“Let’s Surge Some More” - Yon In WSJ
Michael Yon has a piece in the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion column today…
A young Iraqi translator, wounded in battle and fearing death, asked an American commander to bury his heart in America. Iraqi special forces units took to the streets to track down terrorists who killed American soldiers. The U.S. military is the most respected institution in Iraq, and many Iraqi boys dream of becoming American soldiers.
Let’s Surge Some More
By Michael Yon in The Wall Street Journal
It is said that generals always fight the last war. But when David Petraeus came to town it was senators – on both sides of the aisle – who battled over the Iraq war of 2004-2006. That war has little in common with the war we are fighting today.
I may well have spent more time embedded with combat units in Iraq than any other journalist alive. I have seen this war – and our part in it – at its brutal worst. And I say the transformation over the last 14 months is little short of miraculous.
The change goes far beyond the statistical decline in casualties or incidents of violence. A young Iraqi translator, wounded in battle and fearing death, asked an American commander to bury his heart in America. Iraqi special forces units took to the streets to track down terrorists who killed American soldiers. The U.S. military is the most respected institution in Iraq, and many Iraqi boys dream of becoming American soldiers. Yes, young Iraqi boys know about “GoArmy.com.”
As the outrages of Abu Ghraib faded in memory – and paled in comparison to al Qaeda’s brutalities – and our soldiers under the Petraeus strategy got off their big bases and out of their tanks and deeper into the neighborhoods, American values began to win the war.
Iraqis came to respect American soldiers as warriors who would protect them from terror gangs. But Iraqis also discovered that these great warriors are even happier helping rebuild a clinic, school or a neighborhood. They learned that the American soldier is not only the most dangerous enemy in the world, but one of the best friends a neighborhood can have.
Some people charge that we have merely “rented” the Sunni tribesmen, the former insurgents who now fight by our side. This implies that because we pay these people, their loyalty must be for sale to the highest bidder. But as Gen. Petraeus demonstrated in Nineveh province in 2003 to 2004, many of the Iraqis who filled the ranks of the Sunni insurgency from 2003 into 2007 could have been working with us all along, had we treated them intelligently and respectfully. In Nineveh in 2003, under then Maj. Gen. Petraeus’s leadership, these men – many of them veterans of the Iraqi army – played a crucial role in restoring civil order. Yet due to excessive de-Baathification and the administration’s attempt to marginalize powerful tribal sheiks in Anbar and other provinces – including men even Saddam dared not ignore – we transformed potential partners into dreaded enemies in less than a year.
Then al Qaeda in Iraq, which helped fund and tried to control the Sunni insurgency for its own ends, raped too many women and boys, cut off too many heads, and brought drugs into too many neighborhoods. By outraging the tribes, it gave birth to the Sunni “awakening.” We – and Iraq – got a second chance. Powerful tribes in Anbar province cooperate with us now because they came to see al Qaeda for what it is – and to see Americans for what we truly are.
Soldiers everywhere are paid, and good generals know it is dangerous to mess with a soldier’s money. The shoeless heroes who froze at Valley Forge were paid, and when their pay did not come they threatened to leave – and some did. Soldiers have families and will not fight for a nation that allows their families to starve. But to say that the tribes who fight with us are “rented” is perhaps as vile a slander as to say that George Washington’s men would have left him if the British offered a better deal.
Equally misguided were some senators’ attempts to use Gen. Petraeus’s statement, that there could be no purely military solution in Iraq, to dismiss our soldiers’ achievements as “merely” military. In a successful counterinsurgency it is impossible to separate military and political success. The Sunni “awakening” was not primarily a military event any more than it was “bribery.” It was a political event with enormous military benefits.
The huge drop in roadside bombings is also a political success – because the bombings were political events. It is not possible to bury a tank-busting 1,500-pound bomb in a neighborhood street without the neighbors noticing. Since the military cannot watch every road during every hour of the day (that would be a purely military solution), whether the bomb kills soldiers depends on whether the neighbors warn the soldiers or cover for the terrorists. Once they mostly stood silent; today they tend to pick up their cell phones and call the Americans. Even in big “kinetic” military operations like the taking of Baqubah in June 2007, politics was crucial. Casualties were a fraction of what we expected because, block-by-block, the citizens told our guys where to find the bad guys. I was there; I saw it.
The Iraqi central government is unsatisfactory at best. But the grass-roots political progress of the past year has been extraordinary – and is directly measurable in the drop in casualties.
This leads us to the most out-of-date aspect of the Senate debate: the argument about the pace of troop withdrawals. Precisely because we have made so much political progress in the past year, rather than talking about force reduction, Congress should be figuring ways and means to increase troop levels. For all our successes, we still do not have enough troops. This makes the fight longer and more lethal for the troops who are fighting. To give one example, I just returned this week from Nineveh province, where I have spent probably eight months between 2005 to 2008, and it is clear that we remain stretched very thin from the Syrian border and through Mosul. Vast swaths of Nineveh are patrolled mostly by occasional overflights.
We know now that we can pull off a successful counterinsurgency in Iraq. We know that we are working with an increasingly willing citizenry. But counterinsurgency, like community policing, requires lots of boots on the ground. You can’t do it from inside a jet or a tank.
Over the past 15 months, we have proved that we can win this war. We stand now at the moment of truth. Victory – and a democracy in the Arab world – is within our grasp. But it could yet slip away if our leaders remain transfixed by the war we almost lost, rather than focusing on the war we are winning today.
Mr. Yon is author of the just-published “Moment of Truth in Iraq” (Richard Vigilante Books). He has been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2004.
(WSJ)
Nods to Drillanwr.
Be respectful of others and their opinions. Inflammatory remarks and inane leftist drivel will be deleted. It ain’t about free speech, remember you’re in a private domain. My website, my prerogative.
If you can't handle using your real email address, don't bother posting a comment.
Fuck yeah!
April 11th, 2008 at 7:06 amWould love to see Michael Yon sitting beside the General at these “political” hearings …
April 11th, 2008 at 7:19 amWell, since I didn’t know where to call attention to this, here it is. I think this “journalist” should be educated.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-debord9apr09,0,1601961.story
When you have guys like Yon out there, there are three more just like this libtard who cares more about how Patraeus is dressed than the accomplishments of the military that he leads. Typical, no?
Lead the way!
April 11th, 2008 at 7:20 am…..
I have always thought what incredible role models our military must be to the Iraqi people and especially the youth in Iraq. To see the bravery, heroism, competence and sacrifice of our troops in comparison to the animals they are in combat against would ‘win the hearts and minds’ of the majority of the populace.
The Iraqi front is a attempt to install a democracy in the middle of the source of greatest unrest in the world. We are winning now, thanks to the steadfast leadership of President Bush down to the individual boots on the ground.
We cannot retreat or simply hold position, we must press
onward to secure the gains and to move it forward.
…………
Imagine this battle domestically without the likes of yon, dollard, roggio, malkin, sanchez and more. It truly could have been ‘nam redux.
April 11th, 2008 at 7:23 amImagine this battle domestically without the likes of yon, dollard, roggio, malkin, sanchez and more. It truly could have been ‘nam redux.
————————————————————
Oh! Sooooo true!
That’s why they hate the conservative blogs so damn much …
And the blogs have helped create the likes of GoE, and other military support groups to head-off the antiwar bullshit that would have flooded the collective psyche as it did in the `Nam era.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:25 amPlease remember that Yon does not work for any news organization. He is totally funded by donations, and now book sales. So why not buy a book, and donate at his site.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:53 am———
I work for Mike.
America should seriously consider the creation of a “Légion Étrangère”, like France has since 1831.
April 11th, 2008 at 9:22 amread the link you post, that writer needs to be kicked out of his parents basement, and redeposited in Lebanon.
What he said about General Petraeus is beyond the acceptable. If I were on the left coast, the piece of dung would be 6 feet under
April 11th, 2008 at 9:39 amWhat can you say? The man GETS it. With his vast experience, it’s almost a given that he would, but it is an absolute delight to hear what he has to say.
I’ll take one Michael Yon over a thousand Green Zone jackasses any day.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:02 amPMS, no, we need to let these young men become American soldiers. Even if they return home upon ETS, they will be the Sheiks in their neighborhoods . The U.S. Army just might end up being their “home” Why not? These kids know who the strongest of horses are and they wear Army and Marine green . Navy and Air Force Blue, too. They know who heroes and legends are and they are not Hollywood slackers and metrosexuals. Trust me, those Middle Eastern girls know who the studs are ,too and these young men know it as well.
Yesterday,today and tomorrow, the United States Army .
April 11th, 2008 at 10:46 amMotivating!
April 11th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Hardball
April 11th, 2008 at 12:58 pmReading that article, the author really needs to do some fact checking. Obviously the facts are not what he is interested in…