HH: I’m joined now by satellite phone from Baghdad by intrepid reporter Michael Yon. He’s actually in Baquba. Michael, welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show, always a pleasure to speak with you. How goes the fighting on the ground?
MY: Well, it’s really slowed down here in Baquba, Hugh. I was just in the TOC or the headquarters about fifteen minutes ago before I came on the show, and they were like the Maytag repairmen here. I mean, Baquba has just…you know, it was a very serious fight when it started, Operation Arrowhead Ripper on the 19th of June, I came in with them, but it quickly abated. The people have just turned against al Qaeda here. And so Baquba is really, the big fight now is to get the food distribution working again, which it already is. You know, they’ve got that going. And now, they’re working on fuel, because the fuel relates to electricity and water pumping. So really, they’re working on more civic things now. There’s still some combat to do, but not a lot, actually, because like I said, you know, the people just turned against al Qaeda.
HH: Now Michael Yon, a lot of people don’t know the significance of Baquba. And so can you explain what peace in Baquba means for the larger war effort?
MY: Well, it’s huge, because al Qaeda had claimed Baquba as their capitol, their worldwide capitol. And you might recall one of the things that kind of upsets people about my reporting is I said Iraq was in a civil war, and I said that way back in February of 2005, and I continue to do so. But when I first wrote that, I was in Baquba, in 2005, and I spent two or three months here. And it was just total…you could see it, and you could see al Qaeda was trying to foment that civil war, because that’s their underlying strategy, is to do that. And so getting, fracturing al Qaeda here, and al Qaeda alienating so many Iraqis, it’s helping us to put a damper on the civil war.
HH: Now yesterday, Harry Reid said on the floor of the Senate that the surge has failed. Do you think there’s any factual basis for making that assertion, Michael Yon, from what you’ve seen in Iraq over the last many months?
MY: He’s wrong, he’s wrong. It has absolutely not failed, and in fact, I’m finally willing to say it in public. I feel like it’s starting to succeed. And you know, I’m kind of stretching a little bit, because we haven’t gone too far into it, but I can see it from my travels around, for instance, in Anbar and out here in Diyala Province as well. Baghdad’s still very problematic. But there’s other areas where you can clearly see that there is a positive effect. And the first and foremost thing we have to do is knock down al Qaeda. And with them alienating so many Iraqis, I mean, they’re almost doing it for us. I mean, yeah, it takes military might to finally like wipe them out of Baquba, but it’s working. I mean, I sense that the surge is working. Reid is just wrong.
The problem with the US position in Iraq is that it adopted a highly moral position that if it bombed a country and toppled its ruler, it was obligated to stick around for reconstruction, and to do so in a way that minimized casualties.
Trying to “do good” has been extremely costly for the US in terms of both lives and dollars, and has perhaps also cost Iraq in terms of net lives lost vs. a more blunt and brutal approach to restoring law and order.
For its efforts, the US has been vilifed by the West and is now viewed as the source of all evil in the world.
A decadent West will pay the price in spades if the US fails in Iraq. Its feeble response to continued terrorism and subversion will be to offer to hold Rock Concerts for Peace, under the banner “Give Appease a Chance”.
These will last until the terrorists get the bright idea of bombing one. And then we’ll see how brave the Hollywood set really are.
Harry Reid, WRONG?!!! Say it ain’t so Michael!
Even the Hate America Left doesn’t -really- believe the Yanks are losing in Iraq, they just wish it was so. After all, a win for America is a disaster for Lefties everywhere.
This war is one of the thingas Bush has got right, and every time he gives ground to the DemocRats its a mistake.
I disagree with parts of Richard Ball’s comment.
I think that the goal of the US is to bring democracy and change to the ME once and for all. They are sticking around because democracy, in it’s infancy, needs to be nurtured. Even though, by many standards the al-Maliki government is behind on milestones, it is still amazing to me that it has progressed this far – and all parties are participating and talking to each other.
The shrill sounds of the anti-war anti-Bush contingent is going to get a lot louder over the next month or two and they will try to drown out anything good coming out of Iraq because if the surge does work a lot of people (politians, journalists, etc.) are going down throughout the world.
So Michael Yon says everything is just peachy in Baquba. And Nouri al-Maliki says US troops are no longer wanted or needed in Iraq. Oh happy day! Let’s declare victory and get out of that evil s#&*hole immediately. Then give the brave American soldiers a huge ticker-tape victory parade down 5th Avenue. Let today, July 15, 2007 be remembered by future generations as V-I Day, the day we said goodbye to Iraq and the entire worthless Muslim world FOREVER.
The fact that the Iraqi people are themselves saying NO to Al Qaeda, and its fanatic Islamic fascist agenda is exactly what is needed. The rejection has to be from the people, by and for the people. This was the goal of the US – a grounds-up democracy.
It’s not an easy transition, you don’t move from both tribalism and dictatorship into democracy as if it were turning on a light switch. But, it seems that the threshold has been crossed, and, gradually, Iraq will strengthen.
There’ll be setbacks. The other ME states aren’t interested in democracy, eg, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Both are heavily invested in anti-democratic agendas.
Saudi Arabia exports its extremist ideology to mosques in the West, to keep it focused on these external sects rather than on Saudi Arabia.
Iran foments internal trouble in the Arab states, in Iraq, in Syria and Lebanon, in Palestine and in Pakistan. The two, SA and Iran, together, keep Islamic fascism ‘alive and well’ in the world.
But, gradually, democracy will emerge in the ME and fascism will disintegrate. But, we in the West will have to continue to reject and fight it.
Anyone notice that, as victory comes nearer, the anti-Bush appeasement shrill becomes even louder? Read article where writer had temerity to say, we aren’t being told enough about Afghanistan. If only, as a poster has said, the media spent as much time reporting the good being done, as they do soldiers’ funerals.
The media, and Taliban Jack types, are the ones suppressing information, massaging the message, and undermining the troops, in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They create the means for pessismism by reporting only bad news, then declare defeat and demand we leave. Their hypocrisy, arrogance and incompetence is staggering.
NB – voter turnout in both Afghan and Iraqi elections, at threat of death, were significantly higher than federal turnout rates in Canada. We should be embarrassed.
CBCpravda doesnt have time for this kind of victory story. they have Conrad to focus on for a few weeks plus this “right wing ” story, they got their say in early in the story.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/07/15/harper.html
So let me get this straight. You let the military decide what to do in a war and things turn out ok.
Who would have thought it?
Totten and Yon are fantastic. In the battle between the old media and the new media, newspapers v. internet, the accusation is often made that the internet is unreliable, innacurate, not researched or verified.
Well, these two give the lie to that, and, further, reveal the incompetance of the newspapers. During the Boor War, the London Times had Churchill, on active service, providing reports; now, we have Totten and Yon. The NYT, WT, etc. are completely absent. They are simply producing propaganda reports based upon third hand agents who don’t leave Baghdad.
JP,
As soon as all their oil is gone, we can ignore the idiots; until then, they have unignorable power. Fact of life, unfortuantely
Wimpy Cdn.,
Maybe we should tax Persian Gulf oil $20 – $50 per barrel to help wean us off this source permanently. It would hurt us economically in the short term no question, but it makes no sense fund our enemies and rely on such an unstable part of the world for so much of our energy. And it would be sweet to watch the Saudis, for one, try to finance the worldwide jihad through the export of dates.
” And it would be sweet to watch the Saudis, for one, try to finance the worldwide jihad through the export of dates.”
Whaaaaaattt?? No way!!! My God. To you know how much I would miss my date squares?? Arrrggghhhh.
Their getting tired of seeing too many of their kind kill themselves for some bunch or religous fanatics and they want NO MORE AL QUEDA and NO MORE INSERGENTS
Richard Ball, post #1. I’m 100% in agreement. Esp. the bit about the morality.
Here’s my problem: the fact that they’ve turned against al Queda means squat — doesn’t mean they turned toward us. Al Queda has obviously made their lives miserable and they’re reacting to this. And sure, they’ll be chuffed to have the utopian dupes fix this problem for them.
Hate to be so pessimistic but all these reports (like from Yon) are just so much hope addiction as far as I’m concerned. Yada, yada, yada, blah, blah blah. We should simply have decimated the regime and left. Mission Accomplished, and no jokes about it. And smash them again if they re-emerged. That’s all Arabs understand. In addition to their honour/shame syndrome they are believers in zero-sum transactions: they don’t get “nice”. “Nice” is a trick up the sleeve — a hidden agenda.
And oh yes, they’ll be chuffed to play “democracy” for us too as long as the dough keeps pouring in.
Will I ever recover from the embarrassment of supporting this democracy project?