Read The Good Soldiers for Free Online Page A

the heavens with eyes. There were helicopters, too, armed with thirty-millimeter cannons and high-resolution cameras that could focus tightly on whatever was about to be shot, which one day was a dead water buffalo that had been spotted on its side with wires sticking out of its rear end. Concerned that an IED had been hidden inside the water buffalo’s rectum, the helicopter moved in for a closer look as its camera recorded what came next. There was the water buffalo. There were the wires. There was a dog trotting up to the water buffalo’s rear. “Be advised, there’s a dog licking the IED,” the pilot said, and then he opened fire.
    Next Kauzlarich walked past the PX, which would soon have to close temporarily after a rocket crashed through the roof and exploded next to a display rack of Maxim magazines, and then he entered a ruined, four-story building that once had been a hospital.
    The studio was on the top floor, up where the workers lived, those who had come to Rustamiyah from Nepal and Sri Lanka to clean the latrines, sweep up the endless dust, sleep six to a room, and listen to mournful songs on tinny speakers purchased from the sad little shops on the hospital’s first floor. The doors to these rooms were splintered and scuffed, and behind one of them was the radio staff. One of them was a local Iraqi whom the military was paying $88,000 a year to run the radio station. He introduced himself as Mohammed and then confided that Mohammed was a fake name he used to shield his identity. The other man was Mark, an interpreter, also from Baghdad, who confided that his name wasn’t really Mark.
    “Dear listeners. Welcome to a new show,” Mohammed, or whoever he was, said to whoever might have been out there listening to PEACE 106 FM, and that’s how the first of what would be dozens of radio shows began. It was a complicated process. In Arabic, Mohammed said to his listeners, “Our first question to Colonel Kauzlarich is about the situation nowadays in New Baghdad,” which Mark then translated into English, to which Kauzlarich said in Arabic, “Shukran jazilan, Mohammed”— “Thank you very much, Mohammed”—and in English went on from there:
    “Approximately eight weeks ago there was a great deal of crime,” he said. “There was sectarian violence. There were numerous murders. There were many bombs going off, roadside bombs, IEDs, EFPs, and also car bombs that were killing many innocent civilians. Today that does not exist. Crime is down by over eighty percent. The people of Nine Nissan are beginning to feel safe.”
    He waited for Mark, or whoever Mark was, to translate what he’d said, and then continued: “My organization is known as Task Force Ranger, which is approximately eight hundred of the finest American soldiers. Everything that they do is in a controlled and disciplined manner. And one of the things I stress that they do as their commander is to go out and talk to the Iraqi people and determine what their feelings are, what their greatest fears are, and how we can best assist them and the Iraqi Security Forces in developing a very secure environment for them to live in.”
    Again he waited for Mark to translate, and continued: “Bottom line is, the current situation is good—but it’s not as good as it’s going to be . . .” and on he went for thirty-six minutes until he said, seeking to win over the people, “Shukran jazilan,” and Mohammed said, “Shukranjaz ilan,” and Kauzlarich said, “Ma’a sala’ama, sadiqi,” and Mohammed said, “Ma’a sala’ama.”
    This was war fighting as counterinsurgency, just as it was when, in an attempt to “expand and diversify the host-nation police force,” Kauzlarich met with an Iraqi army officer who was living in an elementary school that the Iraqis had taken over not far from the FOB. The walls were pink. They were decorated with Tweety Bird cutouts. There was a single cot and a small TV hooked up to a satellite dish, and the Iraqi