Endurance Meets Doubt in Iraq

HIT, Iraq. SOON after Specialist Michael Potocki was shot and killed in June, the soldiers in his platoon agreed on their goal for the months ahead: to survive and make it home alive.

Survival may be the only thing the troops here agree on. The first death of a comrade in battle is always an emotional shock, and the views from the foxhole here are probably as varied as the 34 soldiers. Still, in this hostile stretch of western Iraq, some of the troops have begun to wonder if the presence of United States forces here is worth the cost in American lives.

The vision at the top is that the forces here are a small but vital part of the counterinsurgency campaign, which requires patience and continued sacrifice until newly minted Iraqi forces are ready to take over.

“The coalition needs to leave, but not too fast,” says Lt. Col. Thomas Graves, who commands Task Force 1-36, the Army unit responsible for securing the town.

Staff Sgt. Ryan Poetsch, who did a previous tour in Baghdad and serves in Specialist Potocki’s platoon, acknowledges that he does not always have the big picture. But he does have a view from the streets in Hit and questions the strategy.

“As a soldier, I am going to do whatever we got to do,” he said. “As a personal opinion, I don’t think we need to be in this city, period. How much money and how many soldiers is it going to take when these people don’t want our help? They just don’t. We don’t even know who we can trust.”

Read the rest at the NY Times