Former Green Beret brings the real story home

Michael Yon is an award-winning journalist, author, and blogger, but he's also no stranger to military service. The former Special Forces soldier was one of the youngest to complete the vigorous Green Beret selection process, and served his country during the 1980s.

Now, Yon has a different mission. He has dedicated his life to relaying unfiltered, true war stories home from Iraq and Afghanistan. His website, which has archives dating back to 2005, is the most comprehensive, detailed, heartfelt war on terror anthology I have come across. I urge all my readers to follow Yon's reporting online and on Facebook. One of his latest dispatches from Afghanistan, Patterns, is a truly enlightening story of what life is like on the ground for American troops.

As we crossed dangerous terrain, a helicopter from some unknown country swooped over the convoy a couple times. The Strykers are bad about getting stuck in the desert, but are better than the heavy humvees, and so we crossed some wadis at 90 degrees. Over my headset, soldiers talked about the high danger of this area. Later that night, we got back to FOB Frontenac and learned that an 82nd Airborne Convoy had been hit in a wadi that we had crossed. The humvees cannot cross wadis like Strykers can. A ranking soldier explained that the humvee had driven in the wadi and been hit. Two soldiers were wounded. Sergeant Albert Ware, an 82nd Airborne soldier from Chicago, had been killed. Albert was originally from Liberia and on his second tour in Afghanistan.

Yon continues:

Sergeant Albert Ware died in service to the United States. He is an American hero. Since this mission, the Coalition has lost about a hundred more. The war goes on.

The Unknown Soldiers wrote about Sgt. Ware on December 22, 2009, and agrees wholeheartedly with Yon's assessment that this Liberian immigrant earned his place as an American hero.

This site also agrees with Yon's assessment of the national media. Yon notes that the mainstream press is "quietly pulling thier reporters from Iraq in the wake of a weakened economy," and that "there is relatively little interest in Afghanistan by comparison to previous interest in Iraq, and so reader interest is low." Yon nails the attitude of managers in many newsrooms, who claim resources and airtime cannot be dedicated to Afghanistan and Iraq if "people don't care." That's why when Michael Jackson died and some woman nicknamed the "octomom" had her babies, day-to-day coverage of the wars virtually vanished from the national narrative. While Yon does offer praise to some media outlets for sticking to the facts, he has not hesitated to admonish journalists when they misrepresent events on the ground in war zones.

If you follow this site and more importantly, Michael Yon's, you won't have to worry about a flavor of the month story distracting from the war effort. You can support Yon's expensive, yet essential efforts to embed in Iraq in Afghanistan by donating on his site. You can also read his books, Danger Close and The Moment Of Truth In Iraq. On the cover of the latter book is a dramatic photo of Maj. Mark Bieger holding a wounded Iraqi girl named Farah in May 2005.


I will close with a quote from Yon, which is not only admirable, but has inspired me deeply to continue this site and its cause.

"I feel no shame in saying I am biased in favor of our troops. Even worse, I feel no shame in calling a terrorist a terrorist".