An Assessment On Afghanistan You Won't Hear Anywhere Else

Ed Morrissey from Hot Air has an interview with Michael Yon, a man whose opinion and assessment on all things related to our war on terror, I greatly respect. He speaks bluntly and honestly and from a perspective not equaled by any of the numerous armchair generals and pundits we have populating our news shows and media. Michael Yon has been reporting from or participating in this global war on terrorism from the beginning. He goes where angels fear to tread, and he does it mostly on his dime. You can help him to continue his reporting by hitting his tip jar.

This is painful to listen to, but listen to it we must. Sometimes the truth hurts, but it is the truth. Please take the time to listen to the whole interview.


If journalism was an honest enterprise this guy would have a wall decorated with not only his military honors but numerous journalism awards. He has been widely recognized for his iconic picture of an American soldier rescuing a young Iraqi who was the victim of a terrorist IED in Iraq, and when he speaks he is doing so from a perspective of having first hand knowledge. He isn't splashy. He doesn't try to get the exclusive and I would be very curious to see what kind of price the bad guys have put on his head. He presents an honest unvarnished look into our operations, something which has resulted in him having his embed status with US forces reviewed on numerous times and just recently resulted in his embed status with a British unit in Afghanistan revoked. He is not a propagandist; he is a reporter in the old school sense.

Kudos to Ed for getting the interview.

'I Couldn't Leave Them On Their Own'

Whenever I read stories like this I am reminded of the war stories told by the now senior Senator from Massachusetts John Kerry when he was running for president and we were reminded on a daily basis about his 'heroic' service in Vietnam or Cambodia or wherever he alleged to be serving. I am reminded how he took his three Purple Hearts and beat feet back home after being overcome by exploding rice.

This young lady is a member of the British 2 Rifles, which some of you may recall were written about recently by Michael Yon, before they revoked his embed.

An Army medic remained at the scene of an ambush in Afghanistan to treat seven injured comrades despite being wounded with shrapnel herself, it was revealed today.

Lance Corporal Sally Clarke, of 2 Rifles, ignored the shards embedded in her back after the Taleban attack and stayed to help her team.
...
Lance Corporal Clarke, who has served for three years, tended each soldier, then helped to move them to the helicopter landing site to be flown to Camp Bastion. Despite being entitled to get on the flight, she refused, insisting she would not leave the patrol without a medic.

She added: “I didn’t feel like my injuries were bad enough to go back to the hospital, particularly as I was the only medic on the ground at the time.

“I couldn’t leave them on their own. I came out here to support the troops on the ground and give them medical care when they needed it the most.”

The Brits are taking a lot of casualties recently, just like the Americans; I can guarantee you not a day goes by when we couldn't read a story like this in our media, if only they would publish them. I have no doubt they are being written because I see them in little local newspapers everyday, but never on the national stage.

This weekend I am going to a NASCAR race here in Atlanta and the Grand Marshall for the Saturday night race is going to be the widow of recently slain National Guard NCO from Georgia, SFC John Beale. While the newspapers and networks like to remind us of the daily death toll, they continue, even after all this time, to ignore the people who are the real story.

5 years into the GWOT and progressives discover Michael Yon

Much has been made of comments made by David Bellavia earlier this week by some who see hidden meanings in Denny's menus,and here we have the progressives taking a shot at Michael Yon.
Firedoglake, a typical screeching, whining, gloom and doom, liberal, sorry progressive, blog has decided that Michael Yon is a propagandists. Something the author of this piece apparently is ignorant of or else he didn't bother to read all of the Michael Yon article he presents as evidence of Mr Yons' propaganda activity. All you need to know about Mr Yon is contained in the second paragraph of Michaels article.

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.

If there is anybody who reads this blog that is not aware of Michael Yon it is time you became acquainted with him. He has been dubbed the Ernie Pyle of our time, and his "dispatches" from the GWOT have been the best pieces of reporting and have been able to place just what is happening on the ground in this war in perspective.
Of course it only took the unlearned readers of that blog 16 comments, which showed their ignorance of who and what Micahel Yon does, to slip into their BushCheneyHaliburton hate fest.

LS April 11th, 2008 at 10:39 am
#17

Over at Rawstory, there is an article about Cheney authorizing torture, etc., but in the comments at the bottom of the page about 10 comments down, begin a series of comments from an anonymous poster with an incredible amount of information tying Cheney to just about everything…Just sayin’..worth the gander.

Of course the remainder of the comments continued along this vein. So the progressives spent all of 16 comments slandering Mr Yon's motives and characters and then returned to their comfort zone of bashing Republicans.
As to Blue Texan's exit question

So what I wanna know is -- at what point will war cheerleaders propagandists like Michael Yon feel enough shame to finally STFU?

I pray his voice is never silenced, for in this day and age of spin and slanted views in reporting he has been a breath of fresh air. He reports what he sees and he backs it up by actually witnessing the events and people he reports on. Something I doubt Blue Texan has ever done.
Why bother to post this over here and not on the Firedoglake comments? Simple like all progressives, dissenting opinions and voices are squelched so my comments would never see the light of day.

The New York Times Takes on Michael Yon

The Times has an article about Michael Yon, which appears to be somewhat biographical in nature. While they acknowledge his existence, no secret to the voracious blog readers out there, they seem to want to say that he agrees with them more then he disagrees.

He went to Iraq believing that the mainstream news media were bungling the story, and he still often criticizes the media’s pessimism. But he has also praised particular reporters from major outlets, or defended the media in general, explaining how difficult and dangerous it is to cover the war.

They offer up a couple of passages of some the horrific things he has seen, such is the nature of war. Of course they also hint that Michael was somewhat of a propagandist.

In his first year and a half of online writing, Mr. Yon carefully avoided a position on whether he thought the war should have been waged in the first place. He eventually said that he had supported it reluctantly because of claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

They then try to launch into a self congratulatory pat on the back for the way they had covered the war.

In an interview, he said that when he first went to Iraq, in December 2004, “I knew we were losing the war,” and that “it was worse than the news was portraying.”

They do manage to make a couple of admissions however.

Since then, bloggers and independent journalists have grown in numbers in Iraq, while the mainstream media there has shrunk. Overall, the number of embedded reporters at a given time dropped from several hundred in the early going to a few dozen in recent months.

There is one telling quote in the article in between the parts where the Times tries to make it case that Mr Yon basically agrees with them.

“His work has a remarkable, chin-out, unvarnished intimacy,” said Jackie Lyden, a National Public Radio reporter who has worked in Iraq. “He isn’t a guarded, diplomatically toned reporter; he can be very frank, and he questions his own assumptions.”

It was surprising to find Michael Yon mentioned in a main stream media news article and although they carefully avoid saying too much about his coverage other then giving his web site and the obligatory nod to the now famous picture he took of a soldier cradling a wounded little girl, they do try to paint an image of some guy who basically exonerates the press for the way they covered the conflict in Iraq.

Michael Yon has a thank you letter from a LTC

LTC is the Army acronym for Lieutenant Colonel. His thank you isn't so much to Michael for posting stories about his unit the 1/4 CAV but to America.

I have been under fire, looked insurgents in the eye, and seen corruption up close. I have also seen people emerge from oppression and live with hope for the first time in years. I have seen children reach up and grasp the hands of American soldiers just because they trust them.

As always a must read.

Michael Yon has Gen McCaffrey's Report

General Barry R McCaffrey Report

Adjunct Professor of International Affairs

December 18, 2007

MEMORANDUM FOR: Colonel Michael Meese

Professor and Head Dept of Social Sciences United States Military Academy

CC: Colonel Cindy Jebb

Professor and Deputy Head Dept of Social Sciences United States Military Academy

SUBJECT: After Action Report—General Barry R McCaffrey USA (Ret)

VISIT IRAQ AND KUWAIT 5-11 DECEMBER 2007

Gen McCaffrey has no love for former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield as he points out in this memo, by making comments that sound more based on a personal grudge of some nature more then an analytical process. I can't say whether future historians will view Mr Rumsfeld favorably or not. There seems to be a lot of hindsight going into evaluations of the man and maybe his foresight can be questioned, but he was a big force behind the current makeup of our military and had to work with what he had. As they say wish in one hand and put shaving cream in the other and see which one gets full first.

b. THE US ARMY IS TOO SMALL AND POORLY RESOURCED TO CONTINUE SUCCESSFUL COUNTER-INSURGENCY OPERATIONS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN AT THE CURRENT LEVEL:

An active counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq could probably succeed in the coming decade with twenty-five US Brigade Combat Teams. (Afghanistan probably needs two more US combat brigades for a total of four in the coming 15 year campaign to create an operational state— given more robust NATO Forces and ROE). We can probably sustain a force in Iraq indefinitely (given adequate funding) of some 10+ brigades. However, the US Army is starting to unravel.

Our recruiting campaign is bringing into the Army thousands of new soldiers (perhaps 10% of the annual input) who should not be in uniform. (Criminal records, drug use, moral waivers, non-high school graduates, pregnant from Basic Training and therefore non-deployable, lowest mental category, etc.)

We are losing our combat experienced mid-career NCOs’ and Captains at an excessive rate. (ROTC DMG’s, West Pointers, Officers with engineering and business degrees, etc.) Their morale is high, they are proud of their service, they have enormous personal courage—however, they see a nation of 300 million people with only an under resourced Armed Forces at war. The US Army at 400,000 troops is too small to carry out the current military strategy. The active duty US Army needs to be 800,000 strong to guarantee US national security.

The National Guard and Reserves are too small, are inadequately resourced, their equipment is broken or deployed, they are beginning their second involuntary combat deployments, and they did not sign up to be a regular war-fighting force. They have done a superb job in combat but are now in peril of not being ready for serious homeland security missions or deployment to a major shooting war such as Korea.

The modernization of our high technology US Air Force and Navy is imperiled by inadequate Congressional support. Support has focused primarily on the ground war and homeland security with $400 Billion+. We are digging a strategic hole for the US as we mono-focus on counter-insurgency capabilities —while China inevitably emerges in the coming 15 years as a global military power.

He is joining in the "we need more troops" bandwagon, but even he says that the standards of the new recruits is lessening. That is the crux of the problem. It is an All Volunteer force and if people are not willing to volunteer what are you going to do? Bring back the draft? This is the argument that was used to do away with the draft. You can't have it both ways. It has been established that in this country there is a very tiny warrior class. Nothing will change that until we start highlighting the heroics of this current group of service members instead of dragging their names through the mud at every oppurtunity and allowing prominent people to try and turn our soldiers into victims instead of the heroes they are.
In the words of Winston Churchill, "Never have so few, done so much, for so many." At least back in Churchill's days they had the backing of their political leaders unlike today where in this country you have congress members very publicly cursing their action, questioning their abilities, and even pushing for prosecution of the members of the Armed Forces. Imagine having to do your job with a NYTimes reporter ready to report everytime you screwed up the figures on your spreadsheet or ready to air on a cable news show 24 hours a day everytime one of your Powerpoint® slides didn't come out just right.
Until America is ready to publicly acknowledge todays Audie Murphy's, of which there are many, then I don't want to hear whining about you can't get people to do the job.

Come Home to Iraq

Michael Yon has posted his latest Dispatch, which is a photo story. Just to tease you, here is one caption.

Today, Muslims mostly filled the front pews of St John’s. Muslims who want their Christian friends and neighbors to come home. The Christians who might see these photos likely will recognize their friends here. The Muslims in this neighborhood worry that other people will take the homes of their Christian neighbors, and that the Christians will never come back. And so they came to St John’s today in force, and they showed their faces, and they said, “Come back to Iraq. Come home.” They wanted the cameras to catch it. They wanted to spread the word: Come home. Muslims keep telling me to get it on the news. “Tell the Christians to come home to their country Iraq.”

For the whole story you will need to go his site and take in the whole story. Mr Yon is a true national treasure and I wish he would get more of the credit that is due him. He has such a way with the pictures and the words. He is a rare man who can convey the emotion and sense of what is going on around him. He expresses it through his captions which focus on people but relate to the bigger picture. I can't remember which person first said it but there is a true saying, "Take care of the small stuff and the big will take care of itself."

Hope Springs Eternal

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

-Alexander Pope,
An Essay on Man, Epistle I, 1733

This is from Michael Yon's latest dispatch. Go see the picture and I will tease you with the caption.

Thanks and Praise: I photographed men and women, both Christians and Muslims, placing a cross atop the St. John’s Church in Baghdad. They had taken the cross from storage and a man washed it before carrying it up to the dome.

This image and this story is spreading across the web, but of course you will never see it get so much as a mention in the mass market media. It really is time to start getting your friends and relatives to at least get curious enough to occasionally check out the various blogs and other news sources on the web so that the message can get out.
Am I saying it is all roses in Iraq? NO but I am saying that there is that one part of the human spirit, that one shred of hope, that things will work out for the better. As long as there is hope there is the chance of true peace and not the peace bought at the price of slavery or subjugation.
There is more at Michelle Malkins site.
And of course Charles over at Little Green Footballs has it covered.

UPDATE: And of course just like the Project Valour-IT project a quick scan of the liberal, progressive, left leaning blogs yielded negative results in a mention of this story. But please remember they support the troops.

Sometimes I feel like a man in the wilderness

That is what Michael Yon must feel like. He has offered the most up to date and precise reporting of what is going on in Iraq, all on his own dime. He is writing the stories that outside of the web you have never heard of. He has quite often been compared to Ernie Pyle, and indeed he is today's reincarnation of Ernie. Now Michael is making an offer to other media outlets. Please publish his works and reports, FREE.
While he is offering his stories for free the cost of gathering those stories is not. He needs help financially and lots of it. Without it the sole voice of the reality on the ground in Iraq may go silent. We can't let this happen. Here is a link to his PayPal page.
For those not aware of who Michael Yon is here is his page at Wikipedia

This is from Michaels latest post

But it wasn’t until I spent that week back in the States that I realized how bad things have gotten. I believe we are witnessing a conspiracy of coincidences conflating to exert an incomprehensibly destructive force on the free press system that we largely take for granted. The fact that the week in question also happened to be when General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker were delivering their reports to Congress makes me wonder if things are actually worse than I’ve assessed, and I returned to Iraq sadly convinced that General Petraeus now has to deal from a deck clearly stacked against him in both America and Iraq.

In a day and age when true heroes like Lt Michael Murphy, LCpl Jason Dunham, and SFC Paul Smith, all Medal of Honor recipient's, go ignored in favor of coverage of Brittany, OJ, and the latest missing teen coed of the day you are depraving yourself of the compelling story of Iraq if you don't become familiar with Mr Yon's writings.

You must read beyond the headlines

Okay I have been following the reporting of some fighting taking place in the Iraqi village of Sherween and it is very interesting the different ways that this story has been reported. Here it is on the MSNBC web site which is actually a regurgitation of an AP news story.
Headline: American among 3 killed in Green Zone barrage
Story: Losing control of village
An Iraqi army officer in the Mansouria region close to Sherween confirmed that insurgents appeared to be in control of the village. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
Al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni radicals took control of much of Diyala last fall after Sunni tribesmen in western Anbar province began turning against them.

So let’s see if we can get the AP story.
Headline: Sunni extremists put village under siege
Story: BAGHDAD - Sunni extremists have seized control of a remote village northeast of Baghdad in a fierce battle with residents who pleaded for rescue by Iraqi army and police as they tried to defend their homes, the deputy provincial governor said Tuesday.
The reported fighting in Sherween, located in Diyala province on Baghdad's northern gates, underlines the continued struggle in the area where militants believed to be from al-Qaida in Iraq have reportedly left graves of victims in areas under their grip.
It also points to a critical problem facing U.S. commanders: the lack of enough fully trained Iraqi soldiers and police to provide security in areas beyond the scope of American military operations. The weaknesses of Iraqi security forces — and questions over how soon they could control the country on their own — have complicated the war debate in Washington as domestic pressure mounts for an American withdrawal.

Today we have this story on CNN:
Headline: 20 dead, 20 arrested in raids on al Qaeda hub
Story: BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Civilians helped coalition and Iraqi forces conduct a massive raid on an al Qaeda hideout in the town of Sherween, leaving 20 suspected terrorists dead and 20 more in coalition custody, the U.S. military said Wednesday.
The militants were caught off guard when U.S. aircraft dropped eight 2,000-pound bombs and 14 quarter-ton bombs on river crossings and a bridge in the town northeast of Baghdad, said Staff Maj. Gen. Abdul Kareem.
Kareem, who commands the Iraqi Security Forces in Diyala province, said the bombings isolated the terrorists who had infiltrated Sherween. The town's residents fought alongside the Iraqi forces during the raid, helping them kill and capture the terrorists, a U.S. military news release said.

In all of the stories they make reference to a dispatch by Michael Yon, an embedded reporter who has provided some of the best reporting on Iraq that you have probably never heard. The difference between Michael and the other mass market media, he uses quotes from people who will go on the record, not the dubious He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, that is used in some many other reports. Michael is on the ground, the other not so much. Michael doesn’t have an agenda, the others maybe not so much.
The real point of this exercise is to point out how most stories are not well resourced or confirmed, are always presented either with a headline of use a tone of absolute gloom and despair, so much so you think you are watching a replay of the old “Hee-Haw” tv series with the guys sitting on the porch singing their gloom and despair song.
The bottom line. The AP originally reported the story and threw in bits about how this points out the failure of Iraqi security forces, other mass market media simply regurgitate stories from AP or Reuters and maybe add a little more opinion in to it and when the final story gets around to be reported in full all of their dire assumptions more times then not turn out to be wrong.

Michael Yon's latest is not for the faint of heart

Michael Yon's latest dispatch is up. It is named Bless the Beast and the Children.

This dispatch is not for the faint of heart. In words and photos Michael once again brings us the reality of the enemy we are fighting. It is not pretty and they are brutal. I have to wonder why Michael's dispatch is not the lead item on every newscast. It is horrific and have we in genteel society simply become unwilling to face the evil in our midst? Are we so adverse to confrontation that simply ignoring or wishing away the Islamic fascists we can magically make this terror go away? Do we think that because it is happening half a world away that it can't come here?

We go through our day to day lives and never give a second thought to what could be. If we joined in one voice and screamed from the rooftops as loudly as we do about Abu Gharib and Gitmo about the atrocities being committed in the name of a most unholy god could we knock it down and diminish it? This dispatch from Michael shows the true face of barbarism and if you read it and see the pictures and are not moved to throw everything you have in the effort to purge this evil from the face of the world I would then question your humanity.

Those are harsh words but unless we awake from our slumber and quit providing cover for these animals they will continue to ravage the countryside, wherever they are.

Here are words from the Carpenters' song of the same title.

Bless the beasts and the children
for in this world they have no voice
they have no choice
Bless the beasts and the children
for the world can never be, the world they see
Light their way when the darkness surrounds them
give them love, let it shine all around them
Bless the beasts and the children
give them shelter from a storm, keep them safe, keep them warm
Light their way when the darkness surrounds them
give them love, let it shine all around them
Bless the beasts and the children
give them shelter from a storm, keep them safe, keep them warm

UPDATE: Why haven't you heard about this in your newspaper or on the network news? Michael Yon wants to know too. He is giving them permission to use his story as long as he gets the credit, which is just right.

On this question of media selectivity, the blogosphere has become incensed that big media mostly ignored the murders, especially given that there are reporters currently in Baqubah. Newsbusters and countless others are on it. More disturbing to many bloggers is that major mainstream players were busted (again) by Pajamas Media just days ago for reporting outright fabrications of a “massacre” that never occurred.
Although I can’t answer to the cause of the problem, I humbly offer permission to media outlets to republish excerpts of the dispatch or the dispatch in its entirety, including my photographs from the story (if used as they are in the dispatch) at no cost during the month of July 2007. I only ask that the site receive proper attribution and that any publication taking me up on the offer email the website with the details.

The Biggest battle in Iraq that you are not hearing about

Most people with a more then a passing interest in what is happening in Iraq knows that there is a big operation going on in the Diyala province, centered on the town of Baqubah. It involves more then 10,000 US troops and thousands more of the Iraqi army. It seems all our news here in the states have time for is the latest updates on the missing women in the Midwest, some senile judge suing over a pair of pants and the out of touch politicians on capitol hill trying to foist this universal amnesty program on us.
The fighting in the Diyala province is being reported by a couple of embedded reporters through their blogs and for that a big debt of gratitude is due to them. Michael Yon reports that maybe some other reporters may be joining him. Gee a week into the operation and they can finally get off their butts in the Green Zone and find out what all this stuff put out in the daily press briefing is all about. You want to know the real reason they aren't reporting on it. They are afraid that if they actually get out in the field they are going to find a different Iraq. One that goes completely against their biases and the storyline they have been promoting for 5 years.
I do not expect the reporting to change. They will bring you the desperation and their armchair quarterbacking of how flawed our operations are, but it won't change what is happening on the ground.
What is happening is the Iraqi people are stepping up and assisting in ways not seen. This is a direct result of our operations to clear the Al Queda out of the Al Anbar province. We set the tone and showed the Iraqi's that we are there to help. We brought the Iraqi security forces up to speed and by using them in the operations they gained the experience, skills and confidence that they could provide for the security of their people. The people saw the Iraqi forces working for them and they got the trust of the citizens. For 50 years inside the country of Iraq those who wore the uniform of the ruling government were not the defenders of the people but rather the enforcers of a brutal dictator. That sort of attitude towards uniformed people does not change overnight, but it is changing.
So for all the blustering by politicians, all the gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands by every "the sky is falling" liberal, for every person who has seen nothing but gloom and doom reinforced by their daily reminder of the loss of American life in this campaign, the soldier on the ground has continued to do his duty. He has remained loyal to his leaders, and he has been able to seize the situation on the ground and it would seem in spite of everyone else they are doing what needs to be done and doing it better then any of their critics could imagine.
Of course you aren't going to hear about unless of course you go read Michael Yon and Bill Roggio who are living, eating, sleeping and in one infamous case fighting alongside the soldiers and walking among the general population.
The fighting has not reached the level of violence that was witnessed in Fallujah, yet, but the operation is in the beginning stages and in fact may last for 60 days. One thing that is clear is the trap has been set and according to what little information you can find we aren't there to take prisoners.