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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (27331)	4/2/2008 2:00:12 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 71588

Liberation of Karmah Part II ...I stepped inside the school yard. Hundreds of children saw me and the Marines, and the whole place erupted in screams of excitement. It was as if Britney Spears or the guy from Coldplay had shown up. The volume was just extraordinary and I took a few steps back in surprise. Wildly screaming children jockeyed for position in front of my camera. After a few minutes of pandemonium, teachers coaxed most of the kids into classrooms and left a few behind to pick up the trash and sweep the sidewalk around the courtyard. “Are they picking up the trash to impress us?” I said to Lieutenant Alleman. It's hard to say why, exactly, but that's what it looked like. “Yeah, pretty much,” he said. “We can get them to do it, but what we really need to do is get them to do it when we aren't here.” The schools are gender segregated by days of the week. One day each school is for boys, and the next day the same school is for girls. A few months ago the schools were opened again for the first time in years. Much hay was made about girls being allowed to return to school in Afghanistan after the Taliban regime was demolished. Hardly any Americans know that in the rougher cities of Iraq, neither girls nor boys could go to school for years because local rule by Al Qaeda was so oppressive and violent. “People just stared at us as recently as August,” Lieutenant Alleman said. “They wouldn't, or couldn't, engage us. But when we started painting buildings and stuff like that people realized we were trying to help. None of the schools were open when we got here [last summer]. We helped them open up five. It's hard to hate someone who gives your kid candy and helps him get to school.” The lieutenant and I quickly popped into a classroom. The kids cheered the lieutenant again. I snapped a few pictures... ... ...BOOM. Somewhere something exploded. It sounded like a short clap thunder without the roll. “What was that?” I said. “Controlled det, most likely,” Sergeant Perusich said. Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams detonate found IEDs and caches of weapons every day. Karmah is so secure now that even hyper-cautious Marine sergeants are sure there’s nothing to worry about when they hear gunshots and explosions. It’s not even a mop-up in Karmah anymore. It’s a clean-up. The war movie soundtrack in the background was just that – a soundtrack. Harmless or not, it was a constant reminder that we were not in Kansas. The sun dropped below the horizon. Twilight outside the city was as dark as if we were in wilderness. We came upon a man sweeping his porch with a straw broom. “Salam Aleikum,” Sergeant Perusich said. “Have you seen any suspicious people around?” “No,” the man said and gave us a sly crooked smile. “They all ran away.” michaeltotten.com