Apr 15 2008
Michael Yon Transforms The Debate On Iraq
This year’s must read by everyone who follows or makes a living in politics will be Michael Yon’s new book Moment of Truth in Iraq: How a New ‘Greatest Generation’ of American Soldiers is Turning Defeat and Disaster into Victory and Hope – which I am heading out today to purchase.
I want to give a huge hat tip to Powerline for noting this event and its impact on one key person – the publisher who writes this about the book:
From the Publisher
I HAVE NEVER BEEN PROUDER TO PUBLISH A BOOKMichael Yon changed my mind about the war in Iraq, by making me understand it for the first time.
From the very beginning I was against the war. I thought it would be a disaster, another Vietnam. And until I had the privilege of working on this book with Michael I was always for immediate pull-out: why should one more American die for a doomed effort?
Michael–who is as close to totally non-political as anyone I know–showed me two things. First, because I judged by Vietnam, the war of my youth, I had radically underestimated what American soldiers could do. I knew they could blow away any regular opponent on any battlefield. But wage a counterinsurgency against an enemy with broad support in the population? Win the “hearts and minds,” to use the Vietnam era phrase that now can be used only ironically? That was asking too much, I thought.
I was 100 percent wrong. Today’s American soldiers excel at counterinsurgency, because they excel at the most important thing: winning over the people by inspiring them with their own courage and compassion, discipline and determination. Reading this book is like watching the movie Apocalypse Now, but in an alternate universe in which the opposite always happens. Every time our soldiers get into an incredibly tense situation with some Iraqis who might be friends or might be enemies or murderers, some situation in which what’s needed is amazing calm and courage to keep things from blowing up and ending in a blood bath, our guys pull it off!
Just wait until you read the Chapter “High Noon” (my favorite), the story of the American soldiers who have to arrest a corrupt but politically popular Iraqi police chief we had put in office in the first place because he had been a real hero in fighting the terrorists. He had to be removed by Americans to show the Iraqis we really did believe in the rule of law. The whole thing could have blown up into a one-town civil war with hundreds dead on both sides. Won’t tell you how it ends, but you will be amazed and very proud.
The other thing Michael helped me understand is the difference between terrorists we just have to kill (often foreigners, or local criminals) and local insurgents we should have been working with all along. For almost five years I could not tell from watching the news–and certainly not from listening to the Administration–who the enemy was, what they wanted or why they were fighting. Not surprisingly it turns out that understanding the various people we were fighting–some of whom have since become great allies–was the key to winning the war, which we are now clearly doing.
I am convinced that everything I once thought about the war was wrong. The truth is we are doing a great thing in Iraq, most of the Iraqi people really do want to be a united democratic nation and already consider America their greatest friend and ally. It would be a crime to turn tail now and abandon them now.
I owe all that to Michael’s book, which is why I believe publishing Moment of Truth in Iraq may be the best thing I have ever done for my country.
If the book has that effect on one person, then it can have it on millions. I am going to go out and get this book and share it with as many people as possible. We need an honest debate on Iraq, not the shrill silliness we have been getting from the SurrenderMedia and Surrendercrats. We need to see what is really happening on the ground to make informed decisions on which way to go. I also strongly recommend a post by Ed Morrissey today on the realities of the Iraqi decision process.
this book changed the mind of the publisher, who by the way has a significant financial stake in it. amazing. astounding. who’d-a-thunk-it? it must be pretty convincing.
you talk about honest debate but anyone who disagrees with you is shrill and silly and surrendermedia and surrendercrats. talk is cheap…and actions speak louder than words. your actions show all you really want is to preach to, and hear from, the choir.
I have been reading Yon from the beginning. He is great and was a main source of information for me when few had information at all. I’m rushing out to get his book also.
Norm, there is no such thing as “honest” debate with you because you are a lying, idiotic wanker without even the slightest clue as to what the idea of “rationality” entails.
Nothing you write is worth paying attention to, on any topic, at any time.
Norm, there is no such thing as “honest” debate with you because you are a lying, idiotic wanker without even the slightest clue as to what the idea of “rationality” entails.
Nothing you write is worth paying attention to, on any topic, at any time.
this book changed the mind of the publisher, who by the way has a significant financial stake in it. amazing. astounding
Please go away. You have no honor or respectibility.
I actually get sick reading your nonsense. Go to your Lefty blogs and join the Never-ending Hate. Dont spread your poison here
vince…please explain what honor and respectability have to do with pointing out an obvious conflict of interest?
i do like it when he acknowledges the administrations (and it’s stenographers) intentional mis-information and propoganda campaign. “…for almost five years I could not tell from watching the news–and certainly not from listening to the administration–who the enemy was…”
American troops “excel at counterinsurgency?” I am postponing assessing the day’s bloodshed directly until the evening but already
have heard sundry major attacks have made this, and the very recent call by some, Rep. and Dem. for Iraq to finance its own reconstruction (finance, then, its own failed occupation) as security strengthens, hideously contemptible.
Norm, there is nothing wrong in the mentioning the “conflict of interest”, or also called “disclosure” in other worlds of business. However such up front “disclosure/conflict of interests” should not be a deterrent to reading the material for your own personal assessment. As opposed to discounting it for the disclosure.
Let’s take, for example, Gore’s disclosure/admittance of his monetary gain from global warming enterprises. The fact that he makes beaucoup $s from being founding/chair/and or board members of his own carbon offset company and charity dedicated to “global warming” technology, doesn’t affect your committal to the existance of, or reading about, global warming. Does it?
In which case, you are cherry picking what “disclosures/conflict of interest” your find offensive… all based on your own wishes for outcome.
The “publisher”, Richard Vigilante, former VP of the infamous Regnery Publishing, responsible for bilge by Barbara Olson and Michelle Malkin, has been so moved by Yon’s propaganda that he now thinks we’re winning in Iraq.
Amazing. And with a straight face, yet!
The publisher was anti-war before reading the book. Norm just slapped one of his own.
Well done, Norm.
mata…it is always critical to understand the motivations of whoever is selling anything. thank you for not attacking my honor or respectability for being intelligent enough to do so.
Yes, Norm…we assessed the BS you were selling instantly.
You’re welcome for “not attacking”, Norm. It’s always good to know the disclosures, but also to keep an open mind and not discount because of the association. Thus the Al Gore/beaucoup bucks disclosure as a reality check.
more comments of substance from 74
Substance? You mean like a complete dipshit thinking he still has “honor or respectability”?
Dude, you blew yourself up long ago.
73…i think your comments speak for themselves.
The publisher was anti-war before reading the book
Could anyone be so gullible to really believe that? Can anyone Google or otherwise produce a single anti-war statement attributed to Richard Vigilante before he wrote this obviously fictitious tale of transformation from peacenik to ardent hawk due to the deathless prose of embedded propagandist and former Special Forces op Michael Yon??
When Vigilante was VP of Regnery, he persuaded Gary Aldrich to edit his book Unlimited Access, in such a way as to highlight fictitious allegations like Hillary Clinton having lesbian encounters in the White House’s basement showers, ordering miniature crack pipes to hang on the White House Christmas tree, and the claim—backed by anonymous sources—that Clinton made frequent trips to the nearby Marriott to shack up with a mistress “who may be a celebrity.”
Unlimited Access shot to the top of The New York Times’s best-seller list, though Aldrich soon revealed to The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer that the Marriott story was “not quite solid” and, indeed, was “hypothetical.”
And according to Aldrich, it was Regnery editor Richard Vigilante who moved the Marriott bit out of the epilogue (where it had been presented as a “mock investigation”) and into the middle of the book (where it was presented as an actual occurrence). Vigilante, Aldrich told Mayer, threatened not to publish the book if Aldrich didn’t agree to the changes.
There’s your truthiness indicia for Vigilante, suckers.
I do speak for myself, of course. Now who the hell are you speaking for if not yourself?
72…and your comments make clear that you are someone with no substance, prone to childish personal attacks. have a nice evening.
That’s ok Norm. Maybe your mommy can tuck you in tonight and make it all better.