Last week I listened to Maj. Ashley Burch, a Marine civil affairs officer in Ramadi, explain a raft of ambitious reconstruction aimed to smother the town of Karmah -- a persistent center of insurgent activity -- in American largess. I was duly impressed. Then, as I walked out of the office, I glanced at a wall map of eastern Anbar province. A bright stripe of yellow Post-its ran across the 104 km highway that connects Ramadi to Baghdad, each with the words "No-Go Zone" written across the top and a date, with the more recent dates closer to Baghdad.
Over the last weeks in Anbar, signs of the ongoing U.S. withdrawal have already been evident not only in the closing of bases (a messy process well underway) but in the daily attitudes of marines of all ranks. Senior officers guffawed at the idea that one might risk a trip into Falluja to gauge atmospherics, because the responsibility for that city has long since ended, and losing a single American life to assess an imminently Iraqi-controlled city makes no sense. And grunts everywhere were kicking stones, bored to tears because they joined the Marines to fight -- not to deploy on what looks like, and is treated as, a mop-up mission.
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