We had our only face-to-face meeting last fall in Greenwich Village, when he attended a book reading and bar party for Choice: The Best of Reason and This Is Burning Man. He was dressed like an international man of intrigue, more like a spy than a journalist—long trench coat or duster, long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, stylish mustache and goatee. He was carrying an umbrella that seemed like a cane. When he introduced himself, I thought of the demonic Robert DeNiro character in the movie Angel Heart. There was some sort of intriguing yet comforting darkness about him—you could tell instantly that here was a man who had seen firsthand the hopes and horrors of human struggle—that he dispelled by smiling and laughing often.

Arthur Chrenkoff conducted a long interview with Vincent on his blog a month before the first election in Iraq. Most of it is just as pertinent today.

King Banian interviewed Vincent for the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the day before his last trip to Iraq. (There are painful passages in this interview: Vincent says "people tend to exaggerate security threats," talks about Basra being safer than Baghdad, says he wants to have fewer adventures and just interview people.)

Vincent reminds David Paulin of a previous generation of politically engaged journalists in a war zone:

Vincent was a heir to the tradition of some of the best reporting of the Vietnam War, a conflict in which a handful of idealistic and prescient journalists went beyond official sources and news conferences -- Saigon's so-called "Five O'clock Follies" -- and ventured into the field to see the war up close, through the eyes of American soldiers and Vietnamese.

Long before it was fashionable, they wrote of Vietnam's self-defeating and atrocity-producing polices: free-fire zones; the use of "body counts" to measure military success; the apparent lack of popular support for the U.S. cause; the failure to win "heart and minds" in the countryside. Some of the most interesting early reporting in this regard was in magazines like The New Yorker and Ramparts, the defunct New Left magazine.

. . . . Vincent struck me as a man of the left; but not the left that one sees today. In his articles, Vincent skewered "peace activists" visiting Iraq who cared less about the suffering of ordinary Iraqis than about criticizing the U.S.-led invasion -- or "liberation" -- as he preferred to call it.

Kathryn Jean Lopez' obituary for Vincent also links to many of the articles he wrote for National Review. These pieces post-date The Red Zone, which was published in 2004.

The words in the cartoon at the head of this post come from an interview with Vincent in Front Page. Let's give him the last word:

Front Page: You discuss how crucial words are in describing the war in Iraq and how the liberal media has damaged the cause of freedom by manipulating them. . . . Can you talk a bit about this -- how the Left shapes the boundaries of debate and dialogue by controlling our language?

Vincent: Words matter. Words convey moral clarity. Without moral clarity, we will not succeed in Iraq. That is why the terms the press uses to cover this conflict are so vital. For example, take the word “guerillas.” As you noted, mainstream media sources like the New York Times often use the terms “insurgents” or “guerillas” to describe the Sunni Triangle gunmen, as if these murderous thugs represented a traditional national liberation movement. But when the Times reports on similar groups of masked reactionary killers operating in Latin American countries, they utilize the phrase “paramilitary death squads.” Same murderers, different designations. Yet of the two, “insurgents”—and especially “guerillas”—has a claim on our sympathies that “paramilitaries” lacks. This is not semantics: imagine if the media routinely called the Sunni Triangle gunmen “right wing paramilitary death squads.” Not only would the description be more accurate, but it would offer the American public a clear idea of the enemy in Iraq. And that, in turn, would bolster public attitudes toward the war.

Supporters of the conflict in Iraq bear much blame for allowing the terminology—and, by extension, the narrative—of events to slip from our grasp and into the hands of the anti-war camp. Words and ideas matter. Instead of saying that the Coalition “invaded” Iraq and “occupies” it today, we could more precisely claim that the allies liberated the country and are currently reconstructing it. More than cosmetic changes, these definitions reflect the nobility of our effort in Iraq, and steal rhetorical ammunition from the left.

The most despicable misuse of terminology, however, occurs when Leftists call the Saddamites and foreign jihadists “the resistance.” What an example of moral inversion! For the fact is, paramilitary death squads are attacking the Iraqi people. And those who oppose the killers--the Iraqi police and National Guardsmen, members of the Allawi government, people like Nour—they are the “resistance.” They are preventing Islamofascists from seizing Iraq, they are resisting evil men from turning the entire nation into a mass slaughterhouse like we saw in re-liberated Falluja. Anyone who cares about success in our struggle against Islamofascism—or upholds principles of moral clarity and lucid thought—should combat such Orwellian distortions of our language.

Steven Vincent Blogger Commemoration - Part I
Steven Vincent Blogger Commemoration - Part III
Steven Vincent Blogger Commemoration - Part IV