ESPIRT DE CORPS. My friend, an Army officer, sounded upbeat on Friday. He called me on his cell phone, waiting for a flight at Reagan National Airport, and told me he was on his way to Fort Benning, Georgia, and then to Baghdad. He will be working closely with the Iraqi military over the next several months. Earlier this year, I met with a soldier in Columbia, Maryland, who told me about a zoo project she had been involved in Iraq. "You think, 'War -- it's so sad because of the people,'" she told me. "But what about the animals and the land?" She said it was satisfying to help Iraqis fix up the zoo grounds. She and my friend are proud of their work in Iraq. Yet as a group of military authors explained yesterday in their New York Times op-ed, "The War as We Saw It," things are not so great over there in Iraq -- despite the success of some individual projects. The authors seem to be responding to the Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack op-ed, which said U.S. troops are in good spirits. It is yet another sign, they claimed, things are headed in the right direction. "Today," O'Hanlon and Pollack wrote, "morale is high." The military authors seem to feel otherwise. Iraqi Army commanders are not, by and large, "reliable partners," the soldiers explained, and Sunnis are forming militias "sometimes with our tacit support." Ultimately, the idea that Americans will win the war in Iraq is "far-fetched." Nevertheless, the military authors are committed to the mission, especially when the goal is to allow Iraqis to "take center stage in all matters." Individuals in the military -- like my friend and the Maryland soldier and, apparently, some people who spoke with O'Hanlon and Pollack -- may feel good about certain projects. But small-scale success, along with the mood swings that accompany them, are irrelevant, say the soldiers in their op-ed. "We need not talk about our morale," they write. "As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through." --Tara McKelvey
