Inspired Blog #7

Rolling Out

It sounds crazy but I think the United States is actually preparing to leave Iraq, hopefully for good. I watch a lot of news, and recently there has been a lot of chatting about troops packing up and making preparations to hand Iraq over to Iraq’s Army. It feels like we have been involved with the war on terrorism in Iraq forever, it also feels like the President has made a lot of promises about troops leaving Iraq, the time may have finally came.

CNN; American forces handing over equipment to Iraqi Army

I have read that there are some seven military bases left in Iraq, but they are all in transition of being handed over to Iraqi hands. Apparently we are still patrolling over there, but hundreds are troops are heading to South en route to Kuwait, where they will be processed through customs, and then finally depart for home.

Right now, there are a few motorpools with thousands of military vehicles and equipment that was once being used for patrols now sitting around collecting dust. I watched an interview of soldier working in one of these motorpools, he said the base was basically overwhelmed by the amount of equipment and vehicles coming in and being dropped off and troops head out of Iraq and into Kuwait. Though it sucks for the people working in the motorpools long hour’s in-taking all the equipment and vehicles, it is a good feeling that we are finally done taking care of business over there and Americans are finally pulling out.   

In one of the articles I read said that there is so much military equiptment left in Iraq that we will either give it to the Iraqi army or sell it to them. I seriously doubt we would sell it to them, because I’m pretty sure they don’t have the financial means to buy anything right now. Part of me thinks it is a good idea to give them our equipment from the war, only so American’s don’t have to worry about the cost of shipping it home and the hassle it would put our troops through, but another side of me thinks it might be a bad idea to give them military equipment. Who is to say that  they don’t sell it to the wrong people, or they member of the military are corrupt and use it for the wrong reasons.

(one of my boys "borrowing" a local's motor bike while on deployment)

I do; however feel good about us pulling out of Iraq. Statistics has shown that the violence has dropped significantly since the war began in 2006. On top of that, I feel like enough damage has been done, at the height of the war Iraq was seeing more than 100 attacks a day and somewhere around 4,500 American troops have given the ultimate sacrifice serving their country over there. Plus I feel like America has done all we can over there, it is time for Iraqi forces to take care of their own business. Hopefully plans go and intended and all the troops are out of Iraq by the end of 2011.