MILITARY MUTINY: "I will never trust them again."

"I now know I wrongfully placed my faith and trust in a presidential administration hopelessly mired in incompetence, hubris, and lack of accountability. It planned a war based on false intelligence and unrealistic assumptions. It has strategically surrendered the condition of victory in Iraq to people who do not share our vision, values, or interests. The Bush administration has proven successful at only one thing in Iraq--painting us into a corner with no feasible exit…I will never trust them again."
--Christopher H. Sheppard, former Marine captain who served two tours of duty in Iraq and took part in the battle of Fallujah, November, 2004. Quoted from his piece, "Coming Home--Disillusioned," The Seattle Times, April 12, 2006.

"My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special provinces of those who have never had to execute these missions--or bury the result."
--Lieutenant General Greg Neubold (ret) "Why Iraq Was a Mistake," Time magazine, April 9, 2006.

"Make no mistake. The retired generals who are speaking out against Rumsfeld in interviews and op-ed pieces express the views of hundreds of other officers on active duty. When I recently asked an Army officer with extensive Iraq combat experience how many of his colleagues wanted Rumsfeld out, he guessed 75 percent. Based on my own conversations with senior officers over the past three years, I suspect that figure may be low."
--David Ignatius , "Replace Rumsfeld," Washington Post, April 14, 2006.


This is my first blog entry, other than updates on my friend Jamie Woodard's critically injured Marine son, in almost a month, and there is a reason for that.

I almost quit.

I had this feeling that nobody was out there. Nobody was listening, or cared. That I was a voice in the wilderness, but like the proverbial tree falling in the woods that nobody hears--if nobody CARES, then what's the point?

I had to do some soul-searching and seek to figure out what I wanted to do, how I wanted to do it, and why--or if I wanted to do it at all.

And then I read the piece by Leonard Pitts, Jr, in the Baltimore Sun, "Gestures of Conscience Bring Solace," about speaking truth to power, especially when it goes against the accepted grain. He said that, when great injustices are perpetrated upon a people, history often looks back and asks the question, How could that have happened? How could the people have let that happen?

He talked about the era of Joseph McCarthy's bullying, innuendoes and lies that had Americans suspecting their neighbors of being Communists…of the practice in World War II, of shipping Japanese Americans--many of whom had sons fighting in the war--off to live in internment camps on the Pacific coast…of the years of Jim Crow, when African Americans were being strung up and lynched for no other reason than that they sassed a white or gazed at a white woman.

Where were good Americans when these injustices, these TRAVESTIES, were taking place? Did no one speak out?

Mr. Pitts knows that true believers in any president or any cause will not be convinced if evidence is screaming into their faces, and that those who dissent already know and need no convincing.

All true.

But, he adds, "History's verdict is all we have left. And when tomorrow calls today into account, some of us want to say we stood up. We called out. We were not silent. "

Mr. Pitts wants to be counted among the number who spoke out, no matter how unpopular the cause or how disinterested the listeners. "The rest of us are left…trying to make certain that when the official record is written, we are not indicted by our silence."

I consider myself a proud member of what I like to call, The 25% Club.

I am referring to the roll-up to war in Iraq, when only a measley 25% of us openly protested what I called at the time A BOGUS WAR. We did so at great risk of being openly booed, as Michael Moore was when he accepted his Academy Award for Farenheit 911, of being accused of being unpatriotic, as triple-amputee and Vietnam vet Max Cleland was, of being told, if we had loved ones in the military, that we were undermining their efforts and destroying their morale if we did not stand silent and wave the flag.

I actually got into a shouting match with my sister-in-law, Bobbie, about it in May of 2003. At a busy public restaurant. During a family meal. When we were supposed to be celebrating my daughter's college graduation.

And now. NOW.

Now, the numbers are almost completely, well, FLIP-FLOPPED, to coin a phrase. Now something like 75% of the American people question this war, believe this war was a mistake, believe the president and his minions lied us into the war, or at the very least, feel profoundly uneasy and anxious about just how long we are going to be bogged down in it before the comparisons to Viet Nam become more uncomfortably apt.

Only about 25% of the American people still stubbornly believe that the war was a good idea, is being handled correctly, and that Rummy and our commander-in-chief are doing a heck of a job.

Now, we have a right, indeed, a moral imperative, to say, We told you so, but you wouldn't listen.

And let me tell you something. As I write these words, my son is fighting with the Marine Corps in his second deployment to Iraq, after having taken part in the historic battle of Fallujah in November of 2004, and he is sick and tired of the struggle, war-weary to his very bones, angry and bitter that they no longer have any idea what their mission is any more except survival.

Do you think it gives me any great satisfaction to have been proven right? When my son's life is in terrible danger every moment of every day? Do you know how it makes me feel?

FILLED WITH A RIGHTEOUS RAGE. That's how I feel. I shake my fist in the direction of Washington, D.C., and I SHOUT…

Only now.

ONLY NOW.

Only now, I am not alone. Let anyone DARE question the patriotism of no less than SEVEN retired generals from every branch in the service, some of whom served under the mighty Donald Rumsfeld in Iraq…Let anyone DARE accuse them of undermining the troops.

"The cost of flawed leadership continues to be paid in blood. The willingness of our forces to shoulder such a load should make it a sacred obligation to get our defense policy right. They must be absolutely sure that the commitment is for a cause as honorable as the sacrifice."
--Liet. Gen. Greg Neubold (ret), "Why Iraq Was a Mistake," Time magazine, April 9, 2006.

Let anyone DARE accuse them of being political partisans…let anyone DARE say they are merely reflecting a "liberal media."

Go ahead. Say it to their faces--especially you chickenhawks who were so quick to send OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN into battle when you, yourself never served, never sent a child away to die.

You have to understand something about the military culture. Unquestioning obedience is literally brainwashed into every soldier, sailor, and Marine: it is the standout lesson of boot camp.

And there is a powerful tradition in the military of not speaking out in defiance of their commander-in-chief, most especially not during a war. Privately, yes. Publicly, no.

So, for these high-ranking officers, some of whom protested the war from the beginning, to speak out now in clear public forums is not something that they have easily done. It took great anguished soul-searching on the part of each and every one.

But they can't stand by. They can't stand by and watch our boys and girls come home under secret cover of darkness in C-130 planes filled with flag-draped coffins, or onboard medical flights, spidered with tubes and bandages.

Only someone who has known the gut-wrenching terror and glory of battle can possibly understand the high cost of asking someone else to fight your battles. They can't do it any more, and they can't stand by and watch others do it, not like this--with no idea what they're doing there now, or how they got there, or why, or when they'll get out.

They cannot, they will not, be silent.

For the administration to toss aside their protests as so much sour grapes, for the Secretary of Defense to send out memos of talking points to supportive generals so they'll say just the right thing in rebuttal on talk shows, for the president to act as if none of this matters, while every day, more boys and girls die and get shipped off to die…is a profound moral sin.

How DARE they thump the Bible and profess their Christianity loud and clear, all while manipulating and maneuvering a war for purely political purposes, taking advantage of the public trust, spinning lies and near-lies and trumping up false causes, all while lining their own pockets with oil company profits gained from corrupt no-bid White House contracts. (Vice-President Dick Cheney, former CEO of no-bid contract Halliburton, made more than a quarter of a million dollars in profit from that company in 2006 ALONE.)

How DARE they use and abuse our bravest and our finest fighting men and women, dooming thousands to death and thousands more to maiming and mutilation, and almost all of them to lifelong psychic scarring just because, hell, war is good for business. Just ask all those fat-cat defense contractors buzzing around Congress like flies around a corpse. Or just ask the oil companies, who dole out half-a-billion dollar contracts to their retiring CEOs while jacking up the prices at the pump to what is estimated by summer to reach more than $4 a gallon in some parts of the country.

And we all know how good war can be for POLITICS, don't we

“Naturally, the common people don’t want war, but they can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. Tell them they are being attacked, and denounce pacifists for lack of patriotism and endangering the country. It works the same in any country.”
--Herman Goering
Hitler’s Reichmarschall
At the Nuremburg trials.

I am the mother of a Marine Corps fighting man, and I will call out my outrage, I will speak truth to power, I will be counted, I WILL NOT BE SILENT…I will be a word-warrior for the real warriors, I will fight for the fighters...until the politicians who pulled off the greatest scam in this country's military history are not only drummed out of office...but properly burn in hell.