Thank You, America
Faith and hope, brought to you by American fighting men and women.
Boston Herald: Faith in the end of violence is alive in battle-scarred Baghdad
Photo by Michael Yon/www.michaelyon-online.com
By O’Ryan Johnson and Jules Crittenden | Monday, November 12, 2007
The Iraqi Muslims and Christians probably didn’t know Veterans Day was only a few days away.
But after reopening the Church of St. John in Baghdad and replacing the cross on its dome, they asked their American guests - embedded free-lancer Michael Yon and the soldiers of C Company, 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry - to deliver a message to America.
“ ‘Thank you, thank you,’ ” Yon reported at his Web site, www.michaelyon-online.com. “One man said, ‘Thank you for peace.’ Another man, a Muslim, said, “All the people, all the people in Iraq, Muslim and Christian, is brother.”
The remarkable scene of a church reopening in battle-scarred Baghdad follows the dramatic drop in violence in Iraq, as the counter-insurgency strategy ordered by President Bush and executed by Gen. David Petraeus and hundreds of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops has begun to take hold. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki yesterday announced a 77 percent drop in attacks and declared sectarian violence “now closed.”
Lt. Col. Robert McLaughlin, a 1981 graduate of Lexington High School, now commanding the “Black Dragons,” 5th Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery, has been stationed in once-deadly Anbar Province as well as the Za’ab Triangle, another insurgent hotspot. But McLaughlin told the Herald he’s seen the change firsthand over the past year.
“This is clearly a struggle for the loyalty of the people. Many external influences want things to remain unbalanced. It is up to the Iraqis themselves to come together to defeat that threat and build a united country,” McLaughlin said.
Whole thing here.
Prior re Yon’s photo: Iraqi Iwo.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:12 am on Monday, November 12, 2007
2 Responses to “Thank You, America”
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November 12th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Good Oh, Jules. Did you have anything to do with procuring that photo?
November 12th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
it’s a lovely picture, but I can’t help but wonder: are Christians allowed on top of Mosques??