Not Frontpage News

This should be. But why not?

A Thousand Words

How many lessons can we be taught by one picture?

Social repression, sexual curiosity, physical and emotional longing, cultural backwardness...

Many lessons.

"The place can work"

From just about the only one on the ground in Iraq who has gotten it right.

Michael Yon - One Step Forward:

2008 in Iraq might go well. I believe, based on up-close observations, that there will be sharp fighting in the first few months of the new year, and that may cause the uninformed to lose faith because our casualties may rise as a result. But Iraq, it can work. The place can work. This is not a vindication for any of the people who made all the mistakes that nearly made this outcome impossible. But our collective and justifiable anger at all of them should not blind us to the fact that the capable hands now at the controls are producing results that we should all be supportive of and relieved by.

Breaking the insurgents

VDH:

I think the second siege of Fallujah in November 2004 will go down in the annals of Marine history as something comparable to Iwo, Okinawa, or Hue, in its violence, heroics, and strategic importance of breaking the insurgents who were ready and waiting for our arrival—after a politically inspired disastrous pullback in April. I was speaking to a number of veterans this weekend in San Diego, and their stories were chilling and awe-inspiring all at once.

They Quietly Kept Fighting

Victor Davis Hanson:

Central here are all the tens of thousands of now anonymous American soldiers who fought so hard and courageously all during 2003-7, without whose sacrifices the later surge and change in tactics would have been impossible. As we struggled to counter IEDs, bring in new equipment, learn that the tribes, not the mullahs, of Iraq, held the power, went through Sanchez, Bremer, etc, witnessed Michael Moore, Sean Penn, Moveon.org, "the war is lost" by Harry Reid, et al. they quietly kept fighting and so saved Iraq.