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| == '''[[Iraq War, major combat phase]]''' ==
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| | <small> |
| After a buildup by [[special operations]] forces and an intensification of air attacks under the [[Operation NORTHERN WATCH]] and [[Operation SOUTHERN WATCH]] "no fly" programs, major ground forces began to move into Iraq on March 20, 2003.
| | ==Footnotes== |
| | |
| As with any war, no plan survives contact with the enemy. Both sides did consider Baghdad the key [[centers of gravity (military)|center of gravity]], but both made incorrect assumptions about the enemy's plans. The U.S. was still sensitive over the casualties taken by a too-light raid in [[Operation GOTHIC SERPENT]] in [[Mogadishu]], [[Somalia]]. As a result, the initial concept of operations was to surround Baghdad with tanks, while airborne and air assault infantry cleared it block-by-block. <ref name=Zucchino>{{citation
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| | author = David Zucchino
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| | title = Thunder Run: the Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad
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| | publisher = Atlantic Monthly Press | year = 2004 | ISBN = 0871139111}}, p. 3</ref>
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| The U.S. also expected the more determined Iraqi forces, such as the [[Special Republican Guard]] and the [[Saddam Fedayeen]], to stay in the cities and fight from cover. Before the invasion, the Fedayeen were seen as [[Uday Hussein]]'s personal paramilitary force, founded in the mid-1990s. They had become known in 2000 and 2001, beheading dissenting women in the streets claiming they were prostitutes. "It was a very new phenomenon, the first time women in Iraq have been beheaded in public," Muhannad Eshaiker of the California-based Iraqi Forum for Democracy told ABC. <ref name=ABC>{{citation
| |
| | title = Who Are Saddam's 'Fedayeen' Fighters? A Look at Iraq’s Brutal Paramilitary Group, the Fedayeen Saddam
| |
| | author = Leela Jacinto
| |
| | date = 24 March 2003 | url = http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=79602&page=1
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| | journal = ABC News}}</ref> They had not been expected to be a force in battle. It was clear that the fedayeen had minimal military training. They seemed unaware of the lethality of the U.S. armored vehicles, and aggressively but haphazardly attacked them. <ref>Zucchino, pp. 14-15</ref> Senior Iraqi Army officers seemed to believe their own propaganda and assume that the war would go well, and there would never be tanks in Baghdad. It was only Special Republican Guard, Saddam Fedayeen, and unexpected Syrian mercenaries that seemed to understand the reality.<ref>Zucchino, pp. 35-36</ref> In an interview after the end of high-intensity combat, MG [[Buford Blount]], commander of the [[3rd Infantry Division]], said "...there were many, I think, Syrian and other countries that had sent personnel; the countries didn't, I think individuals came over on their own that were recruited and paid for by the Ba'ath Party to come over and fight the Americans. We dealt with those individuals there for a two- or three-day period, had a lot of contact with them, but have not seen a reoccurrence of that at this point."<ref name=DLink2003-05-15>{{citation
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| | journal = Defenselink
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| | author - Army Maj. Gen. Buford C. Blount III | date= May 15, 2003
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| | title = 3rd Infantry Division Commander Live Briefing from Iraq
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| | url = http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2608}}</ref>
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| ''[[Iraq War, major combat phase|.... (read more)]]''
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| ! style="text-align: center;" | [[Iraq War, major combat phase#References|notes]]
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| {{reflist|2}} | | {{reflist|2}} |
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| | </small> |
Latest revision as of 10:19, 11 September 2020
Walt Whitman by photographer George C. Cox. 1887 in New York
Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892) was an American poet whose best known work is the poetry collection Leaves of Grass[1][2], a book-sized opus written in a flowing free verse style. It is now considered a masterpiece of American literature, and Whitman is known as the innovator who first introduced the free verse style of writing poetry. Whitman self-published the book in 1855 and continued revising it until his death.
Whitman as a cultural icon
Whitman has recently been resurrected as a popular heroic figure, seen as embodying acceptance for androgyny, bisexuality, and sensuality in general[3], a contemporary trend of evaluating writers more for being perceived as a member of a suppressed social group than on literary merit. Whitman's enduring popularity has scarcely needed the boost of this phenomenon. His importance in American culture, especially in the northeast United States, is reflected in the schools, roads, rest stops, and bridges that have been named after him[4], including the Walt Whitman bridge spanning the Delaware River between Philadelphia and New Jersey that opened for traffic in 1957.
Poem: A Noiseless Patient Spider
This short Whitman poem in free verse is included in most American poetry anthologies:[5]:
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to
connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
Notes
- ↑
Leaves of Grass' by Walt Whitman, complete text free from Project Gutenberg. As well as shorter poems (notably 'A Noiseless Patient Spider'), Leaves of Grass contains three long poems: ‘I Sing the Body Electric,' ‘The Sleepers,' and ‘Song of Myself'.
- ↑
A group of Whitman poems about the civil war is sometimes published separately under the title Drum-Taps.
- ↑ The New York Times Style Magazine: 'Walt Whitman, Poet of a Contradictory America' by Jesse Green, Sept. 20, 2020, p. 74; last access 9/21/2020.
- ↑ There is the Walt Whitman High School (Bethesda, MD), Walt Whitman Elementary School (Woodbury, NJ), Walt Whitman High School (Huntington Station, NY), Walt Whitman Boulevard (Cherry Hill, NJ), and the Walt Whitman rest stop along the NJ Turnpike in Cherry Hill, to name a few.
- ↑ From Leaves of Grass, 'A Noiseless Patient Spider'.
