The new talking point on Iraq is that we must "honor the sacrifice" of the soldiers who've already died in Iraq, and therefore cannot withdraw. The jock sniffers are out in force praising the work of one
Michael Yon - a pro-warrior from the press - remarkable (perhaps unique) for his willingness to put his money where his mouth is.
It is undoubtedly brave to be a soldier and to be shot at, or to be a journalist willing to put his own neck on the line to get the story out, but is it really a "trump all policy criticism" card? As much as soldiers hate it when civilians second-guess their combat action I hate it when right-wing soldiers and "my country right or wrong" boosters belittle my ability to understand a geopolitical reality because I haven't seen combat on the ground.
This is actually quite counterintuitive; after all, it is not the anti-war left that attempts to minimize the visceral violence of combat situations, but the pro-war right. Human rights violations and civilian casualty counts are the "wages of war" unfortunate, but frankly inevitable and blah, blah; blah until death and destruction on the news is an old story.
As much as I would like to believe that the title of "soldier" automatically confers nobility upon both the man and the mission, I don't. First of all these soldiers have no choice but to fight, and if they fight they have no choice but to kill or be killed. Secondly lots of soldiers believe (wrongly) that they are fighting for a good cause; during WWII German soldiers were (for the most part) every bit as brave as their American counter-parts, and no doubt they held noble ideals. The average German soldier likely told himself "even if I disagree with the execution of policies the honorable German national character will redeem the mistakes of the government" (an argument I often hear from conservatives in this nation). Even those who didn't buy into the nationalist sentiment had what I consider a good cause to fight for: survival."
The cliché that there is thin line between bravery and stupidity is not a cliché, because it is untrue. In fact I'm of the mind that there is often no line between bravery and stupidity and that varying quantities of each can be found in one individual.
At one point LTC Kurilla commends his squad for not shooting a civilian farmer in his own country. If this is what serves as evidence that we are in the right in our Iraq adventures it falls a little bit short. Rather its like a horrid action movie in which the USA is the action hero and the civilians and jihadists and terrorists are just characters existing to further the plotline - kind of like "Team America World-Police," but the irony is unintentional.
Indeed Yon's writing actually decent journalism, but it only tells one side of the story. Frankly I'd like to know the "jihadist" side of the story. Really and seriously, I don't know who these jihadists are. My understanding is that "jihad" is a holy war, but I've heard of academic jihad, cultural jihad and a general sense of the word as meaning a struggle (not necessarily even a violent one at that), which leads me to the conclusion that not all "jihadists" are Bin Ladinites or even terrorists. Yon doesn't tell us whether these fighters are foreign or Iraqi, and he does not present an occasion in which these men attacked civilians, only cases in which they attacked soldiers. Apparently this makes these men "terrorists" in the general lexicon, but the general lexicon is (deliberately confused). Suffice it to say these men were attacking US soldiers whose "right" to occupy the country of Iraq is based on an authoritarian policy (preemption) the legality of which is still in question (in my mind at least)
If we are to believe Michael Yon and his booster club the justification for the Iraq war lies not in the trivia of whether or not there are WMD in Iraq (or whether things are improving there), but in whether those fighting the war are brave men fighting for a principle. Even president Bush has adopted this line of thinking. In response to the protests of Cindy Sheehan, Bush has posited the sacrifice of the soldier as the rational for his sacrifice and those of others - that his delusion ennobles his death - assuming said soldier was fighting because he wanted to and not simply because he had to. Bush puts it this way "and I guess you couldn't ask for a better life than giving it for something you believe in" I could quibble and say that an even better life would be living it for something you believe in, but never-mind that; that's all well and good - if what you "believe in" isn't a lie.