Scions of the Surge

A local moderator started off promisingly: "I hope to God the black days don't come back. We are all Muslims and we believe in the same God." Wright leaned forward in his seat, nervously cracking his knuckles and telling Ali, his translator, to pay attention and translate precisely.

Wright would like Shiite leaders to allow the Sunnis to return to the homes. But he is not naive. He knows that the Americans "cannot shoehorn the Sunni population back in." In neighboring Saydiya, families had been pressured to return to their homes too quickly, and another round of violence had erupted. Wright wanted to propose that at least the Shiite families that had moved into the Sunni homes pay rent to their original owners. But he also knew not to interject himself too quickly. He was well aware that the most important voice was missing from the room. "The key is Mr. X," Wright said later. "If he says no Shia pays rent, then it won't work."

Wright is not declaring victory. The reintegration project is "on standby," he says, "until the right conditions are set." He acknowledges that many Sunnis were driven from their homes under his watch. Bayaa, a neighborhood of something more than 15,000 people, was once 30 percent Sunni. Now it is maybe 5 percent. At least 4,000 Sunnis have been driven out. Asked if Delta Company could have done more, Wright sighs and looks at a map of the city. "I don't know what that would be. They blew up a mosque when we were only six blocks away. I think we did the best we could with the force we had," he says. His constant push to get community leaders to talk may be the best way to make amends. Just don't call it reconciliation. "I hate that word 'reconciliation'," he says. "Makes them sound like buddies. They're not f–––ing buddies. What I'm trying to do is to get the wrongs that happened to them earlier in the year addressed." He won't make any predictions. "People at home ask, can we win?" he says. "I tell them we made a lot of progress since we've been here. Can we win? I don't know."

Wright is a good student, a literate, humane man who proudly points out that West Point is a great liberal-arts school as well as a military academy. He has not been debased or degraded by war; he does not live only to survive for the moment. But the lessons of war and conquest change, and Wright, like the good student he is, has learned to change with them. He tried to read "The Best and the Brightest," David Halberstam's epic of the tragedy of American involvement in Vietnam, but "it was too painful, too close to what we went through." Stacked in the corner of Wright's room are DVDs of the HBO series "Rome." Iraq, like ancient Rome or modern Sicily (or parts of northern New Jersey), is a murderous place, and Wright knows he must deal with some shady characters if he wants to bring peace to his little patch of it. General Petraeus says he instructs his young officers, "Go watch 'The Sopranos'," in order to understand the power dynamics at work in Iraq. Wright doesn't need to watch Tony Soprano. He has Mr. X.

With Larry Kaplow, Hussam Ali and Yasar Kani in Baghdad

© 2008