What a treat it was to read this interview with Michael Kelly, conducted just a few weeks before he was killed in Iraq this past April. (link via Michael Totten) Kelly never got to see the statue of Saddam falling in Baghdad, as he died five days before Iraq's liberation. But he predicted it fairly accurately:
I would say it's intended as a war of liberation, and I would bet an awful lot that it's going to work out that way and very quickly. It's not a war of occupation or a war of aggression or a war of imperialism. It's intended as a war of liberation. It is in a sense unfinished business, or what the first war should have been but wasn't. That is the truth about it. I think what people will see—and I guess everybody will see what happens—but in the end, I do think that you will see an honest-to-God picture of people in Iraq and Baghdad cheering America.
Most of the interview concerns Kelly's first trip to Iraq, before and during the first Gulf War in 1991. Asked about what he might have learned during that trip, Kelly shares this insight:
One of the things I found out which is quite interesting personally is that people, at least men, I don't know about women, but men go to great lengths in life to not find out the answer to the question, How brave am I? War presents you with specific opportunities to find out the answer to that question—you can't avoid it at all. The question is asked for you and answered for you, in front of you and in front of other people. It's interesting, because you see it of all the people around you and you see it of yourself. And that's knowledge you have for the rest of your life.
Kelly thought he'd be safer this time around, "embedded" as he was with U.S. troops:
I probably shouldn't say this, because it makes me sound like the undramatic middle-aged man I am, but I don't think it will be that dangerous for me. Last time it was different, because I was wandering around by myself in the desert. This time, if I go over, and it looks like I will, I'll go over attached to a U.S. military outfit, so I'll be surrounded by a large number of young men with automatic weapons. That's a luxury I didn't have last time.
Sadly, he was wrong. Kelly was in a vehicle with a couple of those "young men" when they came under enemy fire, and while attempting to evade that fire, lost control of the vehicle and crashed, killing all three men. This was a brilliant, humble, funny man. Read the whole thing.