Steady, Lads

We need a sergeant major to keep our people on the line. The suicide-bomber who penetrated the Mosul defenses was an act that was bound to happen. I've worried about some attack that could produce casualties on the order of the Marines barracks bombing in Lebanon twenty years ago and that such an attack would shake our determination. In November 2003, I worried that the helicopter downings that killed a score or so of troops would shake us. It did not. Now an attack that kills more than a dozen seems to have shaken much of the media anyway.

Sometimes the enemy will get through. In some wars, they get through a lot. So don't panic and demand we do something. Keep on driving and going after the enemy. Keep training Iraqi forces to fight the insurgents. And set up an Iraqi government that will shoulder more of the burden of this fight. This is still an Iraqi fight. Free Iraqis must take out the terrorists and Baathists. For those who fear a civil war, so what? Is it better to have a united Iraqi public fighting us so we can see we didn't prompt a civil war? No, the Sunnis have decided to fight or sit out the fight passively and so they have made this a Sunni-Shia/Kurd fight. Enabling our side to fight is not creating a civil war--it is winning it.

On the mess tent attack itself, this is a lesson in action and reaction. In response to mortar attacks, we were building a concrete building to replace the tent. It would have shrugged off mortar shells. But consider this. If the suicide bomber detonated his bomb inside the tent (and I don't know if the bomber was in or next to the tent at this point), what would the effect have been inside a concrete structure? I'm no expert but I believe that confining the blast inside the strucutre would have resulted in more casualties than from a blast inside a tent where much of the force would go up and out, away from the troops in the tent.

Keep both these things in mind as we react. No passive defensive can keep us secure. We have to go after the enemy and kill them. And we have to make sure free Iraqis are the ones doing most of the killing.

Keep steady, lads. And fire on command.

UPDATE: From Strategypage comes confirmation that a concrete structure would have made the blast much worse:

The Mosul camp was due to have the mess tent replaced by a bunker, which would have provided better protection from the usual rocket and mortar attacks. Actually, a bunker would have led to more casualties if a suicide bomber were involved. A tent like structure lets the explosion to disperse, while a bunker contains it.