They're Not a Soccer Team; We're Not a Booster Club; This is Real, Live War--In Other Words--Take Your Shock & Awe & Shove It

In his comments, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq lashed out at the American military…said violence against civilians had become a "daily phenomenon" by many troops in the American-led coalition who "do not respect the Iraqi people.

"They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion," he said. "This is completely unacceptable." Attacks on civilians will play a role in future decisions on how long to ask American forces to remain in Iraq, the prime minister added.
--"Iraqi Assails U.S. for Strikes on Civilians," Richard A. Oppel, Jr., New York Times, June 2, 2006.

"As you know, this is not the only massacre, and there are a lot," said Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zubaie, one of the most powerful Sunni Arabs in the new government. "The coalition forces must change their behavior. Human blood should be sacred regardless of religion, party, and nationality."
--Ibid

"We got rid of Saddam, and now we must get rid of the Americans."
--quote from radical Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose party now holds more than 30 seats in the Iraqi parliament and whose militia, the Mahdi Army, controls parts of Baghdad and operates numerous death squads from its 130,000-plus members


I find these remarks intensely ironic. I really like what al-Sadr said, how WE got rid of Saddam and now WE must get rid of Americans. Now…WHO, exactly, got rid of Saddam?

Not Sadr's WE, for damn sure.

Oh, and I am fascinated that a Sunni politician--the Sunnis, in case some of you don't realize this, were the Muslim sect of Saddam Hussein, the Baathist party, the Republican Guard, most of Saddam's secret torture and killing police…and, oh yeah. THE INSURGENCY. Those terrorists who haven't just targeted Americans, but have blown up children gathering around American soldiers who were passing out candy…mosques…marketplaces…and just about any place that they can squeeze in a suicide bomber or remote-controlled detonated device. Iraqi schools now have to be heavily guarded so that the children can learn to read, but their parents live in terror every day that their children will get kidnapped or shot on the way to or from school. Yes, there are some "good news" success stories of American-built schools, but they can't draw media attention to them without risking the lives of everybody in them.

The Sunnis also boast as their proud member, Abu Musab al-Zarkawi himself and his bloodthirsty gang who cut the heads off innocents like the woman, Margaret Hassan, who'd worked more than 20 years for the Care organization, was a naturalized Iraqi, had married an Iraqi man and bore her children in Iraq and who worked to bring fresh water to the poor. They left her torso--just the torso, mind you--in the streets of Fallujah so Marines like my son could find her--but not before posting the grisly video of her execution on the Internet.

I find it also ironic that the Al Jazeera network, which had aired all the OTHER beheadings on television…chose not to show that one. I guess they couldn’t manipulate "Arab street" hatred as easily by that B-roll because this was a British woman beloved by the Iraqi people.

So now the Prime Minister, who wouldn't even have his job without the Americans, is talking about asking the American soldiers to leave. As Maureen Dowd commented in the New York Times, "Bold talk from a tenuous government dependent on U.S. forces to prop it up during a sectarian bloodfest."

So fine. Let's pull out. Let him deal with the consequences. See how many atrocities get committed on the Iraqi people BY the Iraqi people without the Americans to protect them.

Up until now, I have always respectfully disagreed with Representative John Murtha that we should just pull out the troops now. He says they've done their jobs, and done them brilliantly, they have done everything we asked them to and more, but it's not their job to baby-sit a civil war.

I was reluctant to sign on because I knew that the place would just implode without us--right now, even the Kurdish north, which has had a splendid peace for more than 15 years, is beginning to experience tribal violence and reciprocation; the south, which never did seem to display the kind of chaos seen in the Anbar province, is now turning in on itself--Shi'ite against Shi'ite--and the Brits have pretty much lost control of it. Baghdad is a viper's nest, and the Anbar province is so bad I cry every day for the Marines (not just my son) and army troops that are being forced to fight for their lives there every damn day--have you SEEN what's going on in Ramadi?

Pull our troops out now and the place would not just collapse, but boil over into other Middle Eastern countries and of course, leave Israel naked and alone.

Mainly, I didn't want us to pull out in a rapid redeployment because I wanted almost 2500 deaths and 18,000 maimings to COUNT for something in this terrible war, to leave a legacy. Those brave men and women deserved that.

But in the meantime…what the hell are these brave men and women in uniform, most of whom make less than $1200 a month and still have to buy much of their own supplies…supposed to do? What is their mission? Police action? Nation-building? Regime change? Just staying the hell alive until they get to come home and hope and pray to God they won't have to go back a FOURTH time?

Should more die, and more lose arms, legs, and MINDS in this swarming ant's nest of chaos while Larry, Curly, and Moe (Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney), run around yelling WHOOPWHOOPWHOOP to each other and to their precious political base, who just ate up all that crap about Saving Us from Terrorists & John Kerry oh say does tha-at star-spangled banner ye-et waaaaaaave????

I'm sick and tired of the attitudes most Americans seem to have, that "supporting our troops," means slapping a yellow ribbon on the pickup truck and sticking up a flag out front while politicians give stirring speeches about patriotism on grandstands so draped with flags you can't hardly see them--and even some of the military parents I know seem to behave as if these men and women are a soccer team off at an away game and it's our job to decorate the lockers and hang up the banners and pack up the care packages and hold pep rallies in their honor---

--While the media, as I too vividly remember, since my son was enlisting at just that moment in history--the television media just could not get enough of that SHOCK AND AWE--oh my God they were positively ORGASMIC with it--AND THE ROCKETS RED GLARE THE BOMBS BURSTING IN AIR--oh! The footage! Oh! The video! Oh! THE STATUE OF SADDAM CRASHING TO THE GROUND!

Oh! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED Vote for Me America The War is Over and the Oil Fields & My Election--Excuse Me Of Course I Mean Our Country--Is Now Safe & Secure from Terrorism and That Wimp John Kerry!!!!!

The strutting and the swagger and Oh how we love the smell of TESTOSTERONE in the morning!

But real war has very little to do with shock and awe.

American troops are under spectacular emotional pressure. They go out every day, not knowing Arabic, not understanding the culture, not knowing who the insurgents are, not knowing when they can go home or which of their buddies will be blown up before their eyes by an unseen enemy.

The troops were not trained for a counterinsurgency, because Bush hawks ignored the intelligence reports that predicted an insurgency and civil war. These kids were turned into sitting ducks because the neocon con to sell the war needed a gauzy prediction of Iraqi gratitude and a quick exit.
--"Teaching Remedial Decency," Maureen Down, New York Times, June 3, 2006.

Iraq is collapsing in a dustcloud of chaos, centuries-long tribal and religious hatreds, payback for a generation of Saddam, and the unimaginable ARROGANCE of American civilian leadership--Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld--of America's armed forces, leaders who refuse to admit real mistakes, refuse to fire the people who make them, and refuse to change tactics, leaving our military men and women overwhelmed and under siege because they needed 350,000 to 500,000 troops to secure the peace, but hell, they only needed 130,000 to win the war and stage that political commercial for Karl Rove on the aircraft carrier off San Francisco, all while ignoring requests on the ground for more troops as the insurgency gained in bite and stamina, lawlessness ruled the streets, and American soldiers and Marines valiantly tried to fight on with insufficient armor and weaponry.

I mean no offense to the brave pilots of the Air Force and Marines, who save American lives every day with one call on the radio, and who do so much to soften up targets before the artillery and infantry head in.

But in guerilla warfare, it's not the fancy computerized high-tech defense systems that fight and it's not high-flying planes that do the dirty work--it is men and women on the ground, driving humvees and humping it across deserts and fighting for their lives, street by street, house by house, and room by room.

In the beginning of this war, so many people in this country got swept up in the flag and all that shock and awe. Donald Rumsfeld was treated like a rock star by the media--on Saturday Night Live, Tina Fey joked that the reason he always stood behind a podium during his press conferences was to hide his hard-on.

But Donald Rumsfled never fought in a war.

Dick Cheney never fought in a war.

George W. Bush never fought in a war.

Yes, Rumsfeld flew jets for a while--I won't even dignify what Bush did during Vietnam--but neither ever flew combat missions, and you know what? War looks a lot different from a distance than it does on the ground. Up above that billowing plume of fire and bombing destruction, all is peaceful.

Mission accomplished.

Even pilots will tell you it is uncomfortably similar to video games. Click the button on the joy stick. Hit the target. Go home for a beer.

Even in war rooms, the generals and planners can refer to death and destruction as "collateral damage" as they strategize on their big computers, barking orders at scurrying aides.

We can do that same kind of thing, from the comfort of our living rooms. We can watch gray-haired men in starched desert cammies throw around their stirring war-names like Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Vigilant Guardian and view the news footage of battle. We can talk to our friends and refer to the enemy, like one conservative friend of mine does, as "ragheads." We can make all kinds of macho pronouncements about blowing those ragheads off the map. We can pump our fists in the air like Tiger Woods in victory and go YEAH!

When the troops come home, we can hang banners and flags and make pretty speeches and go on back to our daily nitpicking lives...and leave them standing in the middle of a crowded room…terribly, horribly alone.

Because on the ground, real war is not a video game, and all warriors are not "heroes."

War is nasty, dirty, horrible. Hot, cold, miserable, hungry, terrifying, boring. Violent, bloody, gruesome, numbing. Exhausting, filthy, loud, stinking, heartbreaking, bone-jarring, adrenalin-rushing. Triumphant, lost, frustrating, homeless, grisly, exciting, shocking, dangerous, nervous, deadening. Overwhelming, sickening, stupid, smart, mindless, chicken-shit, profound, and profoundly depressing.

Not a single soldier or Marine EVER fights in a war without leaving parts of his or her soul behind in the jungle or desert.

Not a single military mother or spouse welcomes their son or daughter or lover home without sensing that.

They're different, after war. Some are just destroyed by it, their minds and hearts unable to reconcile what they've seen…and done. Others go on to live loving and productive lives, tucking their secret sadness away from their families.

In spite of all that, amidst the hundreds of thousands of engagements with a deadly, evil, and elusive enemy, fought by worn-out troops on second and third and fourth deployments in this miserable endless bloody war…we can count on ONE HAND acts that would appear, so far, to be wartime atrocities.

"The incidents receiving a great deal of media attention lately do not reflect the honorable sacrifice of nearly 150,000 coalition forces currently serving in Iraq," Brigadier General Donald Campbell, chief of staff for Multinational Corps Iraq, told reporters at the Pentagon via satellite from Baghdad. "In the face of difficult and often dangerous circumstances, they demonstrate the discipline, sound judgment, and high moral standards that are hallmarks of the military profession."

Nevertheless, when asked what might be the underlying cause of unprovoked killings, he said that, "when you're in the combat theatre dealing with enemy combatants who don't abide by the law of war, who do acts of indecency, (soldiers) become stressed, they become fearful. It's very difficult to determine in some cases on this battlefield who is a combatant and who is a civilian…They see their buddies getting blown up on occasion and they could snap."
--"Iraq Video Fans New Criticism," Bryan Bender, Boston Globe, June 3, 2006.

On October 3, 1993, an American helicopter was shot down in Somalia. Efforts to rescue the downed Americans went tragically wrong, and 18 Americans were killed, leaving behind 18 devastated families. When President Bill Clinton heard that commanders on the ground had requested more troops but had been ignored by Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, Clinton fired him.

As I recall, Clinton also was savaged by conservative politicians and pundits, (most of whom never served) who sneered at his lack of military experience and crucified him for 18 dead Americans, while later loudly protesting his "nation-building" in the Balkans.

And yet, as I remember it, peace was restored and genocide was brought to an end in the Balkans, and not a single American life was lost.

Now, here we are in Iraq, Bush's war, the first time we ever invaded a country unprovoked and started our own war for causes that were later proven to be not even true.

As recounted in the groundbreaking book, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, by Michael R. Gordon and General Berdard E. Trainor, when Brigadier General James "Spider" Marks, a third-generation West Point graduate who ran the Army's Intelligence School at Fort Huachuca, was brought in to help finalize plans for the invasion just a few months away--he found to his horror that even though planning for the invasion had been going on for more than a year, NO PLANS HAD BEEN MADE TO SECURE THE WMD'S.

In fact, nobody seemed to know even where these deadly weapons, which supposedly could be used against American troops, even WERE. He had to send over to the CIA for their files, which he discovered, were so pathetically incomplete, that they were going to have to peel off more of their preciously few troops just to FIND THE WMD'S.

Furthermore, even as he cobbled together some rushed plans to take care of this crucial issue which was supposed to be, as General Marks put it, "the raison d'etra for war" in the first place, "we just did it ourselves and never received any help doing it nor did we receive scrutiny or challenge with the priorities we set."

From the beginning, Bush, as he so proudly stated for the cameras, is the decider, and he decides.

The thing is, Bush IS the commander-in-chief, which he loves to telegraph by frequent speeches at military bases surrounded by troops and dozens of flags.

He doesn't, however, attend funerals of the fallen or allow photographs of flag-draped coffins to be televised. That wouldn't be good for politics, would it? Karl Rove would have a helluva time making a good commercial out of THAT.

Bush is Rumsfeld's--and, theoretically, anyway, Cheney's--and all the members of the United States Armed Services--boss.

The buck stops with Bush.

In December of 2004, Army Spc. Thomas Wilson asked Rumsfeld, "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?"

The right-wing media immediately jumped to their theory that one of those nasty journalists had FED such a line to that boy--ignoring the fact that IT WAS ALL TRUE, and especially, ignoring Rumsfeld's outrageous reply, "You go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time."

In other words…Go away, kid, ya bother me. I'm busy shocking and awing people. I don’t have time to deal with your whining.

Democratic Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, wrote a powerful piece alluding to this shameful incident in an op-ed he wrote for the L.A. Times:

To date, Congress has held no hearings on the conduct of the war, and Wilson's question remains unanswered…The secretary of Defense has a lot to answer for, but the American people did not elect Donald Rumsfeld. They elected the president and the Congress. The president must be held accountable for deciding to stick with failed leadership--at a tremendous cost to our nation. And this Congress must be held accountable for letting him get away with it. After three years, nearly 2500 lives and half a trillion dollars, it's clear we went to war with the leadership we had, not the one we needed.
--"The Buck Stops with Bush, not Rumsfeld; Truman sacked MacArthur. Clinton fired Aspin. It's up to the White House and Congress to make heads roll over mistakes in Iraq," Rahm Emanuel, L.A. Times, May 29, 2006.

It is my opinion that in this administration, from the top down, there has been a stubborn disregard for human life, from the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal of support for torture, to the disgraces at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, all the way down to recklessly referring to the Iraqi people as "ragheads" in the conservative culture, and in their talk-radio and inflammatory books, the tendency to regard all Muslims as "terrorists."

Do they think the military culture is so completely separate from our own that these attitudes don't trickle down and spread like a stain? Our longsuffering troops have little enough reason to care about the Iraqis, after what they face each and every day. Hatred and bigotry toward Muslim people back home does not help.

It is sanctioned bigotry, as well. Although it is commonly accepted in the military that blame travels up the chain of command, because even if you weren't there at the time, your troops are your responsibility--there has been absolutely no repercussions further up than the rank of enlisted sergeant for what occurred at Abu Ghraib.

Now, suddenly, those abuses took place over weeks and months in some sort of a vacuum peopled only by a few lowly enlisted guards?

They get caught, and suddenly, NO ONE is responsible?

Now, after several situations have come to light--thanks to that evil news media and a frustratingly free press--that make some of our soccer team of heroes look like, well, grief-stricken warriors on a killing spree--the Marine Corps commandant is requiring all the Marines to take retraining courses in the rules of war and military law and the ethics of why we don't shoot babies.

It's admirable--if a bit political--meant to quell the mouthing of folks like those fine Sunnis in the Iraqi government who claim we're so bad and we should have more respect for human beings…before they head out surrounded by a phalanx of bodyguards to protect them from their own people.

But back to John Murtha. Neo-cons hate him because he speaks the truth and, you know, they can't handle the truth.

The reason he speaks out on something as unseemly as our hero soccer team killing women and children is because his heart is broken, that these troops no longer have any clear idea what they are fighting for anymore or who is the enemy or what "victory" is supposed to be. He doesn't want any more bright and beautiful young Americans to die or come home missing half their bodies for a cause that no longer makes any sense…as if it ever did in the first place.

He has to speak out because nobody is speaking out for the soldiers.

(The generals) had to speak up because no one was listening to the soldiers, because Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibilities and because the president has never once questioned the strategy or the performance of his team.
--"The Buck Stops with Bush, not Rumsfeld," Rep. Rahm Emanuel, L.A. Times, May 29, 2006.

(The administration) wanted everybody to be afraid of us, and now nobody's afraid. Certainly not the nutty president of Iran, whom the administration is forced to kowtow to, now that the American military is not a fearsome force in potentia, but a depleted, demoralized, and disparaged force trapped in Iraq trying to police a civil war.

The invasion that was supposed to help (stop) terrorism has made it worse. The invasion that was supposed to make America more feared and beloved has made us more hated…

The virtuecrats of the right thought they would demonstrate American virtue to the world as they imposed American democracy. But now, with murder charges expected against some Marines, and a cover-up investigation under way, the values president is running a war that requires a refresher course on virtue. A bitter irony.
--"Teaching Remedial Decency," Maureen Dowd, New York Times, June 3, 2006.

As Iraq gets dirtier and scarier and meaner and hotter and bloodier every single day--attacks against American troops were higher in the month of May than at any time since the war began--I grow more and more frightened for my son and his buddies and all our troops who VOLUNTEERED to fight for their country, and had their courage and their honor and their valor and their patriotism HI-JACKED for POLITICAL GREED.

I honestly don't know what we're doing over there any more. I just want my son to come home, and all his buddies--safe, in one piece, and of sound mind.

More and more, I'm beginning to fear that it may be too much to hope for.

So don't talk to me about SACRIFICE, Mr. President. YOU DON'T KNOW THE MEANING OF THE WORD.

If the Iraqi government and the people of Iraq are outraged that in war, terrible mistakes are made from time to time and atrocities sometimes occur--even as they are complicit in allowing this festering wound of an insurgency take root in their drab desert land…If the American people are shocked and awed when their heroes don't act quite so heroic…If retired generals have to shout to the rooftops to be heard on behalf of those same heroes because nobody was listening when they were in a position to do anything about it…If the biggest mistake this president will admit to is that he was "unsophisticated" in his swaggering war-talk and thus brought down the hounds of hell on his own people…

Then John Murtha just may be right.

Bring them home. And while you're at it, Republicans?

Stop slashing veteran's benefits and sending hospital bills to reservists wounded in your war, followed up by collection agencies--under cover of darkness in order to balance your bogus tax-giveaway to the rich budget--just before you go out to give another patriotic speech under yet another American flag.

Veterans of this and every war deserve so much more from this country than a bumper sticker and empty promises.

It's just a thought.

As for me, I just want to hug my son again for a long long time, and look into his eyes, and see for myself that he still has his sweet, good, decent, funny, loving, and honorable soul that I remember…and know in my heart that he and all his buddies truly are heroes...in the land of the free…and the home of the brave.