It’s bad enough that the US is involved in a massive, costly and ultimately unwinnable war. It’s even worse that, despite the lessons learned from Vietnam, we don’t take good care of the ones who pay a fearful price when fighting that war.
Read this rundown on returning vets.
“Your broke it, you pay for it” is the rule at Pottery Barn, shouldn’t it be the rule for the Army too?
We spent last night down on Stanford campus with some friends, picnicking, enjoying a concert, and finally, a fireworks display. Great weather, good friends, good food, and a good time.
Except at the end. The soundtrack for the fireworks was a standard Boston Pops set of classic American war music. The glorification of war and of American armed might in the music struck me as both ironic and sad, given how badly the war in Iraq is going. Usually, when I see fireworks, I find myself thinking about John Adams and how he though the 4th should be celebrated, and wondering what he would think of the America of today. This year, though, I mostly though about the soldiers over in Iraq, and what they might be thinking of today.
The sooner they all come home, the better.
American troop deaths in Iraq this month now number more than 90, and there’s still 11 days to go before the month ends. Yet in just 10 weeks, the US is supposed to hand over sovereignty of Iraq over — although to whom is far from clear.
This would all be funny if it weren’t so terrible. It makes me feel like we’re trapped, like a mouse caught on a glue trap, nothing to choose from except bad alternatives, and what’s worse is that it all could have been prevented.
And now people like Paul Bremer, as well as most of the military in Iraq, seem to think that only more violence is going to break this bad cycle and fix things. Have they learned nothing from the history of the Middle East this past 100 years? Increasing the violence is only going to breed more violence.
This is the kind of crap that makes me feel bad to be an American.
While listening to ABC’s “This Week” this morning on my way to work, I started to hear echoes of Robert McNamara in Donald Rumsfeld. Look at what he said today: “It’s clearly a tragic day for America,” Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in Washington. “In a long, hard war, we’re going to have tragic days. But they’re necessary.” (source). Maureen Dowd wrote a great column on this very subject a few days ago. Her best line, and one oh so apt for Rumsfeld’s quote today: ‘In the Panglossian Potomac, calamities happen for the best. One could almost hear the doubletalk echo of that American officer in Vietnam who said: “It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.”‘
In the early days of the war on Iraq, my husband and I discussed whether we weren’t getting into another Vietnam. As time passes and the shadow war continues, I grow more sure that President Bush and his crew have not learned the lessons of history and have committing our troops to another multi-year battle against an enemy we cannot defeat in a land we do not understand.
I feel both sad and angry that who knows how many of our men and women will have to pay the ultimate price until this mess gets straightened out. I just hope our next president will be able get us out of there quickly and with some faint shreds of our honor intact.
Taken from his NY Times column today:
It’s time for the Bush team to admit it made a grievous error in disbanding Iraq’s Army – which didn’t even fight us – and declare: “We thank all the nations who offered troops, but we think the Iraqi people can and must secure their own country. So we’re inviting all former Iraqi Army soldiers (not Republican Guards) to report back to duty. For every two Iraqi battalions that return to duty (they can weed out their own bad apples), we will withdraw an American one. So Iraqis can liberate themselves. Our motto is Iraq for the Iraqis.”
I think it’s a very interesting idea. Of course, if we were to do it, depending on the sympathies of the soldiers who re-up, the door is open for a religious takeover of Iraq. That isn’t what our soldiers died for. But better ideas are few and far between right now.