What "victory" might look like...

Good Vibes
OK, I guess I’ll go into a little bit of our current mission. My Platoon will mainly focus on running a Check Point (CP) into and out of a Sunni enclave within Baghdad. Yesterday I went out to inspect the entrance one. It was amazing. The people were very friendly and open with us. I’d estimate between 10-20 percent of them gave looks that told you they did not like American Soldiers there, but the rest would smile and greet us. There were kids EVERYWHERE! That is a great thing. Kids are the weapon of choice when appealing to people to help us. Everyone wants their kids to be safe and the Insurgents have shown they don’t care as much about them as the Americans do. One shopkeeper (whose daughter is in the picture I posted) begged me to keep his daughter safe. Commerce was bustling. Both Iraqis and American Soldiers were buying goods and food from the shops and pushcart vendors. Beyond our checkpoint the town was a frenzy of activity. It looked like a normal town. Dirtier than we’re used to, but by Arabic standards pretty clean…
I said my guys were “running” the CP. Not true. The CP was run by the Iraqi Army and the “Concerned Local Citizens (CLC),” who are basically a paid and armed neighborhood watch. They were working well together, despite the IA being mainly Shia and the CLC being totally Sunni. Very, very promising.
Many of my comrades insist it can quickly deteriorate back to how it was this summer, when this town was the most dangerous area in all of Iraq. I doubt it. It has now been the most peaceful town in Baghdad for three months, and once people know peace for their children, they will not support the Insurgency in their town again. Without popular support, the Insurgency is finished.
A little political, but that’s how optimistic I was after yesterday’s mission.
-Adam