Reason to Believe

If I listened long enough to you
Id find a way to believe that its all true
Knowing that you lied straight-faced while I cried
Still I look to find a reason to believe.

Reason to Believe - Rod Stewart

While reading about the attack by the Taliban on US forces in Afghanistan during which 9 American servicemen lost their lives, Rod Stewart's Reason to Believe, a song that was popular over 30 years ago, came into my mind.  The song was about love betrayed and I was hearing it while reading accounts of the desperate battle of our men under attack by an overwhelming force at a lonely outpost near the Pakistani border. 

Through a chain of internal associations I recognized that the song captured my feelings of betrayal at how the battle was depicted but even more strongly a powerful reason to believe in our troops.  First, the betrayal, from the New York Times:

Taliban Breached NATO Base in Deadly Clash

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban insurgents who attacked a remote American-run outpost near the Pakistan border on Sunday numbered nearly 200 fighters, almost three times the size of the allied force, and some breached the NATO compound in a coordinated assault that took the defenders by surprise, Western officials said Monday.

The attackers were driven back in a pitched four-hour battle, and they appeared to suffer scores of dead and wounded of their own, but the toll they inflicted was sobering. The base and a nearby observation post were held by just 45 American troops and 25 Afghan soldiers, two senior allied officials said, asking for anonymity while an investigation was under way.

With nine Americans dead and at least 15 injured, that means that one in five of the American defenders was killed and nearly half the remainder were wounded. Four Afghan soldiers were also wounded.

American and Afghan forces started building the makeshift base just last week, and its defenses were not fully in place, one of the senior allied officials said. In some places, troops were using their vehicles as barriers against insurgents.

The militants apparently detected the vulnerability and moved quickly to exploit it in a predawn assault in which they attacked from two directions, American officials said.

It was the first time insurgents had partly breached any of the three dozen outposts that American and Afghan forces operate jointly across the country, according to a Western official who insisted on anonymity in providing details of the operation.

There was nothing obviously noxious about the story, yet I could not shake the feeling of betrayal.  I understand that I do not like how the New York Times presents their news but there was something troubling about the story even taking their bias into account.  When I read Bill Roggio's account of the battle, the feeling crystallized.  The New York Times report was a betrayal of the worst kind.

Joint al Qaeda and Taliban force behind Nuristan base attack

By Bill Roggio July 14, 2008 9:03 PM

Yesterday's deadly complex attack on a joint US and Afghan outpost in Nuristan province was carried out by a large, mixed force of Taliban, al Qaeda, and allied extremist groups operating eastern Afghanistan.

Sunday's assault occurred just three days after 45 US soldiers, likely from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and 25 Afghan troops established a new combat outpost in the town of Wanat, which straddles the provincial border between Nuristan and Kunar. The troops had little time to learn the lay of the land, establish local contacts, and build an intelligence network. The fortifications were not fully completed, according to initial reports.

A complex attack

The assault was carried out in the early morning of July 13 after the extremist forces, numbering between 200 and 500 fighters, took over a neighboring village. "What they [the Taliban] did was they moved into an adjacent village - which was close to the combat outpost - they basically expelled the villagers and used their houses to attack us," an anonymous senior Afghan defense ministry official told Al Jazeera. Tribesmen in the town stayed behind "and helped the insurgents during the fight," General Mohammad Qasim Jangalbagh, the provincial police chief, told The Associated Press.

The Taliban force then conducted a complex attack, coordinating a ground assault with supporting fires. Approximately 100 enemy fighters were reported to have moved close to the base while under a heavy barrage of machinegun fire, rocket-propelled grenades, and mortars. The fighters advanced on the outpost from three sides.

Taliban fighters breached the outer perimeter of the outpost but were repelled. US troops called in artillery, helicopter, and air support to help beat back the attacking force. Casualties were heavy on both sides, with nine US soldiers and 40 Taliban fighters killed during the assault. Fifteen US and four Afghan soldiers were also wounded in the attack.

Reading the Times report one can only conclude that the assault on the outpost was a triumphal and bold success by the Taliban (without any mention of their allies.)  Our forces were nearly over run, we sustained terrible casualties, and we barely held on; some of the Taliban even penetrates within the compound itself!

Yet from Bill Roggio's account and from reading between the lines of the Times story, what one realizes is that the battle was an incredible display of courage and cool under fire and was, militarily, a tremendous victory for our men at a terrible cost.  The Taliban had the high ground, the element of surprise, and overwhelming numbers yet our men fought them off.  The Taliban planned for this to be an Alamo or Little Big Horn but we held and prevailed.  This is the kind of battle about which songs were once sung; this is the kind of battle that once would have been fodder for a Hollywood big budget movie extolling the bravery and fighting spirit of our men yet the Times turned it into a defeat.

Yesterday's copycat bulldozer attack in Jerusalem gave me further reason to believe.   Jameel at the Muqata noticed an incredible series of coincidences linking the two bulldozer attacks.  Both attacks were stopped by men who shared essential characteristics: [HT: Robert Avrech]

• Law Abiding Citizens, licensed to carry weapons
• Active IDF soldiers or in the IDF reserves
• Nationalistic, Religiously-observant Jews
• Determination - belief in our purpose of living in Eretz Yisrael.

The Elder and Sultan both noticed that the hero was a settler, that epitome of right wing quasi-fascism much reviled by the intellectuals of the left.

Two different fronts int eh war against Islamic terror; two different constellations of heroic men.  Only someone who believes that he or she is protecting something worth preserving and defending can put himself on the line.  For some it is the belief in a just and loving G-d, for others in a people and nation that has proved itself, not perfect, but better than most.  For many, it is a combination of these truths that they believe.  Too many of the sophisticated cognoscenti who profess to represent the embodiment of our ethos have lost any semblance of belief in the goodness and rightness of our culture.  They no longer have any reason to believe, to our great misfortune.