“Thank you for peace”

This is the photo that I believe should win Michael Yon a Pulitzer Prize. It will, should we not lose out heart, be studied by schoolchildren and seen in documentaries for decades, if not longer. It is the photo that shows the world that Iraq can be, and wants to be, a free nation ruled not by fear and the strongest fist but by the will and desire of the people who call it home.

Here is the story behind the photo, told by Yon himself.

A Muslim man had invited the American soldiers from “Chosen” Company 2-12 Cavalry to the church, where I videotaped as Muslims and Christians worked and rejoiced at the reopening of St John’s, an occasion all viewed as a sign of hope.

The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. ” Thank you, thank you,” the people were saying. 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 men and women were holding bells, and for the first time in memory freedom rang over the ravaged land between two rivers.

A few bloggers have had some excellent things to say about this photo, and what it tells them about the country in which it was taken. First up, Michelle Malkin.

Yes, Christian persecution remains rampant in the Muslim world and apostasy is still punishable by death. But there are glimmers of good news, and they won’t be broadcast on the nightly news or the front page of the NYTimes. Thanks to the lens of Michael Yon, we can see a fuller, truer picture of Iraq than the “grim milestone”-driven legacy media lens allows us to see. That deserves thanks and praise, too.

Indeed it does, and if there is any sanity left among them, the Pulitzer Committee will agree and give Michael the recognition he has earned the past couple of years. I firmly believe that this photo will, if we keep heart, be seen as every bit as iconic and revered as the one taken atop Mount Suribachi, and for many of the same reasons. The only thing that can prevent Yon’s photo from touching the hearts and courage of millions of Americans is that very few Americans will get to see it, because the MSM isn’t very likely at all to run it on the front pages of newspapers and the leads of evening newscasts.

But there’s more to this story that I don’t think is quite so evident from the photo. Ms. Malkin touched on it when she called it a “glimmer of good news” but The Anchoress brings it right up to the front where we can see it for what it really is: normal people doing a perfectly normal thing.

What I see in this picture is something more than a historic moment – I don’t even know if that’s what we should call it – I see the sort of thing people do when they are neighbors, when they are working together for their neighborhood, for the good of all who live there, and that makes it seem less “historic” than calmly, wonderfully normal, ordinary, wholesome and sane. I see tolerance, which so many are so certain cannot exist in Iraq – or anywhere in the Middle East. Tolerance in the best sense of the word – converting no one, insisting on nothing beyond ordinary acceptance; tolerance that gives people room to live their lives.

But if it’s such a “normal” photo, then why am I making such a big deal out of it. Why does it take my breath away a little bit?

For years, we’ve been told of the unmitigated disaster we have made in Iraq. We were told that it would be, that it had been, that it would always be, a humanitarian disaster and a forever quagmire and a horrible waste of lives and money. We’ve been told that what we have done is not worth the cost, in cash or blood. We’ve been told that if we feel in the least bit good about what we’re doing in Iraq that we are the thralls of the oil tycoons or amoral bloodthirsty animals. We have read about our mistakes in giant font from the largest newspapers in the world. We have had our failings magnified on large screen televisions, being the frowning faces and wagging fingers of our supposed moral betters.

We have heard all of those things and more and we have had to be patient, to let the natural course of human nature and long grievances play out. We have had to watch, heartsick, as our soldiers died amidst the petty squabbles of a society nearly ruined by tyranny and invented hostilities. We have had to hold a faith that has been, at times, nearly impossible to hold. Some of us have walked away from that faith. Some have turned on that faith and those of us who still hold it like a starving dog on a raw steak.

So when we see this photo, this simple image of neighbors who would have been killing each other just a few months ago, our heart leaps because this is what we have been waiting to see for years. This is the coming together of the Iraqi people, writ small, that surely can happen in hundreds of cities and towns. Indeed, as Yon has found, it is happening elsewhere. But this picture, perhaps more than any others I have seen, illustrates the simple decency of neighbor and community that we have prayed would soon come to Iraq.

I’ll let Chris Muir have the last word because, quite honestly, today’s strip wins the whole internet.

(via memeorandum, and Michael Ledeen)