As the number of troops who have lost their lives in the war in Afghanistan has now reached 1,000, the monetary cost of the war could reach into the trillions. The decade long war has had a terrible toll on both the American military and on the people of Afghanistan. The war in Afghanistan is now costing us more than the war in Iraq, both in lives and in treasure. But no one is paying any attention.
Memorial Day always makes me think of my dad-Yves "Buster" Melancon. He served for twenty-seven years in the United States Army and went to Vietnam twice. As a Combat Engineer, Dad wasn't directly engaged in the fighting, but he did travel throughout the war zone. I always wonder how my life would have been different if Dad had never come home.
I was lucky. Thousands of sons and daughters lost their parents to the war in Vietnam. Once, when I was an adult, and after he had retired, I asked my dad to tell me about his experiences. He simply said, "all I know is that a lot of good brothers died for no reason," and then he started to cry. I never heard the rest of the story.
Now, I'm a dad and my son-Christopher Yves-Paul Melancon-is joining the United States Army. He plans on being a Combat Engineer. I wish my dad were still alive. He would be proud.
Millions of men and woman-like my dad and my son-have sacrificed themselves to serve and protect you and me. Do we do enough to protect them? Do we do enough to prevent "a lot of good brothers" from dying "for no reason"? I'm convinced our new President understands that he has their lives in his hands.
After President Obama's election and the adoption of the nineteen month withdrawal plan, the war in Iraq has faded out of the public debate. However, the war in Iraq is far from fading on the battlefield, and the violence in Iraq could be on the verge of increasing.
According to Casualties.org 4,299 American military service members have died in Iraq and March was the lowest level of American casualties (9) since the war in Iraq began. However, last month was the highest total of American casualties (19) since September of last year, and this month 17 service members have died in Iraq.
The Washington Post reported yesterday, that three United States soldiers were killed and nine were wounded while on patrol in a marketplace in western Baghdad. Also, early that day eight Sunnis where killed in a suicide bombing in Kirkuk.
In northern Iraq tensions between the Kurds and the Sunni Arabs are mounting. According to an article in the New York Times earlier this week, the Kurds have refused to recognize the Iraqi government's sovereignty over the Kurdish occupied Nineveh province. The newly elected Sunni Arab governor was not allowed to enter a Kurdish controlled town, a Sunni Arab Nineveh police chief was not allowed to cross a bridge into a Kurdish controlled area, and there have been other similar incidents in the last several weeks.
Early this month the New York Times reported on a bombing in Sadr City; that kind of violence had not been seen in the city since November of 2006. The report stated that sectarian violence had increased recently, and the victims of the attacks expressed the possibility of retaliation against those they felt where responsible.
"...the people were angry and they started talking about reacting. Some of them said that they were ready to return back to the old days, and sink deep into a sectarian war again. Until last week I would not have believed that Iraqis dared to think that there is a possibility of returning to hell."
I watched Dick Cheney's speech to the American Enterprise Institute today in awe. Apparently Mr. Cheney is a student of Joseph Goebbels who was a master practitioner of the "big lie". The "big lie" was defined by Adolph Hitler in Mein Kampf as a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously". Of course one must also repeat said colossal lie ad nauseam and in fact Dick Cheney has been doing so in one form or another for over seven years now.
Cheney managed to string together a whole series of bald faced lies about links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda, Iraq's purported possession of weapons of mass destruction, the notion that when we use water boarding it's an "enhanced interrogation technique" while if anyone else does it it's torture and finally that the torture led to the prevention of further attacks rather than that they were attempts to justify invading Iraq ex post facto.
I've got to give it to Mr. Cheney while he maybe a war criminal of the first order he certainly has message discipline.
John McCain continues to pound his chest about what a great commander-in-chief he would make. Just like his war loving Siamese twin brothers Bush/Cheney his only tool is the hammer of the military and every problem looks like the nail of a war. Now one of their favorite institutional friends the Rand Corporation(the folks who brought you the brilliant strategy of Vietnam) are saying that the "War on Terror" is a stupid concept because it doesn't work.
In a study released July 29th entitled How Terrorism Ends: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida Seth Jones,Ph.D. and Martin C. Libicki make the case that the "War on Terror" has failed to curb the world wide terrorist activities of al Qa'ida. They examined 648 terrorist groups that existed between 1968 and 2006 looking for how they eventually ended their activities. What their, dare I say it, scientific, study revealed is that the concept of a military solution to the problem of terrorist activity has never worked. Instead, "most terrorist groups end either because they join the political process, or because local police and intelligence efforts arrest or kill key members." Not that most of the readers of this site didn't already know it but they also found that the terrorist activities of al Qa'ida have only increased since 9-11 and that they also have expanded into Europe, Asia, Africa and of course the Middle East.
I happened to catch former White House Press Secretary and Austinite Scott McClellan this morning on the NBC 'Today' show, being interviewed by Meredith Viera about his new book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception.
Most of the details he divulged were disturbing, albeit not entirely surprising -- stopping just short of saying the President actually lied; instead using words like "shading the truth" with regards to the lead-up to and "marketing" for Iraq.
But at one point, I heard Mr. McClellan say "I'm disappointed that things didn't turn out the way that we all hoped they would."
"Things," Mr. McClellan? Things?
Things like the four thousand lives that were sacrificed for a war built on "shading the truth?"
Things like the marriages, families and relationships that were fractured because of these deployments and deaths during a war built on "shading the truth?"
Things like the billions of dollars that could have been spent providing health insurance, education, and other basic necessities for Americans and third-world citizens alike, rather than being squandered on a war built on "shading the truth?"
Things like the shameless and nearly criminal carbon-copy votes of your fellow Texans like Republican Congressman Michael McCaul (CD-10) and John Carter (CD-31), who continue to vote against veterans while simultaneously choosing to support and fund a war built on "shading the truth?"
Things like the debt that my grandchildren will end up paying for not only the cost to America but also the world-view of our country after foolishly entering a war built on "shading the truth?"
Things like the 'detainees' who sit in Guantanamo Bay, devoid of their civil rights and their dignity, for no reason other than the fact that we 'detained' them during a war built on "shading the truth?"
Things like the innocent Iraqi civilians who were blown up, dismembered and disemboweled because of a war built on "shading the truth?"
Things like the thousands of soldiers who will no longer walk, talk or think the way they did before they were hit by IEDs fighting a war built on "shading the truth?"
Mr. McClellan's book doesn't promise to be groundbreaking -- at least, not to anyone who already believed that we have been living in the shadow of lies for the last eight years.
But to Mr. McClellan himself, I say this: My 8th grade English teacher taught me one rule of thumb about writing. You degrade your piece and insult your audience by using the word "thing." In this case, the "things" you have stood idly by and watched happen, your mouth stuffed with a twisted sock of misplaced allegiance to a President, not a Country, deserve a mention.
Next time, if you're going to tell-all, be more specific.
(I'd like to hear from any BOR readers who have been in rotation or have family members affected by this. - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
Next week, General David Petraeus will travel to Capitol Hill and make his report to Congress on the war in Iraq. If, as expected, he announces a pause in the withdrawal in troops from Iraq, our Congress must say "no" for the sake of our military and of our servicemembers.
We can not pause the withdrawal of our troops because we are seeing, everyday, the absolute devastation our wars, with frequent, long, often extended deployments, are having on our men and women in uniform.
How can we constantly churn our troops like this? How can we consciously compound the wounds of war? We are sending men and women back for fourth and fifth tours of duty when the Department of Defense, by its own estimation, says that with each additional tour, troops are 60% more likely to develop severe post-combat mental health issues.
I went to see Stop-Loss tonight with my wife. Stop-Loss is about a personnel policy used by the military and directed by the President, that equates to a back door draft. Stop-Loss is just what it sounds like, a policy put in place to stop the loss of military service members due to attrition. According to the film, since 9/11 81,000 service members have been stop lossed.
Tomorrow marks the next step in our presidential nominee selection process. The question of who our next nominee will be is still up in the air. One question we can answer for certain, however, is that no matter who our candidate(s) are, we must come together and support all Democratic candidates in November.
81,000 service members have been stop lossed. As far as I am concerned, the blood of any of these people that were sent back to the desert and killed lies directly on the hands of George W. Bush and his failure to manage our American military force, however, military mismanagement is just one issue of many. The ability for us to bring about real change runs parallel with our ability to elect a Democratic majority. Only through a Democratic majority can we: bring an end to the war in Iraq, finally take care of our children and schools, establish universally accessible health care, and so on.
A Democratic majority with a Democratic president - necessities for change and progress - anything else will continue the abuse of our brave service members. Anything else will fail to honor those who have sacrificed so much for us all.
The History News Network published the following article by me on September 23, 2002. As my oldest son approaches eighteen, I still don't want him to die in an unjust quagmire. It's wrong for Washington politicians to continue using our brave men and women as political props. It's up to us to lead them home with honor.
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Every school child can recite the value of history: those that ignore the past are doomed to repeat it. What lessons can we learn about the present Iraqi crisis from the Vietnam experience?
One of the most frequently heard "lessons" is that politicians should not tie the hands of the military. US forces got bogged down in a quagmire because politicians placed senseless restrictions on how to fight the enemy. If the politicians had stepped aside, the US military could have won the war.
I believe this line of reasoning misses the point. Vietnam was not a "quagmire" because the North Vietnamese Army or Vietcong were a military challenge. Vietnam was a quagmire because the US could not generate enough trust and support among the Vietnamese people. The US was seen as an imperialist power that lacked legitimacy. Does any one really believe the US, or some puppet like Diem, can RULE Iraq? I believe the US will become an "Israel," occupying lands in which the people's anger and hatred toward the occupier will grow day by day. No matter how benevolent US rule in Iraq is, no matter how much better living conditions are, the US will still be the aggressor fighting an unjust war.
How will disgruntle Iraqi's respond to a US invasion? Sit-ins? Marches? Civil disobedience? I think not. They will respond the same way disgruntle Palestinians and Vietnamese responded. The US may win the war versus the Iraqi "army," but in the process it will provide the biggest recruiting boost to the ranks of Al Qaeda, like minded terrorist organizations or simply local "patriots."
