Anon wrote:pachelbel wrote:
This isn't about Dems or Republicans.
It's about a war that a veteran of that war is questioning. And rightly so.
Any of you been in Iraq? Can you dispute anything that the author of this article has said?
You get more irritating with each post you make. Sorry, I know I've told you that before, and it is becoming moreso! You also might be a little more careful about finding out who you are challenging ("Any of you been Iraq") before you do so. Many of us old timers here have been in hellholes equivalent (probably worse than) to Iraq.
Word - lotsa folks engage their keyboards well before their brains are fully spun up. pachelbel appears ignorant of the fact some participants in this discussion indeed have been to Iraq, and ignorant as well that others here have other combat experience.
Now, on to dealing with Charlie Anderson (though doing so grants the snivveling wimp far more credit than his whining merits)- Charlie's maundering unformatted, my responses in bold dark blue:
An Open Letter to Bubba
by Charlie Anderson
I've seen you around. I've seen you driving your gas guzzling SUV with the "Support Our Troops" ribbon on the back. I've seen you wearing your pro-war/pro-bush t-shirts as you walk right past me in my Iraq Veterans Against the War t-shirt as if I don't exist. And I've seen you at anti-war rallies and meetings where I often speak, as you wave your American flag and call me a traitor. In this country we have freedom of speech. But you owe me and every other veteran of this war the respect of listening to our experience.
Charlie, I drive an SUV because where I live paving is not ubiquitous, snow hereabouts is measured in feet, and pretty much is a fact of life from November to April, bookended a month or so to either side by sometimes seemingly bottomless mud, and because I camp, fish, and hunt, and haul trailers around in furtherance of those pursuits, and because I own and maintain land which is not blessed with real roads but does call for inspection and attention. I assure you, my SUV never has transported a soccer ball, spends a considerable amount of time in 4WD - quite a bit of that in LowLock - and there's just about always mud on the backs of its mirrors. The puppy has a hefty front-mounted winch that gets a lotta use, too. It ain't no status symbol, its a tool, and it gets used for and because of its capabilities. So does my Diesel 1-Ton Dual Rear Wheel 4WD pickup; in fact its hardly ever out of 4WD, since its job mostly is to do jobs the SUV can't. Indeed we have freedom of speech, Charlie, and that is to be respected. However, there is no requirement that what may be spoken must be respected, regardless how, where, or by whom spoken. While I respect your right to say what you will, I have no respect whatsoever for what you say pertaining to the matter at discussion, and neither you nor anyone else can mandate otherwise; that is what freedom is about, and that very basic, foundational fact is something you seem not to grasp.
Your magnet says "support our troops," but what have you done for us? Not a penny of the proceeds go to us, instead they go to sweatshops in China.
I have no doubt there is some truth to that, in some instances, however, a veterans organization with which I'm affilliated sells such stickers, decals, and magnets. The product we distribute is US made, all profits go to a well known, highly regarded, fully accreditted, properly licensed charitable organization which provides counseling and material support to the families of deployed service persons, with a particular emphasis on families of casualties. Our organization even eats the distribution costs - itself a fair sum on an annual basis.
You say that I am not supporting the troops when I say that they should come home. But I am, because I know that there was no threat to our nation from Saddam Hussein, I know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, and I know that we were not welcomed in Iraq as liberators. I know that the Iraq war was not worth fighting. I know, because I fought there. You say I'm confused. But what do you know about Iraq? You've never been there.
Your call to "bring the troops home" not only is a disservice to the troops, in that it provides aid and comfort to the enemy, but it furthers the notion, established with the Left's abandonment of Southeast Asia a generation ago and reinforced by the actions of Democratic Administartions since that America has no resolve and cannot be counted upon to honor obligations undertaken on behalf of peoples subject to tyranny, peoples led to believe America was there for them, peoples betrayed, abandoned, and left to fill the mass graves dug by the despots America's failure to persevere has enabled and emboldened. I know that while Ba'athists, Sunnis, Jihadists, and assorted thugs and criminals would have the world believe The Iraqi People neither benefitted from nor appreciate their liberation, such most emphatically is not the case. I know that liberating 25 Million people from the ravages and depredations of a generation's woth of brutal, inhuman tyranny is something well worth fighting for. I don't say you're confused, I say you're deluded, and that you have surrendered to the enemy, given them what they seek. What do I know about Iraq, as I haven't been there? What I know comes largely not from The Media nor the enemy's propagandists, but from relatives, freinds, and acquaintences formerly and currently on the ground in Iraq - and in Afghanistan as well, people with whom I am in more or less daily contact, people who range from lower enlisted ranks through Staff Grade Officers, and who include as well several civilians, people who's honor, honesty and accuracy I trust.
You have the audacity to claim that by not supporting the president, I don't support the troops.
Straw man, Charlie, and non sequitur. Supporting the President or not supporting the President has nothing to do with supporting the troops or not supporting the troops, but calling for the mission of those troops to be abandoned most certainly is the exact opposite of supporting the troops; it is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Of course, it is a matter of free speech, and I would not deny you, or anyone else, the right to do so. None the less, I cannot condone what you do, cannot endorse it, and must oppose it, even while I acknowledge your right to do so.
Yet, the president chose to send over 160,000 of us to Iraq unprepared and without a defined mission. We had no body armor, no vehicle armor, and poor supplies of ammunition. Our families spent thousands of dollars that they did not have to supply us, while President Bush did nothing. In fact he didn't even scold his Offensive Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, when he told our forward deployed troops, "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had."
Like it or not, Charlie, one
does go to war with the army one has, not the army one might wish one had. And the mission was and remains defined; remove Saddam and his Ba'athist thugs from power and establish the conditions whereby Iraq may determine and achieve for herself the freedom, self-determination, justice, and prosperity inherently the right of all nations. A part of that mission, the easy part, has been accomplished. You would have us abandon the more difficult part, and that is something we must not do, for the sake of the Iraqi people, for the sake of the peoples of the region, and for the sake of the peoples inhabiting the planet. Despite your contention to the contrary, no armed force in history ever has gone into harm's way better trained, better equipped, and better supplied than did the force committed to the liberation of Iraq. None - not one, not ever, and as technology and capabilities have improved since the onset of hostilities, so have improved the resources available to those forces.[/color][/b]
Moreover, the mission was originally about weapons of mass destruction, but there were none. Then it was making Iraq a democracy, but yet the "insurgency" worsens. Now the president has decided that in order to honor those who died for nothing, more must die for nothing.
WMD per se comprised but one component of the need for and decision to undertake military intervention. More to the point was Ba'athist Iraq's intransigent defiance of the requirement she unreservedly, truthfully, verifiably, and fully account for all WMD and WMD-related assets and capabilities, Iraq's persistent and blatant refusal to abide by the protocols and agreements of the Safwan Accords, including but not limited to the treatment of indigenous peoples and factions, and Iraq's continued open support for and advocacy of terrorist activity. Yes there is an insurgency, but I dispute your contention it "worsens", in fact I contend that by the evidence exactly the opposite is the case; increasingly, intelligence derived from disaffected indigenous sources results in destruction or disruption of insurgent personnel and assets. Those Americans and anti-insurgent Iraqis who have died gave their lives for the cause of freedom, and there is no price too high to pay for freedom, no more noble cause for which to give one's life.
At present, 2,241 of my brothers and sisters in arms have died. In some way, they may be the lucky ones. Over sixteen thousand others have been wounded in this war, thousands more than planned.
While any such accounting is at best specious, I'll point out more Americans died in Manhattan on September 11 '01 than have died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, and I'll point out that by any measure American combat casualties proportionate to numbers of troops committed have been lighter, exponentially so, than in any conflict America has ever undertaken, lighter, in fact, than in just about any military venture in recorded history. Compare the entirety of the current Iraq conflict to the attack on Pearl Harbor, for instance, or to the taking of Iwo Jima, or D-Day, or The Battle of Belleau Wood, or the first hours of Gettysburg, for perspective. No casualty is a good casualty, of course, but as wars and casualties go, kid, Iraq ain't nothing - it doesn't even compare to the Spanish-American War from which Teddy Roosevelt gained so much. An American in uniform today has a statistically greater chance of death or injury due to crime or accident, home or abroad, than to hostile action, despite the fact we are engaged in a shooting war. I will point out as well that casualties in excess of those already recorded to date were postulated - and planned for - as potentially contigent upon the initial invasion.
The term wounded sounds sterile, bland, and inoffensive. But, in reality, many of them have been so horribly damaged that medical science had to create a new word to describe their wounds: polytrauma. These people would have died in earlier wars, but because of the gallant efforts of brave doctors and medics, they get to live. They get to live with teams of ten or more doctors just trying to get their broken, mangled bodies through another day, as their families look on in horror. They get to live in a physical and emotional hell, not able to recover and not able to voice the pain they feel or the psychological demons they face. All the while suffering with a Veterans Administration under funded by nearly three billion dollars and unable to care for them in the manner they deserve.
First, I'll point out funding for veterans affairs has increased more under the Bush Administration than at any time since the years immediately following WWII. Next, I'll point out that medical advances not only have saved lives that in previous wars would have been lost, but have provided a far higher quality of life for many who had they suffered similar injury in previous wars would have faced. It never is good to come under hostile fire, to get wounded, let alone killed, but an American service member coming under hostile fire today has exponentially better prospect than any member of any military in history.
So which one of us supports the troops? You, who has never set foot in Iraq and wants to leave my brothers and sisters there until they complete whatever the undefined mission of the week is, or me, the veteran of this war who has seen the carnage of battle, the rampant indifference of my countrymen, and just wants to bring my brothers and sisters home alive and care for them when they get here?
I support the troops, Charlie, and honor them, and I support and endorse the mission you evidently fail to understand, but which so many of them do understand, endorse, and prosecute to the fullest of their abilities, even at greatest peril to themselves. And I have seen the carnage of battle, Charlie, far more of it than I care to contemplate, far more than I care to remember, far more than I cared at the time to endure. I dare say I've seen more of battle and its horrors than have you, and that I have lost more freinds and unit members in active combat than have you; given the statistics of the wars in which you and I respectively have served, thats just about an absolute certainty, not even considering the fact I served more than one combat tour, confronting an enemy better equipped, better armed, better trained, better manned, and better organized than the enemy you faced. I thank the nation which placed its trust in me, allowed me to stand for what that nation professes, and gave me the means to accomplish, while at the same time I lament the lack of resolve and courage that prevented the nation from allowing the mission it had set for me and those of my generation to be accomplished.
Keep coming to the rallies. Maybe I'll get through your thick skull eventually. But remember I waved my flag in Baghdad, so you can sit down, shut up, and listen to me.
I don't do rallies much, Charlie, never really went in for 'em at any time, really. I resent that you term me "thick skulled" for my opposing your short-sighted, selfish, isolationist, misinformed, defeatist, terrorist-enabling point of view, but I expect no better from those of your ilk. I detest your point of view, it sickens me. I don't give a damn where, or whether, you waved a flag Charlie, none of that gives you the right to tell me or anyone else to sit down, shut up and listen to you. That mindset, in fact, precisely is part and parcel of what we are fighting and always have fought against.
I would not take arms against you for what you say, Charlie, and would take arms against any who would deny you you the right to have your say. I would, however, take arms against you or anyone else who tried to impose your will and agenda on anyone else whether by force of arms or by other coercion. You need not sit down, shut up and listen to me any more than I or anyone else need sit down, shut up, and listen to whatever anyone else has to say - thats the whole point.
I note the irony offered by another set of facts; the enemy against which I fought was referred to as "Charlie", and his apologists here at home and aborad spoke much as do you. Your words present a hauntingly, troublingly familiar echo, in fact, and I cannot sit idly by while the same mistakes are made as were made a generation ago, and the same outrages are thrust upon peoples who's only fault had been to take us at our word when we told them we'd be there for them.
I'm proud to have been a Marine, Charlie, and proud that my son is one today, and that my father was one before me, and his father before him ... The Corps is a family tradition in my little corner of the world. I'm proud to have served my country, and proud others in my family have had the same honor, and prouder still that honor has been under the Globe And Anchor. There are damned few Marines of whom I'm not proud, Charlie ... but you've made a place of notice on that short, ignoble list ... a little below Lee Harvey Oswald, perhaps, but right in there with John Murtha.
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