Informed Speculation

I’d like to point you to this truly superlative piece by Michael Yon; some folks (like, ahem, me) pontificate and blow hot and cold from the comforts of our living rooms; others, like Yon (and Hitchens) speak from experience. It always behooves those of us in the first category to listen to those in the second.

Yon has little patience for the debate over the phrase ‘civil war’; in fact, he said Iraq was in the midst of a civil war over a year ago:

…I wrote on 23 February 2005:

“Nobody knows what the future will bring for Iraq. In my opinion, it’s already in a civil war, though many people seem afraid to say it. Actually, the reluctance is more likely ordinal in nature—no one wants to be the first to say what many know to be true Many now-stable democracies have suffered civil wars. Democracy, despite its inherent nobility, is seldom easy or pretty. At its best, democracy is a reflection of the “people,” and we all know what “they” are like.”

The topic of the dispatch, entitled “Mission Impossible: Mission Accomplished,” was not the question of whether Iraq’s growing turmoil fell into any particular academic definition of “civil war.” The piece was a collection of my thoughts and observations on the occasion of the departure of the 1st Infantry Division from Iraq. In late February 2005, as I was interviewing the combat soldiers with whom I’d spent an intense seven weeks, I was struck by a question I was asked over and over again.

“How much,” soldiers from 1st ID wondered aloud to me, “do the people at home know about the progress we have made over here?”

As I consider this whole manufactured controversy about my intentions in saying, then and now, that Iraq is in a civil war, and whether or not I used the right definition, and even, ridiculous as it seems, whether I have been hijacked by forces that oppose this war, what strikes me as most telling, and truly as most sad, is that, still, more than a year later, almost every soldier I’ve met in Iraq and most recently Afghanistan, still has to ask that same question: Do the people at home know about the progress we have made over here?

Yon doesn’t use the ‘civil war’ stick to argue for withdrawal from Iraq – quite the contrary:

There are no absolute answers to the question of whether we should have invaded Iraq. History will more clearly answer that, and it will judge based largely on the outcome, and that outcome is not clear today even as the fact of the civil war becomes a more accepted premise in our national debate. The reason for this is simple: civil war is not a deterrent to Democracy. In fact, the reverse can be true, a point I made a year ago.

…I do not report this because I harbor animosity for the current administration, or to magnify any mistakes it has made, but only so that the American people, and readers around the world, can be presented with at least one set of eyes and ears that are reasonably politically color-blind and tone-deaf. If the truth helps the administration, so be it. If the truth damages the administration, so be it. More important is to provide information people can use in their own decision cycles. Whether or not anyone agrees with the reasons for starting this war, we invaded Iraq, and should complete the mission, and that needs to be defined clearly as a stable and democratic Iraq, and not as a date on a calendar.

Nevertheless, he feels we must face facts squarely:

I’ll say it as clearly today as I said it more than a year ago from my perch in Baquba: the civil war is real. It is not abating, it is growing. And it’s growing in part because we have been spackling over the truth about where much of this violence derives, and not addressing the true nature of the enemy.

I could continue, but I much prefer you to read the whole piece for yourself, and hopefully I’ve whetted your appetite enough to recommend it.

Ultimately, Yon’s message is to brace ourselves and finish the job:

It is that same gut feeling that tells me can win in Iraq, but I am not going stretch that far out on the limb as to say that we will win. I certainly hope we do. I was correct about the civil war more than a year ahead of the academic and media pack. I was right about Mosul. But I am not sure about Iraq as a whole. The fine points of emerging governments are abstractions to people who cannot worship without a very real fear that their holy places are no longer safe havens. Having been beaten in Mosul, and pushed out of Tal Afar, and long since driven from the Kurdish strongholds in the North, the enemy is clearly concentrating efforts in the capital city area.

We are not getting the truth through our media, or our civilian leadership. Yes, Iraq is in civil war, but there is no doubt in my mind, not the slightest doubt, that the new Iraqi security forces are becoming stronger all the time. It’s not certain if they are strong enough to hold back the enemy on their own or if we need to increase the efforts of our military in a coordinated measure. But the fact that an American general recently invited me to see that progress is an indicator that our top military leaders are confident. An Army general would not have invited me back to Iraq to see a fiasco, and the mere fact of his invitation is a ray of hope.

…These people, whether we call them freedom fighters, insurgents, thugs, or terrorists, have a stated mission to attack anyone who is not like them, wherever they can. They are not bluffing. They cannot be appeased. They will not stop if and when we leave, if we leave without completing the mission. If we leave, all vestiges of progress will be lost and those Iraqis who risked their lives to work with us to gain that progress will no longer trust Americans. If we run, the enemy will follow us. They will kill us. They will not stop until we stop them. I might be anti-war, but I am much more anti-terrorist. No more needs to be said on the subject of whether or not a portion of the violence in Iraq should be called a civil war, unless we want to argue about the definitions while the place explodes around us. There are more pressing issues than the limitations of our dictionaries.