Leadership, training, and improved relations with the local populace brought Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 23rd Marines home last month from a full tour in Haditha, Iraq, without a single combat death or injury; you make your own luck.

Consider this headline and opening paragraph from an October 7, 2005, report:

Marines find insurgency’s deadly tools in Haditha Weapons cache found buried in courtyard of mosque:

HADITHA, Iraq (CNN) — While the insurgents in Haditha may have faded away for the time being, they left their mark behind. U.S. Marines and members of Iraqi Special Forces on Thursday uncovered a sizable weapons cache hidden in a shrine and yard adjacent to a mosque in east-central Haditha, close to the Euphrates River, and continued to uncover deadly buried roadside bombs. The city itself is almost literally an improvised explosive device (IED) field.

I doubt that Lima Company’s Commander, Major Kevin Jarrard, believes we should time-table the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq:

He is a complex man. He is a solid soldier who treats a day of hunting for terrorists and explosive devices in an Iraqi city as just another day at the office. A father of four, Jarrard also is a man with a special place in his heart for children. Deeply grounded in his Christian faith, Jarrard quotes Moses, someone who knew a thing or two about leading people in the desert.

“Take heed to yourselves, lest you forget what your eyes have seen,” Jarrard said, repeating the words of Moses from a verse from the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy.

He saw a lot in Haditha, an Iraqi town of about 90,000. However, nothing touched him more than ailing children, whose lives were in jeopardy without surgery not available in Iraq. At Christmas, Jarrard began contacting friends at home about the plight of Amenah, a little girl who was born with a severe heart condition. He thought of the example his father, Tom, a Gainesville attorney who died of cancer just as Kevin was preparing to leave for Iraq last year. “Dad didn’t talk about helping folks, he just did it,” Kevin said. “It was always a family affair. We’d just get in the truck and just did stuff.” John Nadeau, a Navy doctor from Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., arranged for Amenah to receive care there without cost. Money was raised for air fare for Amenah, her mother and a medical support person.

Jarrard, recognizing the severity of her condition, cautioned that she might not survive the trip or the surgery. “It was touch and go,” Jarrard said. He rode with the girl and her mother to the Iraqi border in a helicopter and was afraid the girl was dying. She required oxygen while in flight to the United States and was placed in an intensive-care unit upon arrival at Vanderbilt.

Doctors prescribed antibiotics for an infection she developed and it was more than a week before the surgery could take place. But the operation was a success and the little girl’s blue lips and fingers were suddenly turned a robust pink.

Her story was reported on network newscasts and even drew the attention of President Bush; he met the surgeon, Karla Christian, who performed the life-saving, open-heart surgery.

“Some of the Marines raised money, and they sent this little girl, whose heart was ailing, to America, right here to Nashville,” Bush said on a March 11 visit to Nashville. “And Karla and her team healed the little girl and she’s back in Iraq. And the contrast couldn’t be more vivid. We got people in Iraq who murder the innocent to achieve their political objectives — and we’ve got Americans who heal the broken hearts of little Iraqi girls.” … READ THE REST

Instead of just leaving Iraq in 2009 or 2010, perhaps we should stay there a 100 years making a difference in peoples’ lives as the “humanitarians” are always popping off about.