More From the Front: Let Us Finish the Job

There is a theme building (see here and here) in the messages coming back from the Front: “Let us finish the job.” Jeff Emmanuel, a special operations military veteran who served in Iraq and an associate director over at RedState.com reports from Baghdad that while the perspective of the troops runs the gamut, the dominant sentiment is, “To see this mission through to its successful conclusion, not only for America’s sake, but for the sake of the people of Iraq whom they have gotten to know during their time in country.”We want to finish this job. We know we can do it.

I had a remarkable conversation to this effect with a bespectacled infantry captain, who was on his second tour in Iraq and had been there since just before Gen. Petraeus’s confirmation as the new head of MNF-I. We spoke at length about the war, and about the differences between his first tour and now. I asked what he thought about the mission in Iraq, and what he thought our prospects for success were. Gazing pensively at the ground, he took a moment to collect his thoughts, and said, “Well, politically, staying here probably isn’t the best decision.” Given the situation at home, he added, “winning here seems less possible all the time, even though we’re now doing what it is we probably should have been doing all along.” Moving on from that moment of near despair, he paused and glanced up, looking earnestly at me through his thick, military-issue glasses, and said, “There’s not a single one of my soldiers who doesn’t look at the neighborhood we’re in, look at the children there, and not want to do whatever they can to give these kids as bright a future as possible. We want to finish this job, and we know we can do it.”