War Stories: Operation Iraqi Freedom

by Oliver North

  In the aftermath of the battle I asked Lt. J. D. Stevens, who has been here since March, if democracy could work. His response: “If given enough time, yes.”

  That’s the key. Democracy in Iraq is taking root, but it won’t be built overnight.

  OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #51

  Fallujah, Iraq

  Friday, 17 December 2004

  2200 Hours Local

  “It’s stuff you hear about in boot camp, about World War II and Tarawa Marines who won the Medal of Honor,” said Lance Cpl. Rob Rogers of the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines in the aftermath of the seven-day battle for Fallujah. Rogers was describing the actions of his fellow Marine Sgt. Rafael Peralta, a Mexican immigrant who enlisted in the Marine Corps the day he received his green card.

  Most Americans haven’t heard about Rafael Peralta. With few exceptions, most of our mainstream media haven’t bothered to write about him. The next time you log onto the Internet, do a Google search on Rafael Peralta. As of this writing, the Internet’s most used search engine will provide you with only forty-nine citations from news sources that have bothered to write about this heroic young man.

  Then, just for laughs, do a Google search on Pablo Paredes. Hundreds of media outlets have written about him. The wire services have blasted his story to thousands of newspapers. Television and radio debate programs gladly provide the public with talking heads who can speak eloquently on the actions of Pablo Paredes.

  You see, Pablo Paredes, a Navy petty officer third class, did something the liberal elites consider “heroic” and the media consider “newsworthy” He defied a military order. Last week, Paredes refused to board his ship bound for Iraq along with 5,000 other sailors and Marines. He showed up on the pier wearing a black t-shirt that read, “Like a Cabinet member, I resign.”

  We know this because Paredes had the courtesy and forethought to notify the local media that he would commit an act of cowardice the following day. Perhaps he hoped to follow the lead of another famous war protester who went on to become a U.S. senator and his party’s presidential nominee by throwing away his military medals.

  Paredes stopped short of trashing his military ID in front of the cameras because he said he didn’t want to be charged with the destruction of government property. The media, we are promised, will continue to follow this story intently.

  But it’s a shame that the media focus on such cynical acts of cowardice when they could tell stories about real heroes like Peralta, who “saved the life of my son and every Marine in that room,” according to Garry Morrison, the father of a Marine in Peralta’s unit—Lance Cpl. Adam Morrison.

  On the morning of 15 November 2004, the men of 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines awoke before sunrise and continued what they’d been doing for seven days previously—cleansing the city of Fallujah of terrorists, house by house.

  At the fourth house they encountered that morning, the Marines kicked in the door and “cleared” the front rooms, but then noticed a locked door off to the side that required inspection. Peralta threw open the closed door, but behind it were three terrorists with AK-47s. Peralta was hit in the head and chest with multiple shots at close range.

  Peralta’s fellow Marines had to step over his body to continue the shootout with the terrorists. As the firefight raged on, a “yellow, foreign-made, oval-shaped grenade,” as Lance Cpl. Travis Kaemmerer described it, rolled into the room where they were all standing and came to a stop near Peralta’s body.

  But Sgt. Rafael Peralta wasn’t dead—yet. This twenty-five-year-old immigrant, who enlisted in the Marines as soon as he was eligible, and who volunteered for front line duty in Fallujah, had just saved the lives of his buddies by taking the first bullets from that room full of terrorists. But he still had one last act of heroism in him.

  Peralta was the polar opposite of Paredes, the petty officer who turned his back on his shipmates and mocked his commander in chief. Peralta was proud to serve his adopted country. On his bedroom walls in his parents’ home hung only three items—a copy of the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and his boot camp graduation certificate. Before he set out for Fallujah, Sgt. Rafael Peralta wrote to his fourteen-year-old brother, “Be proud of me, bro. . . and be proud of being an American.”

  Not only can Peralta’s family be proud of him, but his fellow Marines are alive because of him. As Peralta lay near death on the floor of a Fallujah terrorist hideout, he spotted that yellow grenade, which had rolled across the floor next to his near-lifeless body. He realized that when it detonated it would take out the rest of his squad.

  To save his fellow Marines, Peralta reached out, grabbed the grenade, and tucked it under his abdomen, where it exploded.

  “Most of the Marines in the house were in the immediate area of the grenade,” Lance Cpl. Kaemmerer said sadly. “We will never forget the second chance at life that Sgt. Peralta gave us.” Each of the Marines in that house knows that Sgt. Peralta is a real hero.

  Unfortunately, unlike Paredes, Peralta got little media coverage. He’s unlikely to have books written about him or movies made about his extraordinarily selfless sacrifice. He may receive the Medal of Honor. And if he does, that Medal of Honor is likely to be displayed next to the only items that hung on his bedroom wall—the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and his boot camp graduation certificate.

  Yes, there are still heroes in America, and Sgt. Rafael Peralta was one of them. It’s just too bad that the media continually fails to recognize them.

  OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #52

  Baghdad, Iraq

  Thursday, 3 February 2005

  1030 Hours Local

  It’s now happened twice in less than four months, though it is more rare than an eclipse of the sun, a shooting star, or a volcanic eruption. It ought to be celebrated as a magnificent, historic event, but it isn’t.

  I’m referring to the Sunday, 30 January 2005, Iraqi election. Like the October election in Afghanistan before it, it signifies the birth of a new democracy. Both elections mark the first vote of a long-oppressed people, yet the media presents them as dangerous events.

  For months, the so-called mainstream media has struggled to depict the Iraqi elections as a fools’ errand foisted on the people of Iraq by George W. Bush. When I was in London last week, the BBC and many European newspapers were predicting an “invalid outcome” because “the Sunni population is boycotting the vote.”

  Last Tuesday, Senate opponents of the president’s Iraq policy lined up behind Robert Byrd and Teddy Kennedy to declare Iraq to be “a quagmire . . . a total failure.”

  And despite a pre-election poll of 33,000 Iraqis by the Arabic paper Asharq Al-Awsat, in which 72.4 percent said they intended to vote—the U.S. media continue to denigrate the process. “Is a 50 or 60 percent turnout enough?” reporters skeptically asked the White House, State Department, and every U.S. and Iraqi official they could find in Baghdad. But when 60 percent of American voters went to the polls in November, it was considered a “historic” turnout. You just can’t please the press.

  But all of this misses the point. Iraqis came out in unprecedented numbers, despite nine suicide bombers and insurgents firing mortars in Election Day attacks. Iraqis voted for members of provincial parliaments and a 270-member National Assembly, which will write Iraq’s constitution. Sunday’s election was the first multi-party election in more than fifty years—and the first in the entire 5,000-year history of Mesopotamia where every man and woman, regardless of tribe, religion, or ethnic origin, was allowed to cast a ballot.

  Even Arab television outlets, like Al Jazeera, documented this “grand moment in Iraqi history,” as the president said in his news conference. Sunday’s election was an instant success and a remarkable accomplishment—first because the terrorists tried so hard to stop it and failed; second, because more than 17,000 candidates were willing to put their lives on the line, vying for 270 seats in the first freely elected National Assembly in the long history of Mesopotamia; and
finally, because so many Iraqi women braved bombs, bullets, threats, and intimidation to go to the polls.

  Watching the Iraqis proudly hold up thumbs dipped in ink as evidence that they had voted brought tears even to the eyes of cynics in Europe and the doubters in America.

  It was the same last October, when whole Afghani families walked miles, skirting minefields and defying threats from Taliban thugs, just to vote. There, it was Moqadasa Sidiqi, a nineteen-year-old woman, who cast the first ballot in Afghanistan’s history. A woman cast the first ballot!

  Here in Iraq, the “feminine factor” is also going to be profoundly important to the country’s future—far more so than whether the voter is a Sunni or a Shi’ite. By law, one-third of the new National Assembly must be women. Women are about to transform Iraq, just as they are transforming Afghanistan.

  Last summer I interviewed the elected governor of Al Anbar province, Iraq’s largest, in the heart of the Sunni Triangle. Months before this momentous election, he told me: “Women voting will change everything. No woman who carries a child for nine months wants that child to grow up to be a suicide terrorist. They want the politicians to give their children something to live for, not die for—and we will have to do it.”

  Most secular and religious leaders in Iraq echo that judgment—it’s only the radical few who want to turn the country back to the Middle Ages. The National Assembly elected on Sunday will not only name a president, two deputy presidents, a prime minister, and a cabinet, but will also produce a new constitution by 15 August 2005. That constitution will then be submitted to a popular referendum—a second free election by mid-October. This new Iraqi constitution will become the law of the land if affirmed by a majority of the voters nationwide. Approval of the constitution will yield yet a third free election on 15 December 2005, to elect a new government.

  All of this seems to have escaped the attention of the president’s critics in our media—as did the television ads produced by pro-democracy organizations to encourage Iraqi turnout. In one, an elderly man is confronted on the street by a group of masked, armed thugs. The man is soon joined by a handful of his neighbors, then more, until the mass of people greatly outnumber the terrorists, who set off running from the crowd of ordinary, unarmed, but courageous Iraqis.

  The voiceover says: “On January 30, we meet our destiny and our duty. We are not alone, and we are not afraid. Our strength is in our unity; together we will work, and together prevail.” No ad like this could have possibly run under Saddam’s rule.

  The terrorist in chief in Iraq, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, in a statement showing just how desperate the insurgents were to prevent democracy from taking root, condemned the elections. “We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology.” He went on to brand anyone who took part as an “infidel.”

  President Bush, in his second inaugural address, said, “By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well—a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.”

  As if to validate both his remarks and the power of the Iraqi ballots, the television cameras panned to a touching, powerful scene in the balcony as the president delivered his State of the Union address on 2 February. Standing next to Laura Bush was Sofia Taleb al-Suhail, an Iraqi woman who had just voted, and behind her, Janet and Bill Norwood, the parents of Marine Corps Sgt. Byron Norwood of Pflugerville, Texas, who was killed during the assault on Fallujah. Mr. and Mrs. Norwood stood to enthusiastic and sustained applause. The applause became thunderous when Sofia reached over and hugged Janet. That woman-to-woman connection told much more eloquently than any pundit’s analysis just what the Iraqi story is all about.

  It was an ember from the fire that President Bush said is blazing in Iraq. And, God willing, may it soon spread to some of those other dark corners of the Middle East.

  OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #53

  Washington, DC

  Friday, 11 March 2005

  2245 Hours Local

  Ever since U.S. troops first went to Afghanistan in October 2001, our supposedly more experienced “betters” in Europe and the “prudent potentates of the press” have warned us that U.S. military action against an Islamic nation was dangerous. They said that attacking Muslims would cause the “Arab street” to rise up and crush us. This theme was widely replayed in the buildup to Operation Iraqi Freedom—and has been reiterated many times in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s capture.

  Since his second inaugural address, President Bush has repeatedly been castigated for his “naiveté” on one hand and for his “aggressive arrogance” on the other. Why? Because he boldly tells those who suffer tyranny that the United States “will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.”

  Yet, despite the carping critics—and the carnage caused by those who would rather die than see freedom flourish—any objective observer has to conclude that George W. Bush is right. “The call of freedom” does indeed come “to every mind and every soul.” Even in the Middle East freedom is indeed on the march—even down the “Arab street.”

  It was evident last October in Afghanistan, in the ballots cast by Palestinians in early January and in late January on the ink-stained fingers of Iraqi men and women, raised in proud defiance against murderous thugs who would return them to brutal bondage.

  Whether the America-haters and Bush-bashers want to acknowledge it or not, the “call of freedom” is genuine. And it’s now being heard in places where American “influence” has long been deemed by the “experts” to be minimal, at best. Here are examples:

  In December, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians peacefully protested to force a new election when a rigged vote installed Vladimir Putin’s handpicked presidential candidate. As a result, reformist Viktor Yushchenko governs today in Kiev. The Bush administration needed to do little more than lend its voice to the calls for a free and fair election.

  Last week, in long-suffering Syrian-occupied Lebanon, tens of thousands unarmed Christian and Muslim civilians protested the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, forcing the resignation of Syria’s puppet government in Beirut. In the aftermath, the new Iraqi government—and even the French—joined our call for the Syrians to withdraw their forces from Lebanon and deport the residue of Saddam’s regime hiding there.

  Though they have yet to fully comply, the Syrians have arrested and turned over the former dictator’s half-brother, Sabawi Ibrahim al Hassan. And to ensure that those in Damascus who support terror don’t get the idea that this is sufficient, President Bush has since told them to “get your troops and your secret services out of Lebanon, and give democracy a chance.”

  In Cairo, Hosni Mubarak, never known to be a friend of liberty or democratic institutions, has announced that opposition candidates will be allowed to run for office in the upcoming Egyptian elections. Mubarak has been the only presidential “candidate” since taking power in 1981. While questions remain about who will be “allowed” to run, a taste of liberty in a democratic election may ignite the “fire of freedom” among the people of the Nile.

  And now, even the royal family in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, seems to be getting the message, though the recent Saudi “municipal elections” were more show than substance—the elected councilors wield little power. The ruling House of Saud appoints as many councilors as were elected and only men can vote—yet the taste of democracy has intensified the call on the “Arab street” for real elections.

  Last week, the Saudi kingdom’s foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, speaking the heretofore unthinkable, said that in future elections women “may” have the right to vote. Unfortunately, he then added, “We know we want to reform, we know we want to modernize, but for God’s sake leave us alone.”

  And therein lies the first problem: The prince doesn’t
get it. It’s not just President Bush’s promise, “When you stand for your liberty we will stand with you,” that is at work in Saudi Arabia. It’s really a quest for freedom that’s sweeping down the “Arab street,” right past minarets preaching repression and hatred for all things Western.

  But Saud al-Faisal isn’t alone in misunderstanding what freedom really means—and from whence it springs. Last week, when President Bush confronted Vladimir Putin about Russia’s freedom of the press, Putin shot back with: “We didn’t criticize you when you fired those reporters at CBS.” Apparently Putin or his advisers believe that a U.S. president has that power.

  Thus the second problem: Saud al-Faisal and Putin apparently believe that holding an election is enough. It’s not. As we have learned from the “election” of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, there’s much more to freedom than casting a ballot. Liberty also means a free press; freedom to worship—or not; the rule of law where justice is tempered with mercy; freedom from fear—of government, criminals, or outsiders, and the freedom to come and go, to speak politically, and to work and create wealth.

  All of this—and more—is what freedom is all about. Elections are not the end of the process, just the beginning. That’s what’s wrong with the argument being waged by some in Congress to start withdrawing American forces from Iraq now that there has been an election. Whether it’s the “Arab street,” or elsewhere, liberty doesn’t march to the beat of a cadence—it arrives to the sound of many drummers, and impatience is never the friend of freedom.

  GLOSSARY