Sorry Navy. Sorry Air Force. To me the Most Outstanding Person Of 2005 is still The American Soldier, whether Army or USMC. I don’t doubt the professionalism and courage of airmen and sailors alike, but I think it is clear that in this conflict the foot soldier bears the brunt of the fighting.
After the initial elation about the Iraqi elections, the news about the enormous gains made by the religious parties came as an anticlimax, and I suppose that many of those who supported OIF with heart and soul, myself included, may have felt at least momentarily fooled. Basically, it seems to have turned out that offering a population which has never really known democracy, not necessarily leads to that population making the right choice when given the chance to elect its leaders. By which we assume that the right choice would have been the secular parties. And why not? We westerners, thanks to our unrestricted access to online and printed data, and flooded with visual and audio information, are in a better position than Ahmed Q in, say, Yemen, to understand what a godforsaken fucked up region the Middle East is. We rightly lay the blame for that at the feet of the region’s dominant politico-religious ideology, Islam, which indeed is fast becoming a burden to humanity’s progress.
In the particular case of Iraq however some caveat concerning the wits of the average Iraqi voter may be justified. After all, Iraq just emerges from fifty years of secular regime, and the average Iraqi’s experience under it may in fact have been the strongest argument against secular rule. It is the religious parties which for the greater part had to lay low during Saddam’s rule, and so their ascent during the December elections is not illogical per se. In Iran, where mullahs have ruled for 25 years, the people, when given a fair chance to cast their vote, would in all likelihood have elected secular leaders.
Therefore I would urge our American readers, who are all too aware of the blood, sweat and tears shed by your troops and their relatives, not to lose heart. For rule of law and democratic representation to take hold and blossom is in fact a very quaint and tough, if not unlikely event. Russia e.g. is a country which throughout the ages has produced countless eminent leaders, statesmen, artists, scientists, engineers, writers, poets and architects. Regardless its troubles, regardless the horrendous crimes against humanity committed on its soil, when speaking of Russia, we do not mentally connect it with backwardness like we do with the Middle East. And yet in Russia, an educated and gifted population lets its right to democratic rule slip away towards some de facto tyranny under a former KGB agent who literally said that the demise of the Soviet Union was one of the greatest geopolitical disasters of the 20th Century. By which I mean to say: the path to democratic rule is long and hard and by no means evident.
Yet Americans believed. With what now seems sheer improbable good will and vast amounts of that unique American "can-do" spirit, they took to the task of implementing democratic rule in Germany, when in 1946 nearby Czechoslowakia passed the so-called Benes-Decree, named after its president, which effectively ruled the deportation of a couple of million ethnic Germans, and which was thought of by the free world as a non-issue, or rather as something deserved.
Yet Americans believed.
That is why, despite the hardships and the setbacks, and plans not seeming to unfold the way we would like to, I think America should carry on in Iraq. For you have done this before, and a positive outcome was much more unlikely than it is today. For there is no other way, since quitting will make look the Vietnam aftermath like a fait-divers. And last but not least, for you have the most magnificent armed forces the planet has ever seen, and militarily you are simply – INVINCIBLE.
MFBB
PS: speaking of your fine military, find a good sample over at CDR Salamander. He has an amazing story about a Staff Sergeant James Gilliland, who from his Ramadi sniper nest called "Hotel" killed a terrorist at a distance of 4,100 ft.