The coffins have been suppressed for too long.
The soldiers are sick of it.
Hayes drops down and cradles Miller's head in his lap, while Dermer rips open a pressure dressing and places it on the neck wound. Each man grabs one of Miller's hands and feels for a pulse. They still haven't found one when medic Spec. Jaymie Holschlag pulls open the back door of the M-113 and rushes, breathless, to Miller's side.
"Doc," Hayes says, looking up at her. "He's gone."
Holschlag begins checking Miller's pulse herself, as if she hasn't heard.
"Doc," Hayes repeats, louder. "He's gone!"
It is 10:18 a.m. on April 12, and John Wayne Miller is no more.
In the frenzy to save Miller, no one was thinking about why the war had snatched away the gangly 21-year-old Wal-Mart stocker from West Burlington, Iowa. Only later, as darkness falls and details of the day's horrors ricochet through their camp, do that question and others begin to haunt Hayes and his tightknit Iowa platoon. With a fifth of its soldiers killed or wounded, the platoon is reeling from the trauma of repeated loss, facing a constant threat from bombs and gunfire on Ramadi's streets, or mortar strikes on their base. They are angry, anxious, wracked by guilt -- one soldier suffers from combat stress so acute that he is unable to go on missions, and stays behind camp walls.
Dermer asks bitterly why the crew had sat exposed so long, making them an easy target.
Hayes turns inward, tormented over why the sniper had set his cross hairs on Miller instead of him.
Others wonder what Miller -- who sought escape by playing video games underneath a blanket -- was doing here in the first place.
Ramadi is a grim destination for U.S. troops. No battalion stationed inside the city has so far escaped a tour without serious casualties. More than 120 troops have been killed and hundreds more wounded since the summer of 2003 -- proportionally more than in Baghdad. And not all the deaths are from combat: One homesick 19-year-old recently shot himself in the head.
War is hell. And we're seeing the same things we saw in past wars -- suicides, fraggings, people becoming head cases.
And those who think we should stay the course are those least likely to want to lend a hand (beyond a stupid yellow ribbon magnet on their car). As Bob Herbert writes:
What hasn't changed is the fact that the vast majority of the parents who support the war do not want their children to fight it. A woman in the affluent New York suburb of Ridgewood, N.J., who has a daughter in high school and a younger son, said: "I would not want my children to go. If there wasn't a war it would be different. I support the war and I think we need to be there. But it's not going well. It's becoming like Vietnam. It's a very bad situation. But we can't leave."
The home-front "warriors" who find it so easy to give the thumbs up to war endanger the truly valorous men and women who are actually willing to put on a uniform, pick up a weapon and place their lives on the line.
The president and these home-front warriors got us into this war and now they don't know how to get us out. Nor do they have a satisfactory answer to the important ethical question: how do you justify sending other people's children off to fight while keeping a cloak of protection around your own kids?
Yeah, let other sons and daughters die for a war you support. That's being a good, patriotic, upstanding American citizen. It's better people
like these suffer, rather than them.
As a loved one of Joseph Tremblay of New Windsor, who died April 27 in Iraq doing what he considered his duty for his country and fellow Marines, I have feelings of such loss and sadness - and also extreme anger.
"The article (on the Downing Street Memo) has helped me understand my anger towards the President and his underhanded, dishonest and dangerous policies in Iraq.
"I urge every American to demand that President Bush be made to answer these allegations regarding what has become known as the Downing Street Memo. I sent in the petition (demanding a hearing) and called all my family and friends, urging them to do the same.
"I am very proud of Joey and the ultimate price he paid for our country, but if President Bush had not lied and been so determined to invade Iraq, Joey would be here with his loved ones, planning his wedding and looking forward to what a young man with such promise could have contributed to the world.
"My question to President Bush is - how do you look yourself in the mirror every morning with a clear conscience knowing that 1,700 young Americans are dead based on a lie?"
So we are stuck in an unwinnable war, with a Right Wing that's increasingly shrill as they hold on desperately to the what last straws they have ("they hate America!" "Last throes!"). We have a military that can't recruit the manpower necessary to fight the war. We have families refusing to send their children into the Iraqi meat grinder.
Thankfully, Jesus' General has just the right solution: Operation Yellow Elephant.
The objective of OPERATION YELLOW ELEPHANT is to recruit College Republicans and Young Republicans to serve as infantry. They demanded this war and now viciously support it. It's only right that they also experience it.
The 56th College Republican National Convention is the setting for many of the proposed ops. It begins on Friday, June 24.
The General encourages his readers to take the initiative to create materials and to plan and conduct special operations. Please let him know what you've done and he'll try to post it.
Regular readers know that the General is a proud heterosexual, Christian conservative. He is not trying to embarrass the College Republicans. Rather, he believes that by encouraging them to enlist, he is pushing them to be more vocal about the good work their doing to make our homeland safe--things like holding affirmative action bakesales, holding immigrant hunts, almost single-handedly funding Ann Coulter, David Horowitz, and Michelle Malkin, relieving the elderly of the burden of having money, and punching out Joan Jett.
Their country is calling war supporters. Fight for freedom! Encourage your children and grandchildren to fight for freedom! Encourage your listerners, your flocks, your readers, your viewers to fight for freedom!
Because, as they like to lecture us, freedom isn't free.