Posted By:
Catherine Moy
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After a two-week stint visiting our troops in Iraq, Move America Forward staffers have returned with news and photographs that can be summed up in four words: American troops are winning.

The MAF delegation traveled well outside the Green Zone, to areas that once were the violence-plagued confines of the insurgency and jihadist terrorist groups.

“Our troops are making a difference now,” said Mary Pearson, MAF deputy executive director and professional photographer, whose photos will appear in the Sacramento Union and here.

MAF Chairman Melanie Morgan traveled to the Middle East and interviewed troops during her stay in Kuwait City. Morgan, who is also an award-winning journalist and radio talk show host for KSFO radio in San Francisco, was on her second trip to the area. She witnessed stunning changes in the area and in the morale of U.S. troops.

“The Surge is working, and America’s troops are helping secure safety for U.S. and Iraqi citizens,” Morgan said.

Pearson, MAF Communications Director Danny Gonzalez and Gold Star mother Debbie Lee, worked out of Forward Operating Base (FOB) Falcon and traveled on daily missions where they spoke with Iraqi citizens, interviewed Iraqi and American soldiers, ate in mess halls, and investigated Baghdad and Ramadi, once a hell-hole of violence and death.

They did not witness Iraqi citizens welcoming American troops with flowers and candy. It was much more personal. Iraqi mothers sent their children out to hug U.S. soldiers. Iraqi men invited U.S. soldiers into their homes for tea prepared by their wives and daughters. Our troops are changing the minds and winning the hearts of the native people of Iraq.

MAF’s staffers walked the very streets that were once crippled by violence and splattered with blood from innocence and where our troops had been targeted with roadside bombs and enemy fire. While they wore protective gear on their patrols – which is quite heavy - not once did they fear for their lives. The long haul that American troops and our allies began on March 19, 2003, has changed the landscape of the Muslim country once ruled by a brutal dictator and sworn enemy of the United States, Saddam Hussein.

“I figured I was with the finest. There was no reason to worry,” Pearson said. “These faces were like my sons.”

As photo-journalists will do, Pearson got up close and personal with native Iraqis, some of whom did not want their pictures taken. There are a number of reasons for such camera shyness, such as security. But every once in a while Pearson would come across a man who shunned the camera and it was clear her subject was on the lam, perhaps up to no good.

Like any large city in the world, Baghdad has its population of miscreants, those who still fight for the lost cause of Saddam Hussein, or who fight over religious differences that arise in the Shiite/Sunni belief systems.

But children, even girls, now come out to play in streets that are still mostly populated by men. Women, when they appear in public, often wear full cover. It is a choice, though, not inflicted upon them by a Taliban-style regime or the thugs that still beat women in Iran for wearing the wrong colors.

Lee, whose son Marc Alan Lee was the first Navy Seal to give his life in Iraq, was comfortable on the streets of Baghdad where markets are booming and Iraqi children play in the streets and parks.

The MAF staffers spent Christmas Day in Baghdad where they walked the streets and saw peaceful scenes that carried the message from 2,000 years ago when Christ was born in Bethlehem.

“We witnessed the large group of children playing on the new slide and park that had just been constructed 3 weeks before. It was amazing how packed the streets were with people,” Lee said. “I’ve never seen streets in America that had such a large percentage of people out in their neighborhoods. It was an amazing turnaround from the pictures we saw in the briefing when we first arrived. When this unit took command in February, there were no shops open, the streets were barren, and garbage was thrown and piled everywhere. They would regularly find bodies of the locals that the insurgents had brutally murdered for speaking to the American soldiers.”

Pearson captured pictures of the children laughing and playing at the park. And she saw something else that will forever remain burned in her memory just like the photos she clicks with an artist’s eye.

“I saw men and women, couples, walking up and down the streets together,” Pearson said. “They were strolling, like in an old fashioned movie. The same couples, up and down. They were enjoying the day. It was so beautiful.”

Christmas also meant celebrating with American troops. Move America Forward collected more than 200,000 Christmas and Hanukkah cards and delivered them. Each message from America lightened the souls of our fighting men and women.

Pearson did visit with a couple of guys who seemed blue. They were thousands of miles away from their families, in a war zone, on the day most Americans were opening presents, playing games and eating loads of food. And praying – for our troops.

“Everywhere we went, we thanked them for their service,” Pearson said. “This whole tour was about our troops.”

Traveling outside of Baghdad with the military is an adventure. Pearson, Lee, and Gonzalez hitched a ride on a helicopter to Ramadi, a city that was once overrun by terrorists, insurgents and outsiders from Iran whose welcome wagons included powerful bombs and other

This is were Lee’s son, Marc Alan, made his last stand and gave his life. This is where a camp was named after Marc Alan. This was an emotional stop.

We cannot talk much about it for security reasons. But a mother who suddenly loses a child always wonders about that child’s last moments. Lee stood in the sand on a dark night in the land where her brave son was “redeployed to Heaven,” as she likes to say.

Loss is a part of life, but it is not natural for a mother to lose her son. Parents should go first. In Iraq, violence still scars the countryside. But Pearson, Lee and Gonzalez witnessed the light that our troops have given the world with their sweat, professionalism, tenacity and their lives.

We are winning in Iraq. But, more importantly, we are safer because children hold our soldiers’ hands. They play on new slides. They go to school. Shops are open. These children and their families will not forget the Americans who saved them first from Saddam Hussein, and then from the terrorists who came to steal their lives.

The success of U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq highlights the success of the War on Terror.  The jihadists are determined to infest societies and rile them up into hotbeds of Islamic extremism, enforced by the use of violence.  They have targeted numerous countries throughout the Middle East to use as bases of operation from which they can plan attacks on Western targets, including the United States.

But in Iraq, U.S. troops have beaten back the forces of terror through military might, and they are ensuring the peace through the genoristy and kindness that are the hallmark of the American people throughout history.

America still remains mankind’s best hope for freedom.  And after visiting our troops in Iraq, it is clear to the MAF delegation that U.S. Troops continue to stand as the custodians of peace and freedom, both for the citizens of the United States and all those around the world who struggle against tyranny and violence.