Blackfive shows us why what we do matters when we give toys and shoes to the kids in Iraq. Read this, if you read nothing else I ever link.

And send a few bucks to the programs that are helping Iraqis (Blackfive has a nice roundup).

Via Kate.

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Via Protein Wisdom comes an article in the Weekly Standard by Mackubin Thomas Owens, professor of national security at the Naval War College:

Critics are asking what the operation in Falluja really accomplished. They note that the insurgents’ leaders appear to have escaped and that violence has erupted elsewhere in northern Iraq. Media accounts also routinely describe the fighting outside Falluja as a “rebel counteroffensive” that surprised the U.S. military, implying that the reduction of Falluja merely created more insurgents.

But the view conveyed by these headlines is myopic. An equivalent headline in June 1944 would have read: “Massive U.S. Casualties on Omaha Beach; HitlerÂ’s Reich Remains Intact, Defiant.” Such stories fail to place Falluja, Mosul, Tal Afar, and other cities in northern Iraq in context. The fact is that Falluja is part of a campaign, a series of coordinated events—movements, battles, and supporting operations—designed to achieve strategic or operational objectives within a military theater. Falluja is just one battle, albeit an extremely important one, in a comprehensive campaign to stabilize the Sunni Triangle.
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When they controlled Falluja, the rebels were able to sustain a high rate of attack against the Iraqi government and coalition forces. Falluja gave them infrastructure--human and physical--and provided the security needed to maintain a large terrorist network. As one military analyst, writing for the Belmont Club blog, has remarked, in the absence of sanctuary, large terrorist organizations cannot survive. Without sanctuary, terrorist networks are reduced to “small, clandestine hunted bands.”

You'll recall that one of the many failures of the Vietnam war was the unwillingness of the Johnson Administration to cut the supply lines along the Ho Chi Minh trail. Clearly, we aren't making that mistake this time: this war, whatever you may think of it, is being fought with commitment and a desire to win. And success is likely to give many Americans a sense that the whole enterprise was worth the loss of life and the financial expenditure.

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