Free to Go, Free to Stay
This young girl, who lived with her family in a village near Khanakhan along the Iran/Iraq border, is featured in several photographs in this gallery. Michael saw the confidence and curiosity expressed in her intelligent eyes as a metaphor for the potential inherent in all free people to determine the course of their future when he photographed her in the spring of 2005. Her mother wears the traditional burkha, eschews being photographed and walks back to the village where her life has been narrowly defined since birth. But the daughter seems to linger with the Americans, contemplating a life entirely different and filled with possibilities.
(Michael sells copies of this and other stunning photos he has taken during the war to pay for his travels and work in the warzone. Go to his website at and support his work. He also has a critically acclaimed book, which you can buy at the site).
Michael Yon’s latest dispatch:
Michael Yon is among the most trusted and honest reporters whose beats are Iraq and Afghanistan. He told us when America was losing ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he now says we have won.
He is on his way back into Afghanistan, whose maniacal terrorists have stepped up their murderous behavior. Then he’s on to Iraq.
Today he writes about the mistakes and the assets of America’s war on radical Islam. He has seen it firsthand and he knows of what he speaks.
19 August 2008
Michael Yon
By now, no credible person denies the dramatic success that continues to manifest itself in Iraq. No doubt, there will be years of political dramas ahead for that country, and when they occur, we will blame ourselves for them, as is our habit. Americans have a tendency to blame ourselves nearly everything from wildfires to genocidal wars on the other side of the globe. And what we don’t blame ourselves for, others will. Some might see our ability to take initiative and shoulder responsibility as naiveté. I think it’s one of America’s greatest strengths.
Many people around the world see America in decline. As someone who travels a great deal, I see the opposite. America is just getting started. Yes, we face enormous challenges and dangerous enemies. But the soul of our country, the initiative of our people, and the depth of the collective intelligence are all far stronger than our critics, and even many Americans, imagine. Al Qaeda thought that America would fall to her knees after 9/11. They were wrong. Today we hunt them like jackals.
Of course, the Iraq war has led some to think that the United States has committed a tragic imperial overreach. Saddam Hussein was an evil tyrant, a truth widely accepted by the international community. Yet the international community can do little about evil tyrants. They leave that up to us, complaining when we do nothing and criticizing when we take action.
However history finally judges him, President Bush will be remembered for two decisions. In 2003, he invaded Iraq. And in 2006, he did not surrender.
Whether or not the first decision was right seems difficult to answer definitively without falling back onto ideological bias, partisan politics, or wishful thinking. Reasonable people likely will disagree about that decision for as long as the event is remembered. If Iraq falls apart or again becomes a tyrant state, then Bush was a brash, imperialistic President invading a sovereign nation without cause, who made things worse and spent lots of money and lives in doing so. If Iraq becomes a stable and prosperous nation even vaguely similar to the United Arab Emirates or Qatar, then most fair-minded people likely will judge Mr. Bush as a little-understood visionary who paid a moderate price to dramatically improve an important region of the world.
But few reasonable people who have been paying attention can disagree that the second decision was correct. In January 2007, one prominent Senator predicted that the Surge would only deepen the sectarian conflict in Iraq. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there: In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”
Now it’s difficult to tell exactly what Senator Obama thinks about the Surge, for each remark he makes on the subject seems to veer in a different direction without ever actually going anywhere.
Please remember all those politicians and journalists who insisted that splitting Iraq into three parts was the only way. Meanwhile, those of us who were actually in Iraq kept insisting that the idea of splitting Iraq was ridiculous. There is no substitute for being on the ground over a sustained period.
History will show that after five years and more than four thousand American lives, we have proved that we never planned to steal Iraq’s oil. To see a real war for oil, one need only look at what Russia is doing in Georgia. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is reminding the world how much it needs America.
Go to Michael’s website for the rest of the article.
