Michael Yon on civil war in Iraq
Michael Yon's viewpoint is, largely,
apolitical. He reports what he sees/has seen. He was "embedded" in Iraq, mostly
under his own financial support, for the better part of last year. He
writes:
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. ...
In the face of such challenges, we need to identify
our options, ask questions with courage and we must listen carefully to trusted
experts. America must not be brash or arrogant, we must never gloss over the
obvious or manufacture disinformation or ignore information contrary to the way
we wish to see the world, especially given that we have taken the role as the
principle world leader. We put ourselves in this position, because we understand
the consequences of waiting for consensus. But we are in this position, and the
world is watching us. The world is watching us all the time, and none so
intently as our enemies. We need to stop doing battle over words, and let the
facts inform our decisions. ...
Ask average Americans and Europeans if Iranians are
coming to Iraq and fighting, and most seem to believe they are. But I
crisscrossed Iraq on numerous occasions and never found an American or Iraqi
military commander who agreed that Iranians are coming in. Surely foreigners
have come to fight in Iraq—I have been there at times when some were
captured—but on the balance, foreign terrorists are a small fraction of
the problem in Iraq.
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.
In order to fund my own fact-finding in Iraq and
Afghanistan, I asked my attorney last week to look into selling some of my
photos. His response, in part, which came to me yesterday:
Sadly, what I am hearing is that the demand for
material from both countries is way, way down. The market has dried up and the
competition from almost free AP photos and US Army material means most agencies
do not want to take on someone whose work is primarily war-related at this
time.
We have gotten our troops into combat and now we are
ignoring them. It’s little wonder that Americans would be angry at me for
calling a civil war a civil war. Most of them have no idea what is going on! But
this is not the sole fault of the media: if there were great demand for
information from the wars, they would dispatch legions of journalists. It is the
people at home who are ignoring our people at war.
...
Pressure is mounting to
end our engagement prematurely. This would be disastrous, but worse is that we
were warned by people whose expertise should have given us pause. In his report
to the Senate, not only did General McCaffrey detail the complex nature of the
enemy, he issued a clear challenge to our civilian leaders:
“We must continue to
level with the American People. We still have a five year fight facing us in
Iraq.”
I think Barry McCaffrey
was being optimistic by saying five years, but he was prodding top leadership to
tell the Americans the truth. Americans can take the truth, but they abhor lies,
and they can smell lies a mile away.
Posted: Tue - April 18, 2006 at 05:02 PM
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