THE LOW POST: Treading Water in Iraq

That's not at all the way it works in Iraq. For one thing, the majority of the troops in a place like Baghdad never leave the massive, seemingly Manhattan-size walled-in Forward Operating Bases (FOBs). Battle-hardened soldiers derisively describe Army personnel who live in the FOBs as "Fobbits" and it is roundly accepted in Iraq that Fobbits make up a clear majority of our deployed military men. For soldiers who actually have to go out and risk getting blown up in patrols, Fobbits are a vile contagion, like malarial mosquitoes -- amazingly numerous and deeply annoying. One soldier laughed when I asked if he thought we needed more guys in Iraq. "Not more troops, but fewer Fobbit-motherfuckers," he growled.

It seemed to me that the reason there were so many guys on the base was that the Army higher-ups on the ground in Iraq had made the decision to limit as much as possible the exposure of Americans to the Iraq outside the wire. They did this not out of cowardice or a reluctance to engage the enemy (who takes on different faces in different regions), but out of a realization that there is almost no way for our troops to actively engage insurgents. You could send more men and women out of the base, but where are you going to send them?

As it is, a great many of the outside-the-wire activities are artificial, self-justifying exercises without any immediate hope of engaging armed antagonists -- "show of force" tours around certain neighborhoods, visits to Iraqi police stations, etc. The prophylactic value of these exercises seems minimal, and many soldiers privately grumbled to me that their main purpose seemed to be to give insurgents something to shoot at.

When I was in Iraq, commanders seemed to recognize this, and even units who did go out on patrols did so on an extremely limited basis, not more than one hour out of twenty-four or forty-eight. And even during that one hour, they never got out of their Humvees -- never even slowed down their Humvees. The rest of the time they spent on the FOBs, tending to their equipment, watching DVDs, chatting on the net with anxious girlfriends back home and getting bossed around by Fobbit captains and lieutenants.

Even those road patrols now seem far more likely to add to the violence than prevent it, since 43 percent of American fatalities last year came as the result of roadside bombs called IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). That's up from 16 percent in 2003. The insurgents plant the bombs at night; the American kids then go out in Humvees during the day and drive in circles hoping not to get blown up. I would like to see David Brooks explain to me how that cycle of madness improves the general security situation.