to overthrow Iraq's government.
"I don't really know all the thought processes behind invading the country," said Capt. Sean Powell, 30, of Fort Carson. "I knew it was going to be longer than what they said, though. I knew it was going to take long because you don't topple a government and the country rebounds within two weeks."
Sgt. 1st class Matt MacClellan, 37, a father of two who trains another division of Iraqis but lives on Old MOD, said he is not in Iraq to fight the war on terrorism. If anything, he said, the United States spread terrorism by invading Iraq. "Now that we are here, though, it definitely has morphed into the war on terror," he said. "We took over a country that had structure and took that structure away."
The soldiers say they want to leave a stable country but also want to get out alive. "I don't think you can use the word 'winnable,' " MacClellan said. "Really, I've scrubbed that from the vocabulary of my thinking. 'Subdued' would be about the best."
