Jade's weblog Archive

We are losing the war. Yes, we beat their army, we crushed their government but right now we are losing the people. No one seems to show these people any respect, they are fed up and want us to go.

They are tired of us breaking in their doors at 3 in the morning. They are tired of us holding children in a school while the parents wait out side. They are tired of us firing rounds into their farms to register the guns.

They are tired of us driving across their land and destroying their crops.

They are tired of the roadblocks and having their cars searched.

We are treating everyone like the enemy right now because of a few bad guys running around causing trouble. People are being detained for having a spool of wire in their house, or because someone buried some bad stuff within a couple hundred meters of their house. People do not even want soldiers shopping in their stores anymore. A lot of innocent people are being shot by soldiers because of miscommunication or nerves, or because they were in the way of a bullet. I am beginning to worry
about what is going to happen here, are we going to be able to get out if we want to? It is turing into a Vietnam. I am here in the wire so I have very little say or very little opportunity to effect change. The men are not getting rest and they are getting jumpy and or bored which is not good for the Iraqi civilians. If you look at the polls, you will see the start of what I mean, it has gotten at least 30% worse here as far as the civilian attitude in the last week. I am questioning myself as an American soldier and I do not like that. If this keeps up, the Taji general population overall will want us gone. Without significant changes in attitude I think that things will be very bad within a month.