Over the past decade, many non-fiction accounts of the Allied Forces’ battles in World War II have concentrated on the extraordinary heroism of the soldiers who liberated Europe and the Pacific.

Popular works such as Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers and Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation have portrayed American GIs who fought their way across Europe as bloody but never beaten, afraid but never paralyzed by fear. These men never lost possession of an indomitable warrior spirit, bred of democratic patriotism and loyalty to their fellow soldiers. They effortlessly rose to the occasion of the extraordinary task before them: defeating and destroying Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

Released around the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, these books also show that after being demobilized, World War II veterans went on to build modern America into the strongest, freest, wealthiest and most culturally vibrant country in the world. In the pre-Freudian world where these men grew up, issues of loyalty, duty and patriotism far outweighed questions of personal fulfillment and spiritual wholeness that became the signature calling card of their children’s generation. Perhaps as a result of this absence of self-conscious egotism, the generation that came of age during World War II accomplished what it did both at war and at peace.

Whatever the case may be, it is not surprising that it was during the 1990s that American society chose to idealize these men. As a decade characterized by moral relativism justified under the banners of diversity and multiculturalism, Americans in the 1990s needed to view their aging countrymen as symbols of American greatness that contrasted sharply with the America they saw on their television screens.

That America, filled with Clintonian salaciousness and insistence on being just another member of the international community, was the polar opposite of the ideal of American exceptionalism that had been the core of the American character since the Founding Fathers.

And yet, though necessary and undoubtedly accurate, these signature books on the heroism of US forces in World War II lack a dimension of insecurity and uncertainty. The Allied forces did not march effortlessly to victory in Germany. The fighting was intense and littered with disaster. In the Battle of the Bulge, the last German offensive of the war, the Allied Forces in the Ardennes forest in Belgium were taken by surprise. In the largest ground battle the US fought in Europe during the war, the US suffered some 80,000 casualties in a month. Some 20,000 Americans were killed and another 21,000 were missing. Entire units surrendered to the Germans.

This gap between victory and defeat is filled by historian Michael Oren’s new novel, Reunion.

OREN, WHO won international acclaim last year with his bestselling history of the Six Day War (Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Oxford University Press), tells the fictional story of a reunion of a company of American infantrymen at the site of the battle they had lost a half-century earlier at the edge of the Ardennes forest.

While like their real life counterparts, these men returned home, married and built their lives as loyal citizens, the characters in Reunion carry the demons of their defeat throughout their ensuing years.

Lt. Buddy Hill, a squad leader, is introduced as a retired Iowa banker dying of bone cancer. Hill, like the rest of the characters, greets his invitation to the reunion with anxiety. Hill had escaped the imprisonment that was the lot of most of his company by evacuating his frostbitten sergeant to a field hospital hours before his men were forced to capitulate to the Germans. In the 50 years since the battle, Hill was plagued with the guilt and loneliness of an officer who feels unworthy of his own soldiers.

Cpl. Pieter (Sweet) Martinson, a line soldier, is an aged stonemason who earns his living carving gravestones in his basement workshop in Wisconsin. Sweet had been a model soldier until the German offensive began. In previous battles, Martinson had distinguished himself for bravery. Yet, as the narrator explains, what motivated Martinson was fear of dying, for, were he to die he would be unable to marry his high-school sweetheart, Meg.

"It wasn’t the threat of pain that got to him or of being maimed or even of losing his life per se, but rather of losing her. Meg. If he died, she’d marry someone else eventually, make love and have kids with him. Death for him meant Meglessness, and the thought of that tormented him."

In the end, he survived the war, yet suffered a nervous breakdown induced by a traumatic event he experienced during the German offensive. A broken man, he returned home and lost the one person who gave meaning to his existence.

Each of Oren’s characters, like Hill and Sweet, carries the insecurity over his performance during combat throughout his life; each, in his own way, views attending the reunion as an opportunity to find closure and absolution for his self-perceived failures on the one hand and as a terrible risk on the other, because his sense of failure and inadequacy may be pointed out by his comrades.

AS A FOIL to the aging veterans, Oren introduces a representative of the "Me" generation they spawned in the form of Richard Perlmutter, the son of their company clerk Label who died shortly before the reunion. Richard, a failed post-modern historian, fills the role of the rebellious child who insists that their sacrifices were made not for the greater good, but for the geopolitical advantage of imperialist leaders who used them to put down the masses.

Partly in reaction to his radical provocations, the men are able to draw together to defend the truth they suddenly understand about their fight.

An interesting sub-layer of the novel involves the elderly veterans’ relationship with death. Each of them is dying or suffering the maladies of old age. Yet they meet on a battleground where their comrades died before their eyes as young men. The interplay between greeting death at life’s natural endpoint and experiencing death prematurely in combat achieves its apogee at the end of the novel and delivers a life-affirming message.

It is not surprising that it takes a work of delicate and sensitive fiction to render the thickness and complexity of the humanity of the soldiers who fought in World War II. Given the universal appreciation for the vital war they waged against Nazi Germany, it is hard to find a historical account of the bitter wages of that war for the men who suffered fighting it and then lived in its shadow for the rest of their lives.

Wars are extraordinary events. Fighting them demands extraordinary courage and sacrifice from ordinary men. Every man who has ever been called to the challenge of combat and survives lives with the legacy of what he did or did not accomplish. The great service that Oren’s Reunion provides, with deft craftsmanship and enormous sensitivity, is to bring the soul-searching of unselfish men to life, and help us all better understand the true meaning of the individual sacrifice of the line soldier.

Originally pubished in The Jerusalem Post Literary Quarterly.

Is Malaysian autocrat Mahathir Mohamad insane?

Many critics of his latest anti-Semitic rant at the annual Islamic Summit Conference last week think so. It was there that he now infamously said, "The Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."

For his fellow Islamic heads of state and leaders, Mahathir is not a madman but a sage. Speaking of Mahathir's speech, Egypt's foreign minister Ahmed Maher said, "I think it was a shrewd and very deep assessment of the situation." Maher added, "I hope the Islamic countries will be able to follow this very important road map."

Given the standing ovation that Mahathir received at the conference, as well as the daily diet of anti-Semitism broadcast and published throughout the Islamic world, it seems safe to say that the views he enunciated are more or less mainstream in the Islamic world today. Because of this, it is important to understand the "road map" set out by Mahathir in his address and assess its ramifications for Israel's future.

In his 4,200 word homily, Mahathir restated his long-held belief that the Islamic world needs to modernize. For this he has long been touted in the West as a moderate and a reformist. Yet unlike states such as South Korea or Singapore, which view modernization as a goal in and of itself, Mahathir views it as a means to a larger pan-Islamic end. That end is the defeat of the West by the Islamic world.

And the shortest path to eventual victory is the destruction of Israel. Victory goes through Israel, in Mahathir's view, because although the US and Europe are the true targets, they will only accept Islam as their master after their current master, the Jews, are destroyed.

The notion that the West is enslaved by the Jews is so outrageous that it is difficult to take Mahathir seriously. But Mahathir is no kook. Indeed, the blueprint for victory that he laid out is already being implemented by many of his coreligionists.

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan for instance, seem to be doing their best to fulfill Mahathir's call for the Muslims to pool their resources to destroy the Jewish "enemy." The two Islamic states have reportedly reached a deal whereby Pakistan will provide the Saudis with nuclear bombs.

Other examples of Arab and Islamic states cooperating to fight Israel abound. Last week Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told foreign ambassadors that Pakistan and North Korea are aiding Libya in its program to achieve nuclear capabilities. Sharon warned that with this assistance, Libya may become the first Arab state to have a nuclear arsenal.

As far back as last September, the Prime Minister warned that Saddam Hussein was transferring parts of his non-conventional arsenal to Syria and Lebanon. In the months since Saddam's downfall, the US and Israel have been trying to find out just which elements of Saddam's arsenal were in fact transferred.

The Saudis, Iranians, Syrians, and Egyptians are actively supporting and abetting the Palestinian terror war against Israel. And lest we tell ourselves that terrorism is not a strategic threat, we need only look to the Philippines to realize what its true destructive potential can be.

There, Islamic terrorists seem to have already attained non-conventional capabilities. On Monday, AFP reported that Philippine security forces recovered traces of possible biological weapons in a raid on a Jemaah Islamiya hideout in the southern Philippine city of Cotabato. The findings included residues of a tetanus virus-carrying chemical. The security forces also found a bio-terror manual at the site.

Aside from intra-Islamic cooperation, Mahathir pointed out that not everyone in the hated West hates the Muslims back. Mahathir counseled the Islamic leaders to use those Westerners who support them and who "see our enemies as their enemies" to advance their goal of world domination. And again, this week, we saw two instances of this occurring.

In the first instance, the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany converged on Teheran on Tuesday and succeeded in postponing the need to deal with the Iranian nuclear weapons program. This they did by accepting the feckless Iranian President Mohammed Khatami's vaguely worded promise to temporarily stop enriching uranium.

Now Iran has at least another month to enrich uranium without needing to worry about the International Atomic Energy Agency turning the matter over to the UN Security Council. Israel estimates that the Iranian nuclear program may reach the point of no return by the summer.

Understanding that the Europeans have no interest in actually preventing the Iranians from developing nuclear weapons, Teheran didn't even wait until the end of the news cycle to expose the agreement as a fraud. Iran's Supreme National Security Council chief Hassan Rohani told reporters Tuesday evening that the freeze on uranium enrichment would only last for "as long as Iran thinks this suspension is beneficial .Whenever we don't want it we will end it," he said.
 

The UN General Assembly's decision to condemn Israel for building a security fence is another example of Muslims using non-Islamic allies to advance Mahathir's agenda. The resolution was introduced by the Arab League. 144 member states voted in favor, four opposed and 12 abstained.

Finally, Mahathir argued that the Islamic world must work with Jews who "who do not approve of what the Israelis are doing." Mahathir invoked the precedent of the Prophet Muhammad's treaty of Hudaibayah with the Koresh tribe in Mecca several times during his speech. In his words, "at Hudaibayah [Muhammad] was prepared to accept an unfair treaty, against the wishes of his companions and followers. During the peace that followed he consolidated his strength and eventually he was able to enter Mecca and claim it for Islam."

Here, of course, we have the fine example of Yossi Beilin's Geneva Initiative, which outsources Israeli decision-making to the Swiss government and Beilin's EU-financed think tank for the purpose of disembowling the country and transferring its capital and heartland to its sworn enemies.

Indeed, Mahathir seemed to have Beilin directly in mind when he explained, "because of [the Jews'] power and their apparent success they have become arrogant. And arrogant people, like angry people will make mistakes, will forget to think. They are already beginning to make mistakes. And they will make more mistakes."

What can Israel do to defend against this onslaught? Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz have made clear that Israel cannot accept a nuclear armed Iran. Israel's anti-ballistic missile defenses are the most sophisticated in the world. And as Israel showed when its F-15s flew over Auschwitz en route to Tel Aviv some weeks ago, Israel has the capacity to conduct long-range bombing missions.

Given the fact that terrorists have and will continue to amass non-conventional capabilities, it is vital that Israel not allow them the space to operate with impunity. This means that the Palestinians must not receive sovereignty over territory unless all terrorist elements in Palestinian society and their support networks have been obliterated.

To ensure Israel's survival against non-conventional terrorist threats, it is not enough to build a wall. A wall will do nothing against chemical, biological or even tactical nuclear weapons launched on rockets, mortars or artillery shells.

Finally, it is important that Israel be honest with itself and its ally, the US, about the intentions of its enemies. We may not have ever believed we would need to take a delusional bigot like Mahathir seriously. But he seems to be an able spokesman for hundreds of millions of like-minded people.

We must respect these Islamic bigots enough to take their threats at face value. We must look at their intentions and soberly assess their actions and their capabilities.

When Mahathir defined us as the enemy, he did us a favor. He told us where he and the Islamic world stand, and where they intend to go. Forewarned, as they say, is forearmed.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

In the aftermath of Wednesday’s attack on CIA personnel in Gaza, the US announced that the FBI would conduct a thorough investigation of the bombing. One can only hope that in conducting the investigation the FBI agents will avail themselves of the knowledge and know-how of the Israeli military forces in the area who are best equipped to help them discover which Palestinian terrorists are responsible for the murder of US officials.

One would hope that this is the case, but given the FBI’s recent track record with Jews, there is little certainty that this will be the case.

Last week WorldNetDaily reported that in a seeminly systematic manner, the FBI has rejected Jewish Arabic speakers’ applications to serve as translators for the bureau. According to a report, when, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks the FBI made a public call for Arabic speakers to apply for positions as translators, over 90 Sephardic Jews from New York submitted their applications. Many of these applicants had prior professional experience working for Israeli radio in Arabic and serving as linguists in the IDF. The overwhelming majority of these American Jews spoke Arabic as a mother tongue.

Repeatedly since the September 11 attacks, US law enforcement, military and intelligence agencies have bemoaned the fact that they are unable to translate all the Arabic data they have gathered because they lack a sufficient number of Arabic linguists.

The FBI has offered no official comment on its rejection of the Jews. Sources familiar with the FBI’s vetting process have claimed that the sense was that the Jews “were too close to Israel” and might not translate documents in an objective manner. A former FBI official I spoke with on the issue said that he could not dismiss at face value the idea that perceived loyalty to Israel would in fact cause a Jew to be rejected by the FBI.

This barring of Jews from contributing to the US war against Islamic terrorism for fear that they have dual loyalties with Israel, an allied country fighting a war against Islamic terrorism, is distressing on many levels.

Over the past month, the US has been wracked by scandal as Muslim military and civilian personnel working at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay where hundreds of Al Qaida terrorists are being held, were arrested on suspicion of committing espionage for Al Qaida and Syria.

Two weeks ago, the Muslim American responsible for bringing Muslim chaplains into the US military and for vetting and accrediting candidates for Islamic chaplaincy positions in the US military was arrested on terrorism related charges. Abdulrahman Alamoudi was up until his arrest a darling of the FBI and the Pentagon. Last year, in the face of public protests, FBI Director Robert Mueller spoke at Alamoudi’s American Muslim Council’s annual dinner. FBI spokesmen have referred to the AMC as “the most mainstream Muslim group in the US.”

And yet, Alamoudi has publicly expressed support for Hizballah and Hamas. The director of the AMC, Eric Vickers refused on a television interview to acknowledge that Al Qaida is a terrorist organization. Alamoudi has said repeatedly to Muslim audiences that the goal of Muslims in America is to turn the US into an Islamic state.

Aside from the AMC, many of the other organizations that Alamoudi led, founded or has been an active member of have been raided in federal counterterrorism probes. These groups include Mercy International; the Fiqh Council of North America; the Success Foundation; the United Association for Studies and Research and the Talibah International Aid Foundation.

But, concerned about dual loyalties of Jews for Israel and the US, the FBI has preferred to aggressively recruit Alamoudi’s Muslim American associates as linguists and rejected the applications of nearly one hundred Jews whose mother tongue is Arabic, who were born and raised in Arab states and are therefore as familiar as Alamoudi’s associates are with the cultural contexts of language.

The same WorldNetDaily article alleged that the FBI was averse to hiring Jews for fear of alienating the American Arab community (of which it views the Alamoudi a respected leader). The article gave no evidence that this was the case, but it is not an unreasonable supposition given US actions in other spheres. 

US actions in Iraq for example, lead ineluctably to the conclusion that portions of the US government believe that Arabs who support terrorism against Israel and hate Jews can still be trusted to fight terrorism against the US.

Most glaring in this vein is the example of Sabah al-Imam, a member of the US appointed Iraqi Governing Council. This week al-Imam participated in the meeting the Arab League’s Damascus based Israel boycott committee on behalf of US-occupied Iraq. While in Damascus, al-Imam stated that post-Saddam Iraq would not enable any commerce with Israel.

There was no reason for the Iraqi Governing Council to feel it necessary to send an emissary to the conference. Egypt didn't. Neither did Jordan. Iraq expert Amatzia Baram, of the US Institute of Peace referred to the participation of a member of the Iraqi Governing Council at the meeting as “a travesty.”

In Baram’s view, “It is a complete outrage that he went to Damascus, which is a center for anti-American and anti-Israel extremism and violence. What it means is that Iraq under US occupation is reverting to its foreign policy under Saddam Hussein. This move constitutes the bankrupting of the entire US operation in Iraq.”

Baram sees a straight line between economic warfare which the boycott constitutes and military warfare. He explains that sending a representative to Syria “signals that the new Iraq will also send its army to fight wars against Israel just like the old one did. It is one thing, in the absence of a peace agreement for the Iraqis to bar Israelis from doing business in the country. It is quite another for them to make such an announcement at a meeting of the boycott conference in Syria.”

At the end of World War II, the US set out to de-Nazify Germany. This involved not only arresting and trying Nazis and barring Nazi sympathizers from positions of power. It also involved telling the German people that the entire Nazi world view that started and ended with hating and killing Jews was morally reprehensible and wrong.

Today, the US is on a path of de-Ba’athifying Iraq. And while high ranking Ba’athists are being rounded up and arrested and party supporters are being kept from positions of power, the US is doing nothing to tell the Iraqis to stop believing in one of the central organizing principles of Ba’athism – Jew hating.

In an editorial in Al-Safeer, one of the new independent Iraqi newspapers, (translated by MEMRI), the editorialist, made a plea to Iraqis not to allow the break up of the country along ethnic lines. Such a break-up, he wrote, “is what the Zionists want.”

The truth is that we Zionists don’t really care what happens so long as Iraq after Saddam doesn’t re-join the Arab campaign to destroy Israel.

The US is trying something revolutionary in Iraq. It is attempting to bring openness and freedom and democracy to a country that has known none of these things and is surrounded by other countries that fear all of these things. But if the new Iraqi national identity is based on the old Iraqi anti-Semitism then the attempt is destined to fail. If the Iraqis after Saddam can find no better reason to keep the country together than the need to stay unified to fight Israel then maybe there is no reason to lift a finger to prevent its break-up. If hating Israel is the core of the Iraqi national identity then that identity is undesirable.

By the same token, trying to bring radical Muslim groups into the American mainstream without demanding that they shed their anti-Semitism first just feeds the beast of hatred that engenders situations like that at Guantanamo Bay and leads to distorted, perverse policies like the FBI’s decision not to hire Jews as Arabic linguists.

Wednesday’s Palestinian terror attack on the CIA employees in Gaza yet again made clear that the same forces are at war against both US and Israel. This alone should signal clearly to all concerned that there is no reason to worry about the so-called dual loyalties of Sephardic American Jews. These loyalties are not in conflict. They are identical.

American Jews are victims of reprehensible bigotry when the FBI refuses their applications for service because it believes that as Jews they will be less equipped to fight America and Israel’s common enemies as Americans. At the same time, America's attempt to enlist what it believes is the "moderate Muslim leadership" in the war on terror is fraught with risk.

In people such as the Sephardic Arabic speakers whose applications were apparently rejected by the FBI, the US has a valuable store of human capital for its war on terror. Better it be used than squandered for the sake of pandering to radical Arab groups.

In Iraq the stakes are just as high. By tolerating anti-Semitic and anti-Israel attitudes in Iraq, the US is courting disaster. Because what else would you call a US-appointed Iraqi regime that declares war on Israel?

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Did the IAF's Sunday's bombing of the Ein Saheb terrorist base in Syria turn a new page in Israel's war on terrorism? Both Israel's critics and Israel's friends seem to think it did.

On the critics' side, we have condemnations from Europe and the UN and others who've adopted Damascus's whining and mendacious line. In this version of events, Israel committed naked aggression against an innocent state in an act that could lead the region to all-out war. For this, these critics claim, Israel should be condemned by the Security Council and all right-thinking people.

In answer, supporters of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon point out that Syria is the home base of over a dozen Palestinian terrorist organizations; that it is the primary enabler of the Iranian Hizbullah in Lebanon; and that if it weren't for Syrian support, groups such as Islamic Jihad, which carried out Saturday's massacre in Haifa, or Hamas, which carried out last month's massacres in Jerusalem and Tzrifin, would be hard pressed to operate. Strike Syria, and the terrorists' financial, political, and military bases are dealt a strategic blow.

As for the US, George W. Bush made it clear that his heart is with Israel's supporters. When the president said that, under similar circumstances the US would act as Israel did, he gave the firmest recognition to date that America and Israel are fighting the same war on terrorism. Yet by warning Ariel Sharon to avoid escalation, Bush also signaled that our critics are right to claim that we are responsible for endangering regional stability.

All these reactions – critical, supportive, or hedged – are, of course, utterly predictable.

From the UN, the EU, the international Left, and their supporters in the media, one has come to expect condemnation for any step Israel takes to defend itself. These critics usually offer pro forma condemnations of terrorist attacks against Israelis. But they will always leave open the question of whether Israel isn't actually responsible for the murder of its own citizens.

The reaction of Sharon's supporters is also predictable. By bringing its counteroffensive against state sponsors of terrorism, they say, Israel can be viewed as moving in a direction that can bring us victory in this long war of attrition.

From Bush there were no surprises, either. As usual, the president said that Israel is allowed to strike back in a limited manner. And as usual, the president warned Israel that its reactions should not go beyond the point of saber rattling.

In other words, far from turning a new leaf, Israel's war on terrorism stands pretty much exactly where it did before the Haifa massacre.

As the IDF was quick to point out after the strike, Syria is literally chock full of high-impact operational terrorist targets – everything from the homes of terrorist leaders to their headquarters. But instead of attacking actual targets, we went after an empty camp. In the process, we once again demonstrated – to ourselves as well as to our enemies – that we are unwilling to take the steps needed to win this war.

What are those steps?

Terrorists and their state sponsors fight by operating where they are strongest and their enemy is weakest. While the Syrian air force is no match against Israel's, an Islamic Jihad terrorist with an explosive belt strapped to her waist is a match for a security guard in a restaurant. And since terrorists wish to see Israel destroyed, there is no difference to them between an F-16 and a baby. Both are valued targets.

On such a battleground, Israel cannot win. All the security guards in the world cannot prevent a lone bomber from finding a restaurant or a bus to bomb or a home to attack.

What Israel can do is fight the war on a battlefield where it can win. A suicide bomber may indeed be "undeterrable." But his (or her) minders and paymasters and supporters may nonetheless be demoralized if they are hounded and killed, if their safe houses are destroyed, if their financial assets are frozen, and if they lose faith in their own invincibility.

By identifying Syria and Iran and the Palestinian Authority along with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hizbullah as legitimate targets in the war on terror, the government has shown it knows where to train its sights – in theory.

In practice, however, the government contents itself with sending signals: surrounding but not storming the Mukata, dropping empty munitions on Sheikh Yassin's house, firing missiles at empty camps in Syria, negotiating with Arafat's handpicked emissaries, and so on.

According to Sharon's supporters, the value of this is that it simultaneously sends a warning to Israel's enemies while placating the relevant arbiters of Israel's right to self-defense. Such a strategy, they add, allows Israel to ratchet up its responses gradually without losing US support.

But as the reactions to Sunday's air strike show, this strategy brings about precisely the opposite set of results. On the one hand, we placate our enemies by showing exactly where our self-imposed limits lie. On the other, we invite the usual hysterical reactions from our critics and only the tepid support of the Bush administration.

Predictability has many uses in politics, diplomacy, commerce, and friendship. This is not so in the war on terrorism. As we have for over three years – ever since former prime minister Ehud Barak started issuing, and then backing away from, ultimatums to Arafat – we have shown that we will not take the steps that need to be taken; that we will always wait until the next terrorist outrage to act; that we will brandish our big stick but never use it. Far from deterring terrorists, we embolden them.

In the meantime, Israel's enemies blame us for the crime of existing. They continue to indoctrinate, arm, and finance cadres who will soon find their battle in the field of their choosing – a cafe, a school, a hospital, or a home. At least we don't have to scratch our heads about what will happen in the aftermath of the next attack. It is all so maddeningly predictable.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

FORT STEWART, Georgia - I arrived at Fort Stewart, the home of the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division, early this week to meet with the soldiers and officers of the 2-7 Mechanized Infantry Battalion, 1st Brigade, who had recently returned home after completing their deployment in Iraq.

It was with these men that I hitched a ride through Iraq as an embedded reporter during the major combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The 3rd Infantry was the main combat force in Iraq from the March 19 invasion through the fall of Baghdad on April 9. After the city's fall, the 1st Brigade took control of neighborhoods on the eastern side of the city, where the bulk of the population lives.

"We relieved the 87th Marine Regiment of their sectors east of the Tigris River. When we arrived, we felt like we had entered the Wild West.

Buildings were burning, car-jackings and looting were rampant. We had Iraqi police officers wearing military uniforms armed with AK-47s who we assumed were Iraqi military forces," 1st Brigade Commander Col. William Grimsley explains. "We held the zones until June 5. During those two months we oversaw the transformation of the area from a chaotic environment to an ordered city."

From the soldiers' perspective, the main US failure in Iraq to date has little to do with the situation on the ground. The main failure is the inability to transmit the reality they experienced daily to the American people.

"Our biggest mistake was letting go of the embedded media," says 2-7 executive officer Maj. Kevin Cooney.

"After the embedded reporters left, the reports coming out had no context. The reporters didn't understand the situation. They had no sense of what was actually going on and they didn't seem to care. They acted like ambulance chasers moving from one attack against US soldiers to the next without giving any sense of the work that was being accomplished," says Maj. Rod Coffey.

That work was vast. They opened schools; they paid civil service employees; they purchased school supplies; they hired contractors to fix and build sewage, electrical and water lines; they secured vital installations; and they cultivated ties with Iraqi citizens who were capable of providing services to the citizenry and information and intelligence to the US forces.

Much of this work was conducted in the blazing summer heat when the soldiers themselves were living in substandard conditions with sporadic electricity and water supplies. In the meantime, they conducted surprise sweeps and raids in search of arms, fugitives and terrorists.

How were they able to make the transition from fighters to administrators? According to the men, the main reason was the warm welcome they received from the Iraqi people.

"Everywhere we went we were surrounded by dozens of children smiling and waving at us."

"Old people came out of these hovels they lived in and gave us bread and invited us into their homes.

"We knew that they were giving us what they had and we understood how much they appreciated that we had liberated them from Saddam," says Specialist Jennings Roberts.

Grimsley notes ruefully that after the embedded reporters left, the brigade had great difficulty persuading journalists to accompany his men on their missions to report on what they were doing.

"They were all living in the Palestine Hotel and did not want to leave," he says of the reporters.

"We had to beg them to come out with us. And on a number of occasions when they did come, and we knew that they had written up what they had seen, we found that for whatever reason, their newspapers did not publish their stories."

The sense the men share of being welcome in Iraq by the majority of Iraqis is backed up by recent opinion polling data which show that the majority of Iraqis do not want the US forces to leave.Yet largely because of the slant of the news reports about Iraq, it is hard to grasp just how far the US has come in a country where tens of thousands took to the streets on September 12, 2001 to celebrate the bombings of New York and Washington.

The men are quick to admit that liberating Iraq physically was easier than shepherding its people towards democracy and fair governance.

"The Iraqis who worked under the regime are incapable of exerting authority. They survived under Saddam by carrying out instructions without question and they still refuse to make a decision without receiving permission from us," says Grimsley. "We realized this when they asked us for permission to open schools. We couldn't understand why they needed our permission to do something that seemed obvious to us, but then it sunk in that what we were seeing was the result of the perversion of a society that lived under total repression for more than 30 years."

The mindset will doubtlessly take years to change.

Even the capture or killing of Saddam will only solve part of the problem. The other problem is that the Bush administration is not sending a message of absolute resolve, while those forces who wish the US to fail are. By targeting GIs and supporters of the Iraqi Governing Council, these forces are working to create a perception of mayhem and chaos that flies in the face of the actual progress on the ground.

The Western media isn't helping matters. In underreporting the successes the US has achieved while over-reporting the difficulties, it creates irrational expectations among the American public that Iraq should be completely rehabilitated in a matter of months.

Equally unhelpful are the so-called multilateralists within the international community, who understand that American success in turning Iraq around bodes ill for the United Nations' bid to establish itself as the ultimate arbiter of global affairs.

Then too, the administration perhaps did not fully comprehend the magnitude of the task it was undertaking when the decision was made to go to war. Not only would Iraq have to be de-Baathified in the way Germany was de-Nazified. It would have to do so while some of Iraq's neighboring states remained under the control of totalitarian, American-baiting regimes intent on reversing the results of the war.

Yet in spite of the negative publicity, the international hostility, the meddling of neighbors and the work of saboteurs, US forces are quietly succeeding in their task. The men all noted that the day that Uday and Qusay Hussein were killed by US forces, the celebration on the streets of Baghdad put Independence Day fireworks to shame.

"And yet, when the 11PM curfew came around, the carnivals abruptly ended and everyone went home," Grimsley explains. "The Iraqis have a healthy respect for power judiciously applied." In other words, Iraqis both applaud and respect the US for deposing their oppressors.

The soldiers paid no attention to the politics in Washington while they were in Iraq. They try to avoid watching the news now that they are home. But when they do see the reports, they are troubled by the distortion.

"The reporters that came to see us when we returned home ignored the tremendous pride we all feel in what we accomplished while we were over there," says Coffey.

Coffey himself was the subject of an odd front page photograph in the New York Times three weeks ago. The photo-editor lopped off his head to show a picture of his son embracing a headless torso in uniform, weighed down with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. Coffey's son was crying. ("Probably because he had just gotten into a fight with his older brother. He wasn't crying over me, I had already been home for a week.") The decorated chest evoked no emotion from a reader.

In a way, this bizarre photograph tells the entire story of the campaign to prevent the US from winning. If the American public is deprived of a view of its heroes, who won a war and are winning the peace, they will, sooner or later, abandon the fight.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.