Michael Yon has a long post up today where he explains his views on the war. It boils down to the fact that he believed Iraq was in a civil war long before we invaded and is still in it today. Do I agree? No. I do not agree with his definition of a civil war but he makes some great points:
The Civil War did not start subsequent the invasion; it was already underway. The former Iraqi regime had slaughtered unknown thousands of civilians and buried many of them in mass graves that are still today being discovered and catalogued. If anything, the previous Civil War has merely changed shape, the advantage has clearly shifted, and now that Americans and Europeans are in the combat zone, the war gets more complicated.
[...]There is a human tendency to ignore certain information while magnifying other information. We all know this. It?s not a disease that infects only people of certain parties or professions, it?s in our nature. In this complicated world, in this excruciatingly complicated world, we must make hard decisions as individuals and collectively as nations. When it came to invading Iraq, as persuasive as I found those official statements about WMD, I also knew some things that the average American would not be in a position to know. Every Iraq-experienced Special Forces veteran that I spoke with before the latest invasion of Iraq?every one of those veterans?opined that Iraq would devolve into chaos and civil war. But when I asked those same veterans if they thought the former regime was a threat to world security, they all agreed that it was, for they knew well the evil of the former Iraqi regime. Tough choices.
[...]True, I am anti-war, but I recognize that at this juncture in human history that refusing to fight in many parts of the world means that we agree to be beaten to death, or we agree to allow airliners to ram into our buildings. War is a pitiful human reality that we must face, and we are far from finished with facing this demon. We live in a rough world where strength is rewarded, weakness is penalized.
Great points by Michael. Being a strong country, hell even a strong person requires you to make tough choices. Bush made those choices and in my opinion made the right ones.
Michael then writes about the misuse of the truth by those who are playing politics:
In my time on the ground in Iraq, I saw almost as much violence toward language and truth as was directed towards people. I wrote about this, also, because back then, again, almost a year ago now; I thought our greatest danger was the ongoing skirmishes we had with the truth.
Particularly among fanatics, there seems to be an intentional misappropriation of meaning in the liberal misapplication of labeling words. Let?s start with the BIG ones: suicide bombers and martyrs. Suicide is a term that should evoke empathy, if not sympathy, for a lonely and despairing act. A distressed soul, harboring a crushing, agonizing lebensmude, weary of the strain of a terrestrial existence, perhaps seeking mere relief, or just an end to psychic pain, may be contemplating suicide. If this person straps a bomb to his or her chest and walks out into the solitude of the desert and detonates, they would then be properly called a ?suicide bomber.? But when the media reports every day on ?suicide bombers,? they are talking about different people.
A fanatic who straps a bomb to his chest and walks into a market crowded with women and children, then detonates a bomb that is sometimes laced with rat poison to hamper blood coagulation, is properly called a ?mass murderer.? There is nothing good to say about mass murderers, nor is there anything good to say about a person who encourages these murders. Calling these human bomb delivery devices ?suicide bombers? is simply incorrect. They are murderers. A person or media source defending or explaining away the actions of the murderers supports them. There is no wiggle room.
Calling homicide bombers martyrs is a language offense; words are every bit as powerful as bombs, often more so. Calling murderers ?martyrs? is like calling a man ?customer? because he stood in line before gunning down a store clerk. There?s no need to whisper. I hear the bombs every single day. Not some days, but every day. We?re talking about criminals who actually volunteer and plan to deliberately murder and maim innocent people. What reservoir of feelings or sensibilities do we fear to assault by simply calling it so? When murderers describe themselves as ?martyrs? it should sound to sensible ears like a rapist saying, ?She was asking for it.? In other words, like the empty rationalizations of a depraved criminal.
The word martyr is derived from the word ?to witness.? It is used to describe a person who is killed because of a belief or principle. Given the choice to recant, martyrs chose instead to face their murderers and stand in witness to their beliefs. True martyrs do not kill themselves, but stand their ground and fight in the face of death to demonstrate the power of their convictions, sometimes dying as a result, but preferably surviving.
The only martyrs I know about in Iraq are the fathers and brothers who see a better future coming, and so they act on their beliefs and assemble outside police stations whenever recruitment notices are posted. They line up in ever increasing numbers, knowing that insurgents can also read these notices. The men stand in longer and longer lines, making ever bigger targets of themselves. Some volunteer to earn a living. This, too, is honorable. But others take these risks because they believe that a better future is possible only if Iraqi men of principle stand up for their own values, for their country, for their families. These are the true martyrs, the true heroes of Iraq and of Islam. I meet these martyrs frequently. They are brave men, worthy of respect.
But what I saw (and see) as the biggest threat to the outcome was not the increase in sectarian violence among Iraqis. The biggest threat to this mission, and by extension to the future stability of this region and the long term security of the United States and our allies, is and always has been the inability to see, hear and communicate the truth to the American people and our allies. In the final analysis, it is not going to matter if the French support our mission in Iraq, but once Americans turn away from their soldiers in the field, we?ve lost.
Nothing is more important then supporting our troops until completing their mission. The best way to support them is to support the mission until it is won. If we were to cut and run now all their sacrifices will have been in vain, and that is unforgiveable.
It is that same gut feeling that tells me can win in Iraq, but I am not going stretch that far out on the limb as to say that we will win. I certainly hope we do. I was correct about the civil war more than a year ahead of the academic and media pack. I was right about Mosul. But I am not sure about Iraq as a whole. The fine points of emerging governments are abstractions to people who cannot worship without a very real fear that their holy places are no longer safe havens. Having been beaten in Mosul, and pushed out of Tal Afar, and long since driven from the Kurdish strongholds in the North, the enemy is clearly concentrating efforts in the capital city area.
We are not getting the truth through our media, or our civilian leadership. Yes, Iraq is in civil war, but there is no doubt in my mind, not the slightest doubt, that the new Iraqi security forces are becoming stronger all the time. It?s not certain if they are strong enough to hold back the enemy on their own or if we need to increase the efforts of our military in a coordinated measure. But the fact that an American general recently invited me to see that progress is an indicator that our top military leaders are confident. An Army general would not have invited me back to Iraq to see a fiasco, and the mere fact of his invitation is a ray of hope.
[...]These people, whether we call them freedom fighters, insurgents, thugs, or terrorists, have a stated mission to attack anyone who is not like them, wherever they can. They are not bluffing. They cannot be appeased. They will not stop if and when we leave, if we leave without completing the mission. If we leave, all vestiges of progress will be lost and those Iraqis who risked their lives to work with us to gain that progress will no longer trust Americans. If we run, the enemy will follow us. They will kill us. They will not stop until we stop them. I might be anti-war, but I am much more anti-terrorist. No more needs to be said on the subject of whether or not a portion of the violence in Iraq should be called a civil war, unless we want to argue about the definitions while the place explodes around us. There are more pressing issues than the limitations of our dictionaries.
I am in Afghanistan?how many people even remember we are fighting here??surrounded by massive amounts of poppy fields. This heroin and terrorist factory called Afghanistan needs to be addressed.
While I can disagree with his definition of a civil war I do respect his work and sacrifices to tell the story by being out there and doing it. I don’t there is a more important body of words then the one I highlighted above. All sides, left right and in between, need to read those words over and over until it is burned into your brain.
