I have been exchanging e-mails with my cousin, who is currently stationed in or around Baghdad. He recently asked if he could send me a souvenir from Iraq. I wanted something distinctly Iraqi, but cheap (my cousin is junior enlisted with a wife and babies to support), so after thinking about it a little while, I asked him to pick me up an Iraqi newspaper or magazine. Here is his reply:

As for magazines or newspapers I aint seen any. They do have souvenir stands but all they got is like fake rolexs and iraqi bongs. They got all kinds of shit that says Iraq on it but that is about it. All I can get is what we have on the base cuz when we go out we dont get out of the truck except to piss. Don't know why. I want to get out and mingle but they wont let me.

My cousin is being a little tongue-in-cheek there. He's been in Iraq for a few months now. He knows exactly why he's not allowed to walk the streets of Baghdad. He's got a red, white and blue target on his back.
We don't even pretend to own the streets of a city of around 6 million people. How can a temporary surge of 20 or 30 thousand additional troops make any difference whatsoever? The only way we can stop the sectarian violence in Baghdad is to take back the streets from the militias, and the only way to do that is through superior force. Superior force means air support, and air support in urban areas means a big fucking mess with lots of civilian casualties. About all we would accomplish is getting them to stop fighting each other long enough to focus on blowing up our troops. No matter how I look at it, this just doesn't appear to be a problem that can be solved with more violence. We could wind up owning the streets with no way to give them back.