Over the weekend, the following email slipped in over the transom.  I found it interesting; I’m sure you will, too:

Hi Dean—

I wanted to share with you about my cousin, 25 year old Pfc. Tyler Wiggins who is returning to Baghdad today to rejoin his brigade at FOB Falcon. Tyler and several other men were given two weeks at home after several weeks of very intense house-to-house raids and fighting. A few days ago we learned that, only eleven hours after Tyler left Iraq, five of his ten-man unit were killed raiding a booby-trapped house, blown up by a refrigerator full of C-4. Tyler was understandably devastated. He had trained and lived with these men, one of them whom, along with his wife, regarded Tyler as a son.

Last night our local American Legion, God bless them, held a sendoff ceremony for Tyler, presenting him with an American Legion flag signed by Legion members and Tyler’s extended family. It was so good to see the support and understanding from those who had “been there” in one campaign or another.  Handshakes, backslaps, and thanks all around.

It was hard for us to let him go, but he was ready to get back to it. He’s a pretty prolific sniper, third in his battalion for personal kills including a high-value target.

He’s a dedicated soldier, a patriot, and a worthy, worthy man. He deserves our thanks and our prayers.

Susan Shepard

I haven’t submitted this letter to the kind of scrutiny and thorough fact checking that The New Republic purportedly used on its Beauchamp Diarists that told a rather different story from FOB Falcon.  I’m posting it anyway because it’s consistent with so many stories that I’ve heard from soldiers who are serving in Iraq or who have served in Iraq.  Everyone there is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. Many already have.  If creative types like Brian DePalma really feel the need to make movies about Iraq, I can point them to stories of heroism, courage and selflessness. 

One also wonders if reading a letter like the one above might tweak the collective conscience of the TNR editors who slandered the soldiers at FOB Falcon and have let that slander stand for almost two months now.

SO WHAT HAVE THE MEN LIKE Pfc. Tyler Wiggins accomplished in Iraq, especially over the last several months?  If you rely on the mainstream media for your coverage, you’d be hard-pressed to answer that question.  Nevertheless, for those inclined to look deeper, the truth is out there: Since the surge began, our fighting men and women have accomplished some amazing things.

Most of you here have probably been reading Bill Roggio and Michael Yon.  Good on you for doing so.  You’re officially better informed than the typical United States congressman or New York Times editorial board member.  Thanks to their courage and knowledge, Yon and Roggio give us a view of what’s happening in Iraq at the street level.  Because of the changing situation on the ground and their intrepid reporting, at some point in the not too distant future the mainstream media’s preferred narrative of Iraq as a desperately violent Hobbesian state will no longer be tenable.

If we pull back from the street level and take a bird’s eye view, the picture gets even more encouraging. In July, the American military suffered 74 hostile casualties, while 1690 Iraqi civilians died violent deaths.  Those numbers were encouraging.  The American hostile casualties had gone down from 99 the month before; it was the second consecutive month that American hostile casualties declined roughly 20%.  The Iraqi civilian casualties went up from 1345 in June, but the death toll of 1690 still represented a dramatic improvement from the roughly 3,000 casualties per month during the pre-surge days earlier this year.

The August numbers are even better.  Once again, American hostile casualties have ticked down roughly another 20%.  While the Iraqi casualty figure remains at first blush unchanged, you need to do a little more digging to get to the truth of the matter.  The 1674 Iraq civilian casualties in August include the over 500 Yazidis that Al Qaeda killed in Kurdistan.  There is no American military surge in Kurdistan; indeed, there is hardly an American military presence in Kurdistan at all.  For over a decade, Kurdistan has offered the region’s best hope of a peaceful, sustainable Muslim regime. 

The crime that Al Qaeda perpetrated in Kurdistan in the middle of August was a cruel reminder of how vicious and barbaric our enemies are, but it had little if anything to do with the Iraq war.  That terrorist attack, the most bloody and cruelly barbaric since 9/11, relates only tangentially to our Iraqi military operations.  The only lesson we could and indeed should take away from that crime is how necessary it is that we thoroughly defeat and destroy the people who would gladly perpetrate similar crimes across the globe.

YESTERDAY, GEORGE W. BUSH VISITED ANBAR province with much of his national security team in tow.  Predictably, the visit, like everything this president does, enraged the left.  If the president sneezed in public, one can imagine dozens of lefty blog posts sprouting up demanding his ouster and insisting the sneeze clearly indicated his lack of fitness for the presidency.

The fact that president visited Anbar, and the additional fact that he received a warm and enthusiastic welcome from our fighting men, triggered paroxysms of rage from the American left.  The left prefers to consider the American fighting man a victim and a child.  The fact that these children/victims have had the audacity to bring Iraq back from the brink of disaster is bad enough.  The additional fact that they seem to like their commander-in-chief is almost too much to bear.

Where is the left to go now that the Iraq narrative has changed?  After the July numbers came in, the left tried to put a ridiculous spin on them.  The Daily Kos didn’t bother comparing July 2007 with recent months, but instead compared it to Julys of the past.  That won’t work with the August figures; in August of 2006, the American military suffered the exact same number of hostile casualties as it did in August of ’07.  1674 Iraqi civilians died violent deaths last month; in August of ’06, that number was 2966.  (It went up to 3539 in September ’06.)

Simply put, the American left will be hard pressed to find any way to dispute the amazing progress in Iraq.  Its smart politicians will stop trying.  Look for their rhetoric to change from “It’s a disaster – bring the children home” to “The mission is almost accomplished – bring the children home.” 

And the American left will always have 2006.  And 2005.  And 2004.  For three years, the Bush administration fought the battle of Iraq with a SecDef who had no interest in the task of nation building and an incoherent military strategy.  History will ultimately judge how much of a failure those years represent.  My hunch is that history will be more forgiving than the present day Defeat Dead-enders on the Boston Globe editorial board.  History doesn’t mark down Abraham Lincoln’s grade much for having the likes of George McClellan and Fightin’ Joe Hooker mismanage the Union’s war efforts for the first three years of the struggle.

ANOTHER PRESSING QUESTION IS where does the American right go from here.  I received an email last night suggesting that the changing Iraq narrative means 2008 could be a big year for Republicans.  Sorry, but I doubt it.  This president will not leave office with a high approval ratings and the Senate slate next year is potentially disastrous for the Republican Party.

But you know what?  Big deal.  Winston Churchill won World War II and saved Great Britain.  The British electorate rewarded him for these accomplishments by promptly booting him out of office in favor of the supremely mediocre Clement Atlee.  Churchill spent 1944 fighting the Nazis.  If John Warner or Gordon Smith or Dick Lugar had been the British Prime Minister in 1944, they probably would have been focusing primarily on keeping their jobs.  If the price of winning the Iraq war is losing some elections, so be it. 

We have a big couple of weeks coming up.  With General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker coming to Washington, some Republican politicians will be looking for a way to minimize the political bleeding rather than win the war.  This is unacceptable, and Republicans who support the war effort shouldn’t think of tolerating it.

I began this post with a letter that reported on sacrifices made at Forward Operating Base Falcon.  Our men there have been willing to give their all.  Some of them have given their lives; juxtaposing their sacrifice with the fact that some of our senators are unwilling to jeopardize their office is quite literally nauseating.

As for the politicians, citizens and most of all soldiers who have stuck with this war effort even when things were bleakest, victory is now in sight.  Those who see it through will someday realize that it has been their finest hour.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com.

(Video from Allah; all casualty figures from IraqCasualties.org)