Embedded journalist extraordinaire Michael Yon makes an appeal to U.S. Senators (thank you Instapundit):
Whatever we do in Iraq from here forward, we must strive to make better decisions than those made between 2003 and 2006. And one way to achieve that is by making certain that our civilian leaders are fully informed. All three candidates for President are extremely intelligent, but that doesn’t mean that all three are tracking the truth on the ground in Iraq. Anyone who wants to be President of the United States needs to see Iraq without the distorting lenses of the media or partisan politics. I would be honored to visit Iraq with Senator Obama, Senator Clinton, Senator McCain or any of their Senate colleagues.
I hereby offer to accompany any Senator to Iraq, whether they are pro-or anti-war, Democrat or Republican.
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The best way to understand what is really going on is to listen closely to a wide range of service members who have done multiple tours in Iraq. Some will be negative, some will be positive, but overall I am certain that the vast majority of multi-tour Iraq veterans will testify that there has been great progress, and now there is hope. Combat veterans don’t tolerate happy talk or wishful thinking. They’ll tell you the raw truth as they see it.
Thankfully, those of us who don’t happen to be Senators can still benefit from the exceptionally deep and detailed Iraq reporting that Michael Yon and Michael Totten continue to provide. If you find their work valuable, as I certainly do, consider hitting their tipjars on your way by.
At Zombietime c/o Instapundit: lots of encouraging pictures from a March 22nd rally in support of U.S. troops, which was held at the same Berkeley Marine recruiting center that has been a frequent focus of antiwar activists. Slightly old news at this point, but worth a look.
On Reuters a couple of days ago: “Clinton attacks Obama and McCain on Iraq”
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic U.S. presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton put the war in Iraq in the forefront of her campaign on Monday, attacking Democratic rival Barack Obama and Republican John McCain over an issue that has divided the country.
Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady, laid out her policy proposals to deal with the conflict, including ensuring that troops have sufficient rest time between deployments, pressing the United Nations to be more involved, and getting key allies to help stabilize the region.
“Bringing our troops home safely will take a president who is ready to be commander in chief on Day One,” she said in a speech.
“Withdrawal is not defeat. Defeat is keeping troops in Iraq for 100 years.”
Oh! Well, if it’s going to take that long to defeat our fanatical Jihadist enemies, then forget it I guess. It’s hardly worth the trouble.
Seems worthy of concern to me that she who aspires to be our military’s commander-in-chief shows no qualms about demonstrating the United States to be the very “paper tiger” or “weak horse” that Osama Bin Laden counted on us to be. Is she just shrewdly pandering to the anti-war component of her voter base, or does she really and truly not see any serious long-term consequences to allowing the United States to be perceived as weak-willed and lacking in resolve? Furthermore, I don’t see how in March 2008 one can make such a gloomy prediction about Iraq’s future and expect to be taken as fully serious, given the significant progress that our shift in strategy has brought. Seems like there’s an ever-growing disconnect between the politically convenient “the Iraq war is a failure” narrative and improving realities on the ground.
I’ve found myself reading and bookmarking a number of noteworthy articles this past week. Lots of interesting stuff to comment on here, but for fear I might not find the time to do so at any length very soon, I’m going to catch up by posting some quick quotes and links…
First up: Writer/director/producer David Mamet wrote an exceptional article in the Village Voice, in which he explains his shift away from the left. Interestingly, he attributes his own change in thinking to an inability to reconcile long-held beliefs with the more favorable evidence offered by his everyday experiences.
I’d observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances — that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired — in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.
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And I began to question my hatred for “the Corporations” — the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live.
And I began to question my distrust of the “Bad, Bad Military” of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world. Is the military always right? No. Neither is government, nor are the corporations — they are just different signposts for the particular amalgamation of our country into separate working groups, if you will. Are these groups infallible, free from the possibility of mismanagement, corruption, or crime? No, and neither are you or I. So, taking the tragic view, the question was not “Is everything perfect?” but “How could it be better, at what cost, and according to whose definition?” Put into which form, things appeared to me to be unfolding pretty well.
It sounds to me like he’s simply become more pragmatic. Brings to mind neo-neocon’s excellent and insighful “A Mind is a Difficult Thing to Change” series.
Elsewhere in the article, Mamet included a mention of NPR that I found amusing and relevant, as my own wife is an NPR fan of many years but I’ve come to find the station’s reporting biases frustrating. Mamet begins:
We were riding along and listening to NPR.
(Typical scene for me and my wife too, during our morning commute.)
I felt my facial muscles tightening, and the words beginning to form in my mind: Shut the fuck up. “?” she prompted. And her terse, elegant summation, as always, awakened me to a deeper truth: I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: I found I had been — rather charmingly, I thought — referring to myself for years as “a brain-dead liberal,” and to NPR as “National Palestinian Radio.”
Funny, I’ve come to refer to it in my own mind with a chuckle as “Nationalized People’s Radio” … Mamet and I must be thinking on similar wavelengths…
(Update 3/19: “National Progressive Radio” is another variant I’ve since caught myself using)
In other news: George McGovern seems to get it more than either of our current Democratic presidential candidates when it comes to economic freedom, as Glenn Reynolds noted at Instapundit. Why, as Glenn rightly asked, isn’t he running for president?
The nature of freedom of choice is that some people will misuse their responsibility and hurt themselves in the process. We should do our best to educate them, but without diminishing choice for everyone else.
The last remaining staircase at the World Trade Center site was moved on Monday. Fittingly, it sounds like it’s going to be preserved as part of the World Trade Center 9/11 memorial.
Charlie Martin puts his finger on something that’s been troubling me about the healthcare debate for a long while: What many people think of as health “insurance” isn’t actually insurance.
IraqPundit genuinely wonders what Obama thinks about U.S. involvement in Iraq, and provides an instructive recap of Obama’s position statements over time. Therein lay some interesting surprises for me, including this quote from a Boston Globe report:
In July of 2004, the day after his speech at the Democratic convention catapulted him into the national spotlight, Barack Obama told a group of reporters in Boston that the United States had an ‘absolute obligation’ to remain in Iraq long enough to make it a success.
‘The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster,’ he said at a lunch sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, according to an audiotape of the session. ‘It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who have already died… . It would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective.’
He might actually have had a chance at my vote, had he continued with this kind of talk. But lately he seems disinterested in talking about anything but his 2002 advocacy against the Iraq invasion, and in discussing any Iraq policy or strategy short of an immediate withdrawal — an act of retreat and defeat that our enemies would not soon forget, and that would surely come back to haunt us in future conflicts.
Also, at Hot Air: Does the media’s anti-war rhetoric embolden Iraqi insurgents? (Thanks again Instapundit.)
At the Wall Street Journal: What is it about Democrats and Chávez?
And at phi beta cons: Is “postmodern belief in the futility of life” helping drive some to become campus killers? (Hat tip: Instapundit)
Michael Totten has posted another characteristically excellent, in-depth report from Iraq — this time from Fallujah, as the Marines there train the local Iraqi Police and prepare to leave patrolling of this once volatile, now startlingly calm city in their hands.
As always, Michael provides insightful, informative reporting that’s hard to come by elsewhere — thoroughly engaging and well worth reading in its entirety.
If you like Michael’s work, consider dropping something in the tipjar that makes his travels possible. (I just did so myself.)
Update 2/12: Part III is up now. A few among many especially relevant excerpts, addressing the unfortunate disconnect between popular perception and what Totten has witnessed on the ground:
According to planet-wide conventional wisdom, United States soldiers and Marines are on an abusive rampage in Iraq. Relentless media coverage of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib – which really did occur, but which the United States didn’t sanction or tolerate – seriously distorted what actually goes on in Iraq most of the time. The United States military is far from perfect and is hardly guilt-free, but it’s the most law-abiding and humane institution in Iraq at this time.
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Such people do not wish to recklessly fire their weapons and harm civilians. Their rules of engagement are sharply restrictive, much more so than most American civilians have any idea. The rules are certainly more restrictive than Iraqi civilians expected when the Americans showed up in force in 2003.
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I’ve said before that American soldiers and Marines aren’t the bloodthirsty killers of the popular (in certain quarters) imagination, and that they are far less racist against Arabs than average Americans. They are also, famously, less racist against each other, and they have been since they were forcibly integrated after World War II. This is due to sustained everyday contact with each other and with Iraqis. The stereotype of the racist and unhinged American soldier and Marine is itself a bigoted caricature based almost entirely on sensationalist journalism and recklessly irresponsible war movies.
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You know who else is in Iraq and therefore knows what the country is really like? Iraqis. (Of course.) They see and experience much of the same kinds of events George Packer and I have seen and experienced. They don’t learn about Iraq from Reuters and Hollywood. And they are less anti-American than they were during the initial invasion in 2003 – at least many of those who have had sustained contact with Marines and soldiers. Sustained contact with the “other” breaks down bigotry all around, even in war zones.
The violent strain of anti-Americanism in Fallujah and the surrounding area has ebbed almost completely. People here know Americans are not the enemy. They know Americans protect them from murder and intimidation from the head-choppers and car bombers. They know Americans provide medical care to Iraqis hurt by insurgents and even to insurgents wounded in battle.
