The Kansas City Star this week is running a series of editorial suggesting an exit plan that will lead to peace and prosperity in Iraq and the region. For a look at the entire package, go to this link. Let us know if you think our exit plan is on the right track.

By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board

MAZAQ, Iraq -- Cpl. Abass Mashai never met Crew Chief Hank Eaton.

They live in different worlds. Eaton’s home is Shawnee, a neat little piece of suburbia with strip shopping centers on the edge of the Kansas prairie. Mashai’s home is a farm in rural Kut Province, a collection of adobe huts in a swath of green surrounded by flat desert.

But these two, a lifelong Kansas City-area resident and a lifelong Kut-area farmer, separated by more than 9,000 miles, share quite a bit. Both are strong patriots. Both believe in the work they accomplished while on duty in this war-torn country. Both yearn for their comrades, who are still at work here. Both were forever changed by injuries suffered in Iraq. And both share a vision for Iraq, and how the United States can make a good exit from it.

Their unified answer: Pack up and leave.

So today, after a week hearing from experts around the world, politicians, academics and military brass, The Star is giving voice to two who were wounded in combat.

Eaton is one of more than 31,000 U.S. troops who served in Iraq now struggling with “traumatic brain injury,” deemed “the injury” of this war.

Mashai is an Iraqi soldier, one of many trained by and who fought side-by-side with Americans. He lost his left foot and lower leg to a roadside bomb not 50 miles from the humble farm where he now lives.

Their solution is the same, but their motivations differ. Eaton is 29, “going on 90.” He isn’t sure the United States had any business invading in the first place.

He was injured February 2007 in Taji, just north of Baghdad, the center of the storm back then. His Apache’s rotors were hit during a reconnaissance outing.

On landing, he jumped out to check for damage. Fearing getting caught on the hooks and webs surrounding the door, he jumped without armor. That’s when the mortars started falling. One hit a fuel dump. The blast blew him 20 yards. He was sent home with a traumatic brain injury. Three crewmates died.

“We saw a lot of action, but most of the time they weren’t Iraqis,” he said. “They had Syrian or Iranian paperwork. They were there to kill us, but they didn’t care if they killed Iraqis. They weren’t Iraqis.”

Eaton now spends his days going to rehab, trying to stimulate his mind to recapture memories. High school, for instance, is gone. He carries an electronic organizer to take the place of short-term memory.

He has daily seizures. When his wife takes a business trip, he stays in Westport with his brother. “She can’t really trust me alone. I forget things — that stoves are on, things like that. I’m not even close to normal life.”

His view of Iraq’s near-term future is equally bleak.

“We shouldn’t have gone in alone, it should have been an international effort,” he said. “But we can’t take the war back. So what do we do now? Iraq is going to collapse. We can’t stop it. We need to pull out and let what’s going to happen happen.

“Then we have to hope they can rebuild it.”
Mashai, 36, doesn’t believe his country will collapse. In fact, he believes it’s ready to stand alone.

He lost his leg in June 2008, just south of Baghdad. He was manning a mounted gun atop a Ford pickup truck, guarding his unit when they pulled up to a joint U.S.-Iraq command post. The first roadside bomb just rocked them back. The second destroyed the vehicle and ignited ammo in the truck. His lower left leg was cut off, and he took several bullets in his hips. Two others in the truck died.

Since then, he’s done little besides sit on his farm. He says if he had his leg back, however, he’d return to service. Even without it, he trains soldiers on rocket-propelled grenade technique three days a month.

“I believe in Iraq,” he explains. “And I’m a soldier.”

He was a soldier before the U.S. invasion, as well, part of a special emergency response force. But he says he came to love soldiering after the U.S. arrived. He trained with Americans, and their training was much better, far more specific.
And he believes in the work they did. From his little farm, it’s 20 yards to a shallow irrigation ditch. Until recently, crossing that was a deadly risk.

“The terrorists were in control of 90 percent of this land,” he explains, referring to the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
“Now, we can sit in the cafes and drink coffee and tea, and talk about the future.”

The number of Iraqi security forces injured is much higher than when he joined after the U.S. invasion, though the exact figure is difficult to pin down. When asked, Iraqi officials requested small bribes to reveal the actual numbers, suggesting a bribe for each year of the war.

The security forces, he thinks, are more professional than even before the invasion.
For this, he thanks the United States, for its efforts in the field and in training.

So, now that he’s heard President Barack Obama’s plan to pull troops out of the cities in the coming months, and Iraq by 2011, what does he think the United States owes his country?

“Iraqis did this to me,” he said. “What is to come is between Iraqis. We’re ready. There is nothing the Americans can do about this.”

Then, soldier still, he pauses. His eyes light up.

“There is one thing: air support,” he said. “Planes and pilots. Leave the land to us.”

By Matt Schofield, The Star’s editorial board