GO AHEAD REPUBLICAN CONGRESS; PAINT TARGETS ON THE TROOPS' BACKS; THEY'RE NOT YOUR CHILDREN

This week at a news conference, The Wall Street Journal's David Rogers, a Vietnam Veteran, challenged the House majority leader. "In Vietnam, they used to put us out in these fire support bases and hope we would get attacked. Is that what you're doing here?" he asked. "You are putting people in Iraq and hoping they get attacked so you can bring out the terrorists?" Has it come to this?
--"Becoming Terrorist Attractions," Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe, June 23, 2006.

A sergeant on patrol…told a journalist, "You can have my job. It's easy. You just have to drive around all day and wait for somebody to bomb you."
--"Probing a Bloodbath," Evan Thomas and Scott Johnson, Newsweek, June 12, 2006

Reinstate the military draft and see how quickly the United States ends its war in Iraq.

Imagine if all our sons and daughters were at risk for deployment in the desert…If we feared our children would be next up to be gutted like fish, we might be less likely to shake our heads at crazy anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan. If turning 18 meant your kid's boots on the ground, a resolution to pull troops out of the ground by a certain date might grab more than six votes in the US Senate.
--"A Military Draft Might Awaken Us," Joan Vennochi, Boston Globe, June 22, 2006.

The Republican talking-points, delivered to Congress from the White House in a thick 200-page document this past week, so they would all fall in line with Karl Rove's political plan to use the war as a weapon to shoot to kill Democrats who dare disagree, are crystal clear.

All you have to do is spend just a few minutes listening to the 30-second sound bites or spend a little time watching Sunday morning news programs, as I am doing right now.

Listen for some key words: 9/11, 9/11, 9/11 and cut and run, surrender, retreat, defeat.

The fact that the top general on the ground in Iraq, as we speak, is talking about almost the exact same phased withdrawal and redeployment as top Democrats--Does that mean General Casey wants to cut and run?--is irrelevant. The fact that 87 percent of the Iraqi people want the same thing is irrelevant. The fact that more than half the Iraqi people think it's okay to attack Americans is irrelevant. The fact that the Iraqi Prime Minister has put out a plan today offering amnesty for Iraqis killing Americans is irrelevant to Republicans.

Their message is clear as a bell, in fact, in case we don't get it, listen for the following sentence to be repeated constantly: We are fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here.

Or something like, The reason we haven't had another 9/11 is because we are fighting the terrorists over there.

What I want to know is…WHO'S THIS WE?

I'll tell you who it is. It's my son and his buddies and my nephews and their buddies and the mothers, wives, husbands, family and friends of 130,000 troops that are being sent in harm's way to be, as Ellen Goodman calls them in the Boston Globe, terrorist attractions.

If you don't believe that, then ask them. We asked our son, and he said, "We go out and try to provoke them, draw them out into attacking us."

They do this because we are a civilized nation, and recent news headlines to the contrary, the point is that our boys and girls are trying their best not to kick down doors and kill innocent families. They are trying to draw out the bad guys so they can fight them openly in the streets rather than going into homes of women and children being used as shields by a craven and cowardly enemy.

They do this through three and four deployments away from their families, every single time running a greater and greater risk that their number will come up, their luck will run out, and that IED or mortar round or RPG or bullet will have their name on it and they will be sent home in a body bag or maimed for the rest of their lives.

And all this time, the Republican Bush-backing Congress has no moral compunction whatsoever in sending our sons and daughters over there again and again and again and telling them to stay the course, that their sacrifice is noble and that anybody who doesn't think so even if he is a decorated combat veteran, it does not matter, he is a coward.

This, from people who, by and large, never leave their air-conditioned offices for so much as a five-hour fly-by in the most dangerous country on this planet.

And they tell those of us who send our children over there again and again and again that we should be patient.

Patient.

Every single day my son puts on his digitalized cammies, his body armor that, his first deployment, was insufficient but that did not stop him from fighting bravely in Fallujah, the biggest urban battle since World War II. He heads out, sometimes on foot, sometimes in a humvee that, again, was not properly armored all the way up to 2005, when his last deployment ended.

He picks up his rifle and he heads out in bone-melting heat to serve his country and the political whims of his commander-in-chief. He goes out in armor that, three years after the war began, is finally sufficient.

Maybe. But the insurgents are getting more sophisticated, and their IED's more savage, so that now, rather than just maiming the guys and girls in the humvees, they're blowing them all into, as one sergeant put it, "nothing much but a spinal cord with flesh attached to it."

My son and his buddies goe out in 125-degree heat with 100 pounds on their backs, and their job is to get shot at or bombed. That is their job.

But that's okay, you flag-waving ribbon-tying patriotic Americans who believe the Republicans are right to send other people's children off to draw out terrorists who, before the Bush administration, didn't even exist in Iraq, send off other people's children to fight and die so you can swallow Karl Rove's talking-points mantra, and go to sleep at night secure in the knowledge that they're fighting them over there so we don't have to have another 9/11 over here.

(Of course, the British are fighting them over there, and some Canadians are fighting them over there, but that hasn't stopped home-grown terrorists from blowing up buses and trains and planning other acts of terrorism...but that's irrelevant to the Repulicans. After all, they don't let the facts get in the way of politics, EVER.)

Then, armed and up-armored with Rove's talking points, those same good people who trust the Republicans and Bush to keep us safe with other people's children, can attack me, the mother of a Marine Corps fighting man, the aunt of a Marine Corps fighting man, and the aunt of two Army fighting men, all but one of whom have served or are serving in combat missions, so you can attack me as unpatriotic or of undermining the troops.

Go ahead, you cowards whose kids never once got shot at their whole lives. Give it your best shot.

Bush keeps saying we have to complete our mission. Of course, he never really says what that mission is.

Ellen Goodman does. What if the unacknowledged "mission" is to keep the terrorists "over there"?

But Joan Vennochi, puts it more bluntly, and she is right:

A key difference between Iraq and Vietnam is the country's ability to keep this war at a convenient distance. We can turn from the front-page headlines of war, death, and destruction to sports and celebrity gossip; a click of the remote, and the face of a young soldier, now dead, fades to "Friends" reruns or "America's Next Top Model." The volunteer army ensures that someone else's children are losing limbs and dying; someone else's children are pushed to alleged acts of violence against Iraqi detainees and civilians. Even when the news from Iraq is so brutal it forces momentary focus on the war, quick relief is promised.
--"A Military Draft Might Awaken Us," Joan Vennochi, Boston Globe, June 22, 2006.

By the way, it was one of those cut-and-run Democrats who actually proposed that we bring back the draft.

That's right. US Representative Charles Rangel, a Democrat from New York, introduced the Universal Service Act of 2006.

According to Vennochi's article, the act would require all people in the United States, including women, between the ages of 18 and 42, to perform a period of military service or period of civilian service in furtherance of national defense and homeland security. The proposal was referred to the House Subcommittee on Military Personnel.

Where of course, nothing will come of it, because the Republican-dominated rubber-stamp Congress has no interest in really making any kind of substantive difference in Iraq.

All they want to do is trump up fake debates in Congress for their hateful anti-Democrat sound bites, accuse Democrats like John Murtha, a decorated Marine combat veteran, of being a coward because he says our troops have done their job, that they are exhausted, and that the more times they are flung into battle again and again and again, the more likely they will snap and do the kinds of things that have been alleged in recent weeks.

Because believe me, they are doing it alone because the country does not care.

My son's first deployment, his friends back home called me frequently to see how he was doing. This deployment, even his own grandparents often forget where he is and what he is doing. Most of his friends have never called. Only one has even asked for his address.

They're busy. It's somebody else. And these are my son's personal friends and buddies.

It's just too damn easy to forget.

Joan Vennochi goes on to say something that is so powerful I'm going to put it into all-caps:

PRESIDENT BUSH MOBILIZES HIS BUBBLE TO MOVE FROM WASHINGTON TO BAGHDAD FOR A FEW HOURS, AND THE COUNTRY IS SUPPOSED TO SALUTE HIS BRAVERY? BRAVERY IS MANNING A TRAFFIC CHECKPOINT IN A HOSTILE TOWN NAMED YOUSSIFIYAH, WHERE SPECIALIST DAVID J. BABINEAU OF SPRINGFIELD WAS KILLED AND TUCKER AND MENCHACA WERE KIDNAPPED.

Kidnapped, then tortured, dragged behind pickup trucks, dismembered, beheaded, and dumped like garbage in the street, with booby traps surrounding their unrecognizable bodies, so their buddies trying to rescue them would die in horrible ways, too.

But that's okay.

We can breathe a sigh of relief.

After all, it was somebody else's children.