We Could Be Heroes, Just for One Day
The Hidden Columnists--David Brooks Edition (26 Nov)

In which Mr. Brooks goes in search for heroes from the Iraq war (here's the link to the full column for Times Select subscribers):

Capt. Christopher Ieva comes from a military family. His grandfather won a Bronze Star in World War II and his father served during Vietnam. Throughout his boyhood in Bensonhurst and then North Jersey, Ieva wanted to be a marine.

On May 8, Ieva found himself leading a Marine assault in western Iraq. U.S. forces were in the midst of Operation Matador, an effort to clean out the insurgent safe havens in the towns along the Iraqi-Syrian border.

Ieva and his men were to help bridge the Euphrates River and attack insurgent strongholds to the north. But as they got to the river, they began taking mortar fire from the town of Ubaydi, about three-quarters of a mile away. Ieva's superiors decided they wouldn't cross the river that day; they would take Ubaydi.

Ieva crawled up to a hillside and, as he told me, surveyed the town "Civil War style." Ubaydi is a densely packed grid of concrete town houses in the middle of the desert.

Ieva decided to take two armored vehicles and, as a feint, make a flamboyant charge across the desert on the southwest corner of the town. Two platoons would flank around to the left and launch the main attack. Others would go off to the right to prevent the insurgents from escaping. It was a maneuver Ieva and his men had practiced each Friday after hikes.

Ieva's armored vehicle took off across the desert, and he saw a blaze of muzzle flashes from the walls of the town ahead. The machine gun bullets made a constant "ding-ding-ding" as they hit his vehicle, and the rocket-propelled grenades made loud cracking noises.
[...]

Ieva's men came across a fortified terrorist stronghold, where one of his men, Lawrence R. Philippon, was killed. At another stronghold in that town, according to a gripping piece by Ellen Knickmeyer of The Washington Post, insurgents had built a crawl space under the front door; they lay on their backs and shot upwards through the floor with armor-piercing bullets at marines who came through. The marines needed five assaults and 500-pound bombs from an F/A-18 attack plane to finally take and destroy that house.

I don't have space to describe how Ieva and the other marines fought on that hot spring day, but by the end, about 75 insurgents had been killed and 17 captured.

Two points are worth making. After the Marines took Ubaydi, they didn't have the troops to hold it, and it again became a terrorist safe haven. Over the past two weeks, the Marines have been back in Ubaydi for more bloody fighting. This time they have enough trained Iraqi forces to hold the area, but why weren't there enough troops last spring? Every time you delve into the situation in Iraq, you come away with the phrase "not enough troops" ringing in your head, and I hope someday we will find out how this travesty came about.

Second, why aren't there more stories about war heroes like Christopher Ieva? The casual courage he and his men displayed is awe-inspiring, but most Americans couldn't name a single hero from this war. That's because despite all the amazing things people are achieving in Iraq, we don't tell their stories back here. That's partly because in the post-Vietnam era many Americans - especially those who dominate the culture - are uncomfortable with military valor. That's partly because some people don't want this war to seem like a heroic enterprise. And it's partly because many Americans are aloof from this whole conflict, and couldn't tell you a thing about Operations Matador and Steel Curtain and the other major offensives.

Captain Ieva, who is now serving at Camp Lejeune and has earned his own Bronze Star, has it right: "We're always painted as victims. But we assaulted them." This is a culture that knows how to honor the casualties and the dead, but not the strength and prowess of its warriors.

Look, I'm all for honoring the men and women who put their lives on the line to protect our country. They're amazing individuals doing something I certainly could never do. Driving around Honolulu today, we saw a lot of ribbon magnets supporing the troops (remember, there are a lot of military bases around here), and I was struck by one that read, "Freedom Isn't Free." I agree with that. But I would add, "It Shouldn't Be Misspent."