The Uruk-Hai of Babylon?

Jason Van Steenwyk compares the "insurgents" in Iraq to orcs. Good analogy:

It seems their delight to slash and beat down growing things that are not even in their way.

This is part of an excellent post on the cluelessness of journalists when it comes to the military. Which reminds me of an NPR story (NPR's my favorite radio station) on Dan Baum's New Yorker article (Hat Tip: Blackfive) about the bottom up exchange of knowledge going on among junior leaders in Iraq right now:

Chadwick (NPR): Dan, we think of the Army and the military as bound by tradition, and the old way of doing things, that, uh, it's difficult to do anything innovative. What have you learned about that kind of thing in this reporting?

Baum: I've been impressed by the flexibility of the Army to allow this, to encourage this...

What follows is some stuff about how the Army would have fought the war differently (i.e. Rumsfeld is a moron for not listening to Shinseki and sending more troops). Now, Baum surely gets this, but Chadwick, as most journalists, seems to be stuck in the "Vietnam" paradigm: the military is hidebound and against innovation. Anyone that has been in the U.S. military can tell you it is perhaps the most flexible, innovative organization in the world. It encourages low-level initiative and creative thinking. This is the key to it's success, much more that all the high tech gadgetry and weaponry.