Last Memorial Day, Sgt. Kristofer Goldsmith tried to kill himself. He had just been stop-lossed along with 80,000 other soldiers as part of the surge of U.S. forces to be sent to Iraq in the Bush administration’s last-ditch attempt at victory. Goldsmith already suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), though Veterans Affairs (VA) refused to diagnose him. His contract… return to article
-
subscribe to print magazine
-
email this article to a friend
-
Reader Comments (23)Page 1 of 1 pagesI’m sometimes mystified that certain ITT articles get no discussion response at all, like this one (so far).
We’d better become clear in our minds, finally and once-and-for-all, regarding what it really is to wage war and what it really does to a huge number of the people who are sent to fight it. Whether they come home luckily uninjured physically or psychologically, or take their own lives due to post-traumatic stress, or live on in a desensitized, spaced-out stupor, it’s about time every American came to grips with the shitty reality of it, rather than intellectually ducking their heads into the sand and habitually backing their government’s play as though it were a sporting event and they’re rooting for the home team.
We’d better finally grapple with the implications of reflexive obedience in the patriotic mode and what kind of thinking a citizen of a country like America ought to employ, a citizen of a (nominally) constitutional republic whose clout is so enormous that our fuck-ups resonate around the world and back home in the neighborhoods as much so as our successes. A country in which the foundational charter assigns war-declaration power to the branch that is most responsive to the public (the legislature), thereby implying that it is that very public whose assessment of the danger and risk is most central to the question.
It’s about time we stopped responding like a bunch of Pavlovian dogs, salivating in fear when the “terror” threat is once again dragged out to dull our minds and make us turn toward our Daddy (or Mommy) in Washington to protect us from the boogie-man du jour, especially when it’s we ourselves who helped sharpen that boogie-man’s claws, ala Saddam.
It’s about time we quit allowing military culture and leadership to foster blank-out thinking by schooling troops to blandly repeat things like, “I’m here to do a job,” when doing “the job” entails killing, taking the risk of being killed oneself, and wildly disrupting the lives of the people whose countries we’re invading. Even if it’s for a laudible purpose, and that right there is always to be substantiated and never, EVER taken on faith. It’s a hell of a lot more than just a “job”, both for those at whom the rifles are pointed and as well for those who are carrying them.
I don’t want to hear that, “I’m just doing a job” mesmerism another time… as if we’re asking our young people to take tickets at the movie theater or add up an accountant’s column. “A job”, of all things. F’n newspeak!
We should be damn reluctant to go to war. And there had better be a damn good set of reasons, reasons that don’t get changed midstream, to justify it. And that means we’ll be needing more people who accept the risks of the gadfly role, pestering the powers-that-be with little things like facts, experiences, and revelations of malfeasance in the upper ranks (particularly, I emphasize with great energy, the “upper ranks” of the civilian political leadership).
More power to the IVAW. Those guys know more about what’s really going on over there than we do, by a damn-sight. That applies as well to “the deciders”, who see what they want to see.
Unfortunately us regular guys are also stuck with seeing what those “deciders” decide to show us*… or we would be stuck with it, except for those fine chaps who bring us the straight stories, told from the ugly perspective of having had their own feet in the boots, their own fingers on the triggers, and their own memories of the benumbed nihilism they had to foster in themselves in order to do their “jobs”.
(* Are the coffins still shipped home draped in the national colors? I don’t know. We’re not allowed to see too much of that, for fear our emotions and our thinking, and ultimately our actions, will become unmanageable. It’s a morale issue, don’t you know. Shit.)
Posted by Kuya on Mar 19, 2008 at 1:39 AM I think they should let a soldier be at home “living at least a month before they discharge him.I myself was only asked do you feel okay wel at that moment yes,but after a week I started drinking every day I had to wait for mail from state department dod but within a month of discharce I was caught DUI wich is against the law ‘wich is good’should be no drink at all or smoke,tel!But fine having bailed out was caught again DUI so as you see I was a criminal now. thats why I would recomend something of this kind!After all it takes a while to get used to home again.After a 2 weeks they can ask how are you doing etc.this would help alot of vets I know I have been down that road.Let them give this a try? anthony
Posted by anthony on Mar 19, 2008 at 6:12 AM Thank you for this article. Another important story that the main stream media has missed. So many suffer from war and we owe it the the soliders who have spent horrific times in war to listen to their pain and ease their suffering.
Posted by dmgilbert43 on Mar 19, 2008 at 4:38 PM Shout out to Kuya… I’ve not seen it said better than that!!!
Deep bows and thanks!
Posted by HeyOK on Mar 20, 2008 at 11:44 AM Hmmm..... I think it’s been fairly well documented that the original Winter Soldiers events were brimming with frauds and false accounts.
Perhaps not so much here, as it’s much harder in today’s Internet/blog age to get away with much, but I’m still suspicious that the real purpose here is not to provide a venue for people to vent and get support they can’t get elsewhere, but to paint a distorted picture of the typical experience by, and attitude of, the American soldier in Iraq, and to try to convince the electorate of some overly grim reality that simply isn’t reality. Hence the great efforts at publicizing the event???
This war has not gone as planned, (there was no planning, one could almost conclude) but currently things seem to be going quite well and there appears to be excellent and working plans in place. There’s been report after report by journalists in the field and visiting congressmen expressing their shock about just how much things have turned around for the better in the past year or so. But now these winter soldiers think it’s time to pour cold water on the whole affair. My opinion is that this attitude is rather selfish and short-sighted, disrespects their brothers still in Iraq willingly and proudly, and is not really representative of the typical soldier’s feelings.
There have been many “phony soldiers” recently exposed, however, ala Jesse McBeth, and I think that anyone who values truth in advertising should be wary of believing everything claimed by WSII participants.
Let’s remember how much and often we criticize the Bush administration for distorting reality and propagandizing us into believing something.
Posted by Natalie on Mar 20, 2008 at 1:51 PM Hello Natalie…
Responding to comments you made above.
I didn’t look at as this as something, “to get a venue for people to vent and get support they can’t get elsewhere, but to paint a distorted picture of the typical experience by, and attitude of, the American soldier in Iraq,”…I felt it was a part of the war story needing telling now. Not many years from now in an action movie. These things (historically) are a part of war. For that reason I think even saying “vent”, or “get support” mean a very different thing to someone who has faced any deployment for this country I love and support.
I should (and now have said) say I work in mental health, And I’m also a member of the U.S. military.
I question the concept you propose… that we should not question what is going well now i.e. the ongoing conflicts in Iraq. As you said there really wasn’t a plan which was usable or followable by the troops (the very troops speaking in this article to follow).
Rather than say their stories are in question… might we focus on the people and forces which allowed them to experience these things in the first place?
Maybe we should look more closely at the points made in the first comment here… What does a democratic people need to do/think about to allow their country (meaning countrymen and woman) to go to war? What do they need to allow nameless individuals to sit in detention camps for 6 years without a clear reason for guilt or innocence - Guantanomo.
I’m quite sad that I feel let down by the people of the U.S. All this power and it’s been directed to self protection and fear. I still think we’re better than that. It’s gonna take some work and time… yet I think we can (and will) do better than that.
Blessings, David
P.S. And I mean ps like this is not my point – an add on etc… CAVEAT: You said, Hmmm..... I think it’s been fairly well documented that the original
Winter Soldiers events were brimming with frauds and false accounts.
I’d be interested in easy links to those sources, honestly. Today is the first I’ve heard of this whole thing and if the original “players” were shot down with facts then that’d give this a whole new meaning for me.
Posted by HeyOK on Mar 20, 2008 at 3:21 PM Anthony - You were “done to”, and you are owed. You’re perfectly correct that vets ought to be able to get follow-up inquiries as to their mental health status, and I mean more than once, as part of the high-quality medical and psychiatric support any vet who needs it should get (but, disgustingly, often doesn’t).
Try to tail off on the alky, cousin. It’s always toxic in big or repeated doses (so we say “intoxicated"), and I can tell from the tone of your post you don’t want to hurt an innocent while driving, but you easily could if you let that habit of drug-induced repression lay a hook into you. I doubt if the govt will meet its obligation to you, but there’s help from other quarters, and honestly a lot of the help is quite good.
Don’t call yourself a criminal. Your brain can hear your mouth, and it’s very programmable (psych major talking here). Those are poisoned thoughts, they’ll fuck you up worse than any hooch. You’re injured. What you need is healing influences. They’re out there, no BS, whether VA does right by you or not. Try not to let the ugly thoughts make you mean or chronically sad, those are hard to come back from, can become habitual.
Thanks for the risks you took, even though I’m angry at your CinC, like f’n flamin’ angry (gimme 12 rounds with GWB in the ring, gloves and headgear fine, no Secret Service interfering… him and me are about the same age and weight class, it’s a fair fight but I’ll put his ass on the mat and no mistake!). It isn’t you or the brothers and sisters in uniform we’re pissed at, those of us who think this war was a bad, bad mission you were sent upon. People heal from the most grievous, madcap wounds, shit you’d think no one could ever heal from but they do, and you definitely can too, es verdad! People who don’t know you do indeed give a damn about you, in addition to those who do know and love you, don’t take my word for it you can check it out yourself.
Posted by Kuya on Mar 26, 2008 at 11:09 AM haledavid - I send virtual gassho (palms together at forehead, recognizing the sacred spark in you). Have you ever been furious with someone you dearly love? I’ve been in that state since about March of 2003, the dearly loved one being my country…
...I continually have asked, “What the hell are we doing? Why aren’t more people freaked out about what’s happening?” And I will tell you that answering my young-adult children’s pointed questions is a challenge, to understate it. Yes, let down, I’ve felt that again and again, it bloody sucks. How come so few want to think and examine? It’s damn disheartening. It’s like everyone is stoned, but worse.
Posted by Kuya on Mar 26, 2008 at 11:10 AM Natalie - I’ve read your posts many times on many threads, and I can tell you believe it’s important to be a thinking person. I realize you and I don’t agree about this, but I ask you to please consider the possibility that the “surge” will necessarily have a (likely temporary, imo) dampening effect on the more overt acts of violence in Iraq but cannot have a lasting effect unless we basically occupy it indefinitely, which John McCain must also think or he wouldn’t talk in terms of “100 years”. Or, my other concern, unless the government we helped set up in Baghdad becomes as beastly as the former client dictator we deposed when he slipped the leash.
I ask that you consider why so many of us are so dismayed. My personal anger you can leave out of it or think I’m a weirdo for talking about getting in the ring with GWB, I don’t mind. But when you look at the whole of it, from the false Saddam-helped-cause-9/11 facet, to the sham WMD intel facet, to the ill-equipped soldier facet, to the non-existent strategy facet, and all of the other stuff I won’t belabor you with, I ask that you consider all of it and try to acknowledge why I and haledavid and millions of others (hundreds of millions, if you go beyond US borders) do feel so let down, so misled. Tricked and taken advantage of, that’s what if feels like. I push no venom onto you, I only ask that you see it from this perspective even if it’s not at all your own right now.
There’s a reason why 70% of Americans and 90% of humans are shaking our heads in chagrin. I only ask that you give those thoughts a truly serious moment, even if it’s pretence. If you don’t change your mind, it is your right, it is your mind after all. But you will see that we’re not all selfish and short-sighted, but have an authentic grievance.
Posted by Kuya on Mar 26, 2008 at 11:11 AM I have no idea why ITT’s little flag thingy describes me as posting from Germany, I’m in Hanoi.
Posted by Kuya on Mar 26, 2008 at 11:14 AM Kuya thank you for youre posts.I thank God also because you know a soldiers heart aint from stone.It can break but it takes time to reap up the pieces and fit them back in the right place.With hlp from good friends ,Ill have reapped and put most back on the right place also with the help from above and brothers &sisters;like you! bless you “Kuya”!Anthony
Posted by anthony on Mar 26, 2008 at 2:09 PM I find it ridiculous how easily you can believe lies from these guys. I can only speak for Jon Michael Turner’s accounts because I know his words are complete lies. Those videos he offered up for all the liberals to cry at, where not his to offer up. They belong to 3/8 WPNS CO and he jacked those videos from my husband and his brothers own personal footage. He couldn’t even offer up the truth about what was going on in the videos because he was not a part of them.
Last time I checked there wasn’t a draft in place when he signed up for the Marines, knowing full well he would go to Iraq. He gets offered some money, a little 15 minutes of fame and turns his back on the people that would’ve been there for him for the rest of his life.
Watching his pathetic testimony where he’s getting choked up while telling lies made me think about all of my husband’s brother’s funerals I’ve gone to. All of the faces of the families torn apart because they lost their husband, brother and father flashed into my head.
There is a special place in hell for people like Jon Michael Turner.
Posted by ProudUSMCWife on Mar 27, 2008 at 10:02 AM Hello ProudUSMCWife:
This must be the point in the article above you took exception too. Would you be willing to explain your response based on my questions below?Jon Michael Turner, a Marine from Burlington, Vt., offered the most dramatic—and most graphic—testimony. He stood and tossed his medals into the crowd, yelling, “Fuck you, I don’t work for you no more.” A machine gunner in Anbar Province, Turner showed videos of a 500-pound laser guided missile hitting Ramadi and of his unit machine-gunning the minaret atop a mosque. He showed digital photos of a mutilated body in a car after it had been shot up by a 50-caliber machine gun, with a close-up image of brains; part of a human face on a Kevlar helmet at Abu Ghraib; and a gruesome picture of the open skull of a boy he had just shot in front of the boy’s father—Turner’s first confirmed kill on April 18, 2006. For that, Turner was personally congratulated by his commander, who then offered a four-day pass to anyone who killed the enemy with a knife in hand-to-hand combat. “I am sorry for the things I did. I am no longer the monster I once was,” Turner concluded as he closed his eyes to suppress tears.
Not his videos to offer up or he wasn’t there?
In today’s world videos are very freely shared and open to misrepresentation. Which is it...? You think he should not share the videos or he was there and has his side of the story to tell – which you obviously disagree with? What is THE TRUTH which you allude to yet don’t say? Can you, your husband, or his brothers, “offer up the truth”? He told his story now you tell your side. Pointing a finger and saying “liar” isn’t much of a story really. The pictures he showed obviously resulted from something....
You also touch on the whole “voluntary” military concept. Very touchy subject with a lot of gray area IMO. I don’t know of the particulars of Jon Michael Turner’s situation yet the very concept of volunteer has been thrown out long ago… I’m basing this on the actual words of the oath I raised my hand for and what has repeatedly been happening the past few years. The Oath actually was binding me to The Constitution of the U.S.A. Where in the Constitution of the great U.S.A. do you find justification for, and a legal basis for, we the people, you the wife, your husband, his brothers, me, to support and take actions like we have?
Why are we fighting each other?
Wouldn’t it be a little better for me to be able to somehow console the loss your family has felt – per your words? I have felt loss too… It sucks. There’s a bright spot if the loss means or stands for something. Still a loss though. Still an emptiness which may never be filled.So you have posted here, rather vehemently. Are you angry over the losses your family sustained or do you feel the soldier Jon Michael Turner has lied? And if you think he has lied please provide myself and others more than an accusation.
Posted by HeyOK on Mar 27, 2008 at 10:45 AM Response to HeyOK
I am not making accusations, I’m stating the facts. When I say those weren’t his videos to share, I mean: HE WASN’T EVEN THERE! Those videos were shot by another company in 3/8, not Kilo Company. My husband was a part of those videos, not this guy. For him to show videos that he stole from another company, makes him a fraud. How can he say what was happening in a video that he knows nothing about because like I said before HE WASN’T EVEN THERE. If you were to watch the real video (like I have), you would clearly see the sniper in the mosque that shot at my husband’s Lt, and resulted in a Marine losing one of his eyes.
The only thing that makes me angry is the fact that this guy is still alive to spread lies when a lot of great guys gave their lives so this idiot could tarnish their names.
I’m very proud of my OIF Veteran, and I will continue to be.
Posted by ProudUSMCWife on Mar 27, 2008 at 11:06 AM Hi Kuya,
Thanks for your response to my post. I appreciate your civility and thoughtfulness.
I understand the sentiments of those who so bitterly oppose the war, and I respect those that would behave the SAME WAY if the parties happened to be reversed. However, I have a LOT of problems with the anti-war effort as a whole.
First of all, our congress voted to approve the action there. High ranking Democrats gave impassioned speeches on the nobility and wisdom of dispatching Saddam Hussein, and doing so was official government policy even during the previous administration, whose warnings about the dangers of Saddam’s WMD (including nuclear) possession were even more dire than Bush’s. And some 70% of the population approved of the invasion after Iraq fell under our control. Everybody thought it was great.
But then, after things started not to go so well, instead of maybe offering some discreet constructive criticism and more importantly suggestions and support, these same Democrats went public with negative vitriol, for largely political re-election reasons, and distanced themselves from their president, weakening him internationally and in the minds of the Iraqis.
This irritates me to no end, and it would irritate me if my party did the same thing, and I suppose they have, although I think it was pretty mild in comparison. Because I look at it from a family standpoint, that is when foreign policy and especially war is at issue. Families have disagreements and arguments within their own walls, but when we’re out and about and someone in my family goofs up and needs some correction or disipline, we don’t do it loudly in public for the world to hear. We don’t give others the opportunity to say to themselves, “look, that family’s all screwed up, look at them yelling at each other. They’re obviously not worthy of our respect, can you believe how they’re carrying on? I kinda feel good knowing they’re so screwed up and whatever they say to us, we can disregard them. Look, you guys don’t even get along and agree amongst yourselves, how can you tell us anything?”
And when someone’s threatening someone in the family, we stand up for them regardless of how we feel about that family member, or even if we feel he’s at fault. Someone in our family’s under fire, and we stand together, maybe to sort out problems with them later in private.
And especially now. This has been a long process, with many twists and turns. Some surely should have been anticipated and planned for better, but others are simply things that are inevitably going to play out upon effecting such a grand transition. But I believe that the vast majority of Iraqis are peace-loving, and we’ve recently seen definite physical action on their part to express that. I believe that the empowerment of individuals will eventually result in those individuals getting what they want, which is peace and the ability to raise families in peace. So isn’t it about time to put down the protest signs and join in a little support of our “family”?
continued......
Posted by Natalie on Mar 27, 2008 at 7:25 PM ......The other aspect of the anti-war crowd that baffles me is the presumption on their part that they are somehow representing the feelings and best interest of the troops. It’s a volunteer force, first of all, and there really doesn’t seem to be any kind of mass defection from military service.
I’m sure ProudUSMCWife can offer far better insight on this, but my impression is that the vast majority of the troops are pretty darn proud of their accomplishments there. I guess I base this on hearing them talk and reading their occasional editorials, the raucous welcome President Bush receives when speaking in front of military crowds and the smiling bursting faces when he’s visited them in Iraq. No doubt there are some who are absolutely not happy about their mission, and no doubt there is plenty of anger about how they’ve been led during certain time periods, but in general, on balance, I perceive their attitude about the invasion and mission to be quite positive. I know I’d be heartsick to see so many of my fellow Americans so angry about what I’m trying to do.
Let’s say there’s a lot of controversy about a construction project in your neighborhood. Finally it’s decided that the project is going forward, and majorities agree. But during construction, there’s a few angry sorts that spend their time picketing the place, sabatoging the worker’s tools and distracting them, going on TV and complaining about the foolishness and worthlessness of the work they’re doing, the work they’re quite proud of, even after several died from accidents.
No, sorry. At this point it’s incumbent upon a reasonable citizen to let the project go forward. Concrete’s been poured, steel is up. Millions have been spent. The project must be finished. Who knows, you just might like it once it’s done. It might actually benefit you down the road, in unforeseen ways.
ProudWife powerfully demonstrates my earlier point about how hard it is to pull anything off in this age of blogs and video. It looks like the frauds are still trying, though, and they’ll no doubt be successful in dishonestly influencing many.
That’s not being a very good member of a family though, IMHO.
Posted by Natalie on Mar 27, 2008 at 7:29 PM Thanks ProudUSMCwife that was the clarification I wanted. You didn’t actually say Jon Michael Turner wasn’t there in your first post so I wanted it spelled out clearly.
You have the benefit of your husband who was there and you have seen the videos themselves with his perspective.
I haven’t seen the videos for comparison and so now I’m assuming what Jon Michael Turner showed and what you’ve seen are the same videos. If they are the very same videos then per your husband, who was there, Jon Michael Turner is lying and misrepresenting. That would be wrong and he needs to explain it.
I could also see how Jon Michael Turner and his Company might have taken similiar videos and be telling the story with them.
I support Jon Michael Turner or anyone telling their story truthfully from their personal perspective. I would not support making a confusing issue worse by lying.
Natalie: I like your analogy though to make it really fit I think more emphasis would need to be added on several & ongoing deaths at the construction site which might have been avoided with better planning. That the plans are still not clear even though the majority might have supported them and new questions arise daily. That these deaths will continue if construction continues. That even though people are admitting the plans and effects weren’t and still aren’t clear no one is taking responsibility for the ongoing problems and deaths.
I see that as a more realistic analogy between a construction site and Iraq. Would you agree or have I now gone over the top?
Posted by HeyOK on Mar 28, 2008 at 12:21 AM “....more emphasis would need to be added on several & ongoing deaths at the construction site which might have been avoided with better planning.”
An imperfect analogy, no doubt, but I think I can use your suggestion to improve on it. It would be fine and dandy to constructively criticize the procedures at the site that were leading to accidents, and to offer helpful and well-meaning suggestions for improvement. But to shout and scream, to leap to the conclusion that it would be better to just scrap the project, sympathizing with the loss of life but with ulterior motivations most in mind, would not be in the best interests of anyone, really.
Posted by Natalie on Mar 28, 2008 at 2:17 AM Natalie –
I do love analogies and mine too are usually imperfect. Perhaps more so when dealing with issues of war and all the layers of meaning, personal experience, motivators like money involved, and the FACT that it’s a life and death issue.
I’m thinking that if anyone were to build an analogy which closely followed a similar path to our current dealings in Iraq, from first mention to today, the plug would be pulled and a redo called, investigations into who said and did what etc. Some how we’ve allowed this and now the only answer seems to be drive forward and be prepared for a continuous rough ride.
I don’t have a better answer at present. My answer was several years ago when I advocated strongly to stop and think about what going to war against Iraq preemptively meant before we were in the middle of it. I thought we had enough to focus on by being in Afghanistan we’re we knew the folks responsible for 9/11 actually were for sure! Since then I’ve felt sideswiped by shock and awe.
Let’s get back to actually formulating and studying a plan before we act… that way we don’t have to keep reacting and reacting and reacting while more people deal with the trials and mayhem of war.
Right now, regarding withdrawal, I see the same thing happening as when we entered Iraq. Let’s just do it and see what happens.
The talk is of timetables etc… How about someone pick a date and then show the people of the U.S. what can be accomplished or expected by that date. Then people can say I agree or I disagree with the best guess of experts etc to back them.
What must be accomplished by said date or the mission of withdrawal needs revamping. This is the only way IMO to stand by our claim that we want Iraq to be free and we want our troops out. (That is what we’re fighting for now right?)
In the meantime I am also for holding accountable those who have acted without a viable plan, an ever changing plan, and landed us in this mess to begin with…
You can’t go to war and not expect something to happen… the stories told by soldiers in the article we’re all replying to are one the of things we might expect.
Another we might expect is deaths. And it’s a very strong measure of success IMO. I keep hearing it’s getting better and better and better over there? Yet more and more and more people seem to be dying? Can anyone make sense of that? Am I looking at the wrong links? Are the numbers skewed? Almost 50% of our losses are from the the last two years – Way after “mission accomplished” and way after Saddam was dead.
http://icasualties.org/oif/ What is the measure for success in Iraq? Why is it better now?At what point is it correct to say the ends simply do not justify the means no matter how great those “ends” might be?
I think as the very first comment here by Kuya stated: We’d better become clear in our minds, finally and once-and-for-all, regarding what it really is to wage war and what it really does to a huge number of the people who are sent to fight it. Whether they come home luckily uninjured physically or psychologically, or take their own lives due to post-traumatic stress, or live on in a desensitized, spaced-out stupor, it’s about time every American came to grips with the shitty reality of it, rather than intellectually ducking their heads into the sand and habitually backing their government’s play as though it were a sporting event and they’re rooting for the home team.
AND:
We should be damn reluctant to go to war. And there had better be a damn good set of reasons, reasons that don’t get changed midstream, to justify it. And that means we’ll be needing more people who accept the risks of the gadfly role, pestering the powers-that-be with little things like facts, experiences, and revelations of malfeasance in the upper ranks (particularly, I emphasize with great energy, the “upper ranks” of the civilian political leadership).
Posted by HeyOK on Mar 28, 2008 at 11:03 AM Voluntary has shown up a few times in this thread… as in it’s an all volunteer force right?
I’ll say: MY service thus far has been voluntary! I have repeatedly chosen to stay in the military… By choice… even facing deployment and with a free ticket out… by choice I stay. There are contributing factors and yet thankfully thus far it has been by MY choice.
Not all of the troops I’ve personally dealt with, led, or heard about have had that choice. They signed a contract voluntarily. They forgot to read the small, very small print, which said the U.S. government now owns you. Be patriotic and raise your hand and voluntarily join… sign here… DONE. Try and get out of a contract you signed with the government of the U.S.A.
Stop Loss is real and in effect.
If you don’t know what that means then I suggest you should find out before you ever use “voluntary” again.Bottom line question: How many troops have to be forced to stay longer than they agreed before it no longer becomes a volunteer force. I SAY it takes ONE. I’ve already WAY exceeded that with the troops I deal with – thus I say it’s not a volunteer force anymore.
How many do you think it takes before it’s no longer voluntary?
Posted by HeyOK on Mar 29, 2008 at 11:05 AM Hi again Natalie,
I’m always glad to see reasonable responses on these threads, whether it’s in agreement with a post I’ve made or not. As you know quite well, there’s always the risk of getting irrationally flamed. Refreshing to not be told I’m full of it, am stupid, etc etc.I can certainly respect your irritation with so many Democrats in connection with this problem. Back in the 2004 election season, I criticized John Kerry for having voted to approve the war but then deciding afterward that it should not be funded, as per his voting record on funding bills. I said at the time and I still think, the more honorable choice would have been to vote against the war if one thought it was bad policy, but, since the majority of legislators would have approved invasion anyway as we saw, to vote for funding so as to not leave troops in the field undersupported. I add that the legislator who voted against the war should continue to repeatedly and publicly say why the war was the wrong move, and to explain their votes for funding in the light of the fact that Americans in uniform were in need of the materiel the funding would provide.
No doubt the pundits would tear them a new one for what they’d call hypocrisy, but if I was a Congressman or Senator, I’d prefer to be called a hypocrite for voting against the war but in favor of funding rather than vice versa. The “vice versa” brand of hypocrisy seems to stink more, to me.
But, if I were in that position, you all would never hear the end of my continued harangue that the war was a bad job and the invasion should never have occurred, and that my funding votes were strictly in response to the presence of troops in the field, not to be construed as a backing of the war policy. Maybe my hypothetical re-election would be impossible after that, but I could live with that better than I could sending young men and women out to fight and maybe die with one vote, only to cut off their provisions with a future vote. That does really stink.
It is true that regime change in Iraq as US policy didn’t begin with the GWB administration. But it’s also true that in the run-up to the March 2003* invasion, we as the public were dishonestly influenced by tales that Saddam was instrumental in 9/11, hard evidence, so it was called. And I can still see Robin Cook, former Foreign Secretary to the Blair** government, on BBC with warnings of WMD warheads deployable within under an hour, i.e. battle ready including the delivery system. Colin Powell’s fairytale about mobile bio-weapons labs, Porter Goss’ assertion that the evidence was so good it was a “slam dunk”, all that. I acknowledge the duplicity many Dems showed, but there’s been plenty of duplicity to share around, and the items I cite from within the Bush administration and its partners, I believe, had the greatest effect in building up support among the public immediately before the invasion.
I am not convinced that Americans would have accepted the invasion of Iraq if they had only been reminded that, back in 1998, the Iraq Liberation Act stipulated US policy toward Saddam. I do think it was the bogus linkage with al-Qaeda and the falsely declared clear-and-present-danger of WMDs ready-to-rock that did it for most of us. Certainly me, at the time. So you can see there’s a personal flavor to my indignation.
* I’m not at all sure about the constitutionality of the 2002 move by both Houses to give war-making (effectively, war-declaration) power solely to the President. At the least, it seems cowardly.
** another pol it would be good to get into the ring with…
Posted by Kuya on Mar 30, 2008 at 10:42 PM But to add a major point, I think the eye was taken off the ball. If, as John McCain says, we “need” a victory in Iraq, I submit that we’ve needed even more a victory in Afghanistan. And beyond the military victory, I think we should have done in 2002 what we should have done in the early 1980s when we trained and equipped the mujaheddin (incl. our asset of the day, Osama bin Laden).
I compare with Europe and Japan. Following WW2, it was investment after the military victory that rebuilt those regions, making them far less suitable as environments conducive to radicalism. We should have done something similar in Afghanistan, back in the days of Reagan/Bush and even Clinton, but we didn’t, and this helped feed the conditions that led to the rise of the Taliban by the time of the mid 1990s.
And this is my personal sticking point. If 9/11 was on the level and the enemy to be trounced was the jihadist partnership between the Taliban government and the al-Qaeda movement’s leadership, then the Iraq diversion was 180 degrees in contradiction to that goal. As I say above, Bush & Co. took their collective eye off the jihadist ball. I lived in Pakistan during the years that the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, I’ve travelled in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas where bin Laden is very likely hiding (although he could be in Quetta or Chitral, as well). Those guys want to literally turn back the clock 1000 years, reactionaries to the point of medievalism. In my opinion, confrontation with the jihadist movement on the heels of 9/11 should have taken the fore over any prior agenda, with no distractions. And, I feel that as a nation we are obligated to invest in the rebuilding of Afghanistan’s infrastructure and civil society; we were in the ‘80s and now we are again. Now, with the same obligation applying also to Iraq, we make more unlikely the possibility that either place will be stabilized, short of client-governments (many locals in both places will say “puppet-governments") becoming so hard-fisted that “peace” ends up being only the visible sign of repression as the only remedy to the chaos the wars have brought about in their separate regions. A decisive victory in Afghanistan, with medium- and long-term investment in it to shrink the appeal of jihadism, would have been the better choice. It was the only good choice.
I have nothing but sympathy and respect for American military families who have lost loved ones. I have family-by-marriage in the Corps, and dear friends in the Navy and Air Force. But I can’t pretend that I think those lives were lost in the correct cause.
The soldier or marine can be granted honors for the faithfulness he or she showed by sucking up their fear and risking death or psychological maiming on behalf of their trust in the civilian leadership. This can be accepted even if the troops end up having been in the “wrong war” (barring atrocities or following illegal orders) because they do not make policy, but are only expected to carry it out, are punished if they don’t. Even when they volunteer, they expect (rightly) that if they are sent to deal out violence, it will be for a clear reason that bears direct relevance to the protection of the US. They trust that this will be the case, and that their good faith will not be squandered.
The legislature and executive, by contrast, cannot share in the soldier or marine’s honor by osmosis, just by being associated with them in the public eye. War in-and-of-itself is not inherently honorable, especially for the initiators of it, which the military never is in the US. In a war scenario, the only way the creators of the war policy get any honor is if the mission they sent the men and women in uniform on was in fact in the protection of the US, and that there was no misdirection or BS in the justification they gave to the nation when they sent the troops, the sons and daughters of neighborhood folks, over to fight and die.
I can respect a soldier or a marine even if I think they were on the wrong mission, while still thinking that their bosses in Congress and in the White House have been duplicitous, hubristic, magical-thinking fools who serve personal or factional agendas above all, agendas that have virtually no attachment to the line of propaganda they used to make us all think we were in immediate danger. Damn them. Trusting them or this path the country is on right now is an impossibility for me. Once, twice, thrice burnt, forever shy. If they’ve got something up their sleeve to inspire my or anyone’s trust, now would be the time to reveal it.
Posted by Kuya on Mar 30, 2008 at 11:20 PM Proud USMC Wife: You are amazingly knowledgable about the footage you claim is “owned” by others, completely missing the point that it is the footage itself that is the issue. If there is a special place in hell for anyone, it is for those who lied us into this illegal “war,” in reality an occupation, which has corrupted and ignored every convention or rule of war ever created for such situations, literally stolen taxpayer billions and handed them over to contractors who put your husband’s life and the lives of his “brothers” on the ground, at terrible risk. The actions of Blackwater and their ilk for which we have paid a very high price in every sense of the word have helped to create a more deadly atmosphere for our troops than even their own commanders have done. I have listened to all the Winter Soldier hearings, have you? You pick on Jon Turner, but can you actually identify combat footage, one from another? We have a “proud USMC wife” in our family who can only repeat endlessly “[soldier] has a job to do.” Well that job has cost literally millions of innocent lives, displaced hundreds of thousands more, resulted in rapes, detentions and torture of innocent men, women and children and bled the country of every dime we could to line the pockets of corporate buddies of the administration. You and Natalie just don’t get it; this was never a good war that went bad, a noble effort that was poorly planned - it was planned this way on purpose. Please. Use your critical thinking. I know that Proud...Wife can’t because she is married to the military and war is their job, any war, anywhere, at any price. You have been lied to and lucky that your husband has not paid the ultimate price. You and he have nothing, nothing, and more nothing to be proud of. Take a good look. Depleted uranium has destroyed the country forever. It is illegal to use it, but we did anyway. Poisoned our own soldiers with it. Jon Turner? He is the least of your worries, dear.
Posted by daytrip on May 15, 2008 at 2:31 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
register a new account »Posting Security
Also by Jacob Wheeler
- More U.S. Meddling in El Salvador?
- Was Hillary’s speech a turning point?
Many Clinton supporters in Denver swallow doubts, support Obama - Bringing Baghdad to Denver Streets
- Don’t Tase Me, GOP!
- Caricaturing Danish Muslims
- The War That Never Ends
Iraq Veterans Against the War's 'Winter Soldier' hearings revealed the awful truths of the occupation and the ongoing struggle for those who have returned home.
Popular Discussions
- The 9/11 Faith Movement
Many Americans believe 9/11 was a conspiracy by the U.S. government
1972 posts since Jul 11 06 - What’s the 411 on 9/11?
891 posts since Dec 21 05 - Democrats: It’s the War
659 posts since Nov 1 05 - Was the Presidential Election Stolen?
462 posts since Jun 19 06 - A Fundamental History Lesson
The rise of National Socialism proved politics and religion don't mix
426 posts since Oct 10 05
© 2008 In These Times | Reprint Policy | Privacy Policy | Powered by Expression Engine | RSS Feeds
