[Rhodes22-list] Political - Book Report

[Brad Haslett]

Re *Michael J. Totten*
The Real Iraq
*Michael Yon sees the country, and the war, without ideological blinders.*
16 May 2008

*Moment of Truth in
Iraq*<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0980076323/manhattaninstitu/>,
by Michael Yon (Richard Vigilante Books, 227 pp., $29.95)

Iraq is where ideologies go to die. Arab nationalism, Baathism,
anti-Americanism, al-Qaidism, Donald Rumsfeldism, and Moqtada al-Sadrism
have either died there or are dying. Conventional liberal opinion, more or
less correct about the foundering American war effort from 2004 to 2006, has
been severely bloodied—along with Iraq's worst insurgent groups and
militias—by General David Petraeus's leadership of the American troop surge.
Even post-9/11 fear of Islam has proven unsustainable for those who
regularly interact with ordinary Iraqis. Independent journalist Michael Yon,
who has spent more time embedded with combat soldiers in Iraq than any other
reporter, is a refreshingly unideological analyst of the war. His
self-published dispatches have earned him a loyal following around the
world, and he has set out to reach even more people with the publication of
a terrific new book, *Moment of Truth in Iraq*.

Yon begins his story *in medias res*. "We are in trouble, but we have a
great general," he writes on the eve of Arrowhead Ripper, the major battle
last summer against al-Qaida's terrorist army in Baqubah, just north of
Baghdad. Iraq was all but lost before the battle, when American forces under
Petraeus surged into the capital and beyond. Yon then takes us back in time
and to the northern city of Mosul, where Petraeus first proved that he knew
how to counter an insurgency by working with the local population and
protecting it from killers. Yon spent many months in Mosul embedded with the
1-24th Infantry Regiment, or "Deuce Four," and his first-person narrative of
firefights in the city's streets and alleys is relentless and gripping.

Despite Petraeus's early successes in Mosul, the city is now perhaps Iraq's
most violent. It slid back into chaos when the general's strategy was
discontinued after he completed his tour there and before he was appointed
the commander of American forces in Iraq. There are no final battles in
counterinsurgency warfare, as Yon makes clear, but if there were to be one
in Iraq, it most likely would take place in Mosul. Much of Iraq has now been
pacified—most famously and astonishingly in the formerly convulsive cities
of Fallujah <http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_fallujah.html> and
Ramadi, as well as in Baqubah, most of Baghdad, and regions further south.

*Moment of Truth in Iraq* isn't the journalistic equivalent of a war movie,
but parts of it could surely be used as the starting point for a screenplay.
(Such a film might easily perform
better<http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_urb-war.html>at the box
office than Hollywood's string of gloomy, axe-grinding Iraq
flicks have.) Still, Yon's book isn't just about explosions and carnage.
It's also about the new counterinsurgency strategy and, more important, the
Americans and Iraqis who risk their lives to make it work. When Iraq was
degenerating into its worst levels of violence, American soldiers spent too
much time behind their bases' walls, hoping to keep casualties to a minimum
and to avoid being seen as occupiers by the Iraqis. Today, they live and
work inside Iraq's cities and neighborhoods, where they tend to be welcomed,
if not as liberators then as protectors. Counterinsurgency is as much about
nation building and community policing as it is about war making.

"The American soldier is the most dangerous man in the world," Yon writes,
"and the Iraqis had to learn that before they would trust or respect us. But
it was when they understood that these great-hearted warriors, who so
enjoyed killing the enemy, are even happier helping to build a school or to
make a neighborhood safe that we really got their attention." Images of the
despicable abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib have become iconic for many
around the world. But anyone who has spent significant time with American
troops in Iraq, as I have, will recognize the truth in Yon's descriptions of
U.S. soldiers as usually decent and caring. "There are lots of kitchen
accidents in Iraq," he points out. "Kids get burned. American soldiers can't
take it when they see a kid get burned. If they are in the neighborhood on a
mission and they see a burned kid, they will cancel the mission to get the
kid to an American aid station, which, technically they shouldn't be doing."

Yon is a former Special Forces soldier, and his affection for the grunts in
the field is palpable. He takes their honor, courage, duty, and sacrifice
seriously in a way that most journalists don't—and perhaps can't. At heart,
he is as much a soldier as a reporter, but he is neither a propagandist for
the U.S. military nor a mouthpiece for its public affairs officers. He
nearly got himself thrown out of Iraq for an article in *The Weekly Standard
* challenging some top-level brass for trying to censor media coverage. And
he calls out both officers in the field and pundits back home who refuse to
admit that all has not always gone according to plan. "Combat soldiers have
little patience for less than unvarnished truth," he writes. "That's why I
spend so much time with infantry." Nothing makes a mockery of party lines
and spin from air-conditioned offices quite like facing snipers, ambushes,
and improvised explosive devices in 135-degree heat. Reality is more real in
Iraq than almost anywhere else.

But in distant places like Washington, eight time zones away, Iraq is more
of an abstraction. There is a left-wing Iraq and a right-wing Iraq, and they
only vaguely and occasionally resemble the actual place. Yon will have none
of either, which may be why no reporter who has covered the conflict—from
any country or for any newspaper or magazine—has managed to convey the truth
with such blistering accuracy. "Happy news for the Left was that U.S.
soldiers were demoralized and the war was being lost," he writes. "Happy
news for the Right was that there was no insurgency, then no civil war; we
always had enough troops, and we were winning hands-down, except for the
left-wing lunatics who were trying to unravel it all. They say heroin
addicts are happy, too, when they are out of touch with reality."

Iraq is a tragic, unhappy, and often disturbing place, but it's less
sinister and frightening up close than it is from a distance. That's because
it's a country striving for normality, whose normal aspects rarely make
their way into media reports that highlight violence, mayhem, and failure.
On TV, Iraq looks like a nation of masked, gun-toting fanatics, but in
person, one finds friendliness, solidarity, and reasonableness amid the
chaos. "Just because Iraqis have 'Allahu Akbar' on their flag," Yon writes,
"doesn't mean they're going to blow up the World Trade Center any more than
'In God We Trust' means we're going to attack Communist China." "Iraq does
not hate America," he insists. "If they hated us, I'd be urging an immediate
troop withdrawal, because there would be no hope of winning this war. If the
Iraqis hated us, we would be fighting the Iraqi Police and the Iraqi Army.
Instead, we're fighting alongside them."

Yon convincingly argues that the U.S. is winning in Iraq, at least for the
moment. "The enemy learned that our people and the Iraqi forces would close
in and kill them if they dared stand their ground. This is important: an
enemy forced to choose between dying or hiding inevitably loses legitimacy.
Legitimacy is essential. Men who must always either run or die are no longer
an army and are not going to found a caliphate." The outcome, though, is
still in doubt. If Petraeus's surge strategy fails or is prematurely
short-circuited by Congress, the American and Iraqi forces will almost
certainly lose. "Maybe creating a powerful democracy in the Middle East was
a foolish reason to go to war," Yon concludes. "Maybe it was never the
reason we went to war. But it is within our grasp now and nearly all the
hardest work has been done." Which makes the present moment the moment of
truth in Iraq.

*Michael J. Totten is a blogger <http://www.michaeltotten.com/> and
independent journalist who has made five trips to Iraq. His work has
appeared in the *New York Times*, the *Wall Street Journal*, and numerous
other publications. *The Week* named him Blogger of the Year in 2007 for his
dispatches from the Middle East.*
 ad Yon's book, well worth the time.  Brad

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