The Washington Post is letting the truth fly. From Ben Connable, a Major in the Marine Corps: The Truth On the Ground
We know the streets, the people and the insurgents far better than any armchair academic or talking head. As military professionals, we are trained to gauge the chances of success and failure, to calculate risk and reward. We have little to gain from our optimism and quite a bit to lose as we leave our families over and over again to face danger and deprivation for an increasingly unpopular cause. We know that there are no guarantees in war, and that we may well fail in the long run. We also know that if we follow our current plan we can, over time, leave behind a stable and unified country that might help to anchor a better future for the Middle East. It is difficult for most Americans to rationalize this optimism in the face of the horrific images and depressing stories that have come to symbolize the war in
Iraq . Most of the violent news is true; the death and destruction are very real. But experienced military officers know that the horror stories, however dramatic, do not represent the broader conditions there or the chances for future success. For every vividly portrayed suicide bombing, there are hundreds of thousands of people living quiet, if often uncertain, lives. For every depressing story of unrest and instability there is an untold story of potential and hope. The impression ofas an unfathomable quagmire is false and dangerously misleading. Iraq
It is this false impression that has led us to a moment of national truth. The proponents of the quagmire vision argue that the very presence of
U.S. troops inIraq is the cause of the insurgency and that our withdrawal would give the Iraqis their only true chance for stability. Most military officers and NCOs with ground experience inknow that this vision is patently false. Although the presence of Iraq U.S. forces certainly inflames sentiment and provides the insurgents with targets, the anti-coalition insurgency is mostly a symptom of the underlying conditions inIt may seem paradoxical, but only our presence can buffer the violence enough to allow for eventual stability. Iraq.
UPDATE:
I wish I had had time early so that is why I am taking it now. First, I want to thank WaPo for at least putting the voice of the Marine Major in the paper. It would be nice if they would continue to let alternative voices coming out of Iraq to be heard. For those of us that have been paying attention over the last 3 years, these are the things that we have been hearing coming out of Iraq from journalist like Michael Yon and many others.
Now I would also like to say that I believe the main reason that the media has not been reporting the far more positive story out of Iraq, is because it did not fit the agenda. Bush bad, everything he does, everything he supports, everything he is for, we have to be against. The problem the media is encountering now, is that the good news can no longer be suppressed. The elections are going forward, the Iraqi people are more positive and all of this just simply can longer be covered up.
When the history is written into the books on President Bush and Iraq it will only be then that we will get the true, fair and accurate accounting of what went on with all of this. I can only hope that history will remember all of the ney sayers, those democrats, elites, lefties, moonbats and others and the sad and miserable part they played. So history will teach yet another lesson as to what it was like to be on the wrong side of history.