I found an interesting op-ed posted at the drudge retort and thought I would share it with the community. The op-ed was written by the father of a slain soldier and he essentially questions the war and the current "stay the course" strategy.
More below the fold:
From the op-ed by Paul E. Schroeder father of the late Lance Cpl. Edward "Augie" Schroeder II.
Washington Post
Early on Aug. 3, 2005, we heard that 14 Marines had been killed in Haditha, Iraq. Our son, Lance Cpl. Edward "Augie" Schroeder II, was stationed there. At 10:45 a.m. two Marines showed up at our door. After collecting himself for what was clearly painful duty, the lieutenant colonel said, "Your son is a true American hero."
Since then, two reactions to Augie's death have compounded the sadness.
At times like this, people say, "He died a hero." I know this is meant with great sincerity. We appreciate the many condolences we have received and how helpful they have been. But when heard repeatedly, the phrases "he died a hero" or "he died a patriot" or "he died for his country" rub raw.
"People think that if they say that, somehow it makes it okay that he died," our daughter, Amanda, has said. "He was a hero before he died, not just because he went to Iraq. I was proud of him before, and being a patriot doesn't make his death okay. I'm glad he got so much respect at his funeral, but that didn't make it okay either."
The words "hero" and "patriot" focus on the death, not the life. They are a flag-draped mask covering the truth that few want to acknowledge openly: Death in battle is tragic no matter what the reasons for the war. The tragedy is the life that was lost, not the manner of death. Families of dead soldiers on both sides of the battle line know this. Those without family in the war don't appreciate the difference.
This leads to the second reaction. Since August we have witnessed growing opposition to the Iraq war, but it is often whispered, hands covering mouths, as if it is dangerous to speak too loudly. Others discuss the never-ending cycle of death in places such as Haditha in academic and sometimes clinical fashion, as in "the increasing lethality of improvised explosive devices."
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I am outraged at what I see as the cause of his death. For nearly three years, the Bush administration has pursued a policy that makes our troops sitting ducks. While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that our policy is to "clear, hold and build" Iraqi towns, there aren't enough troops to do that.
In our last conversation, Augie complained that the cost in lives to clear insurgents was "less and less worth it," because Marines have to keep coming back to clear the same places. Marine commanders in the field say the same thing. Without sufficient troops, they can't hold the towns. Augie was killed on his fifth mission to clear Haditha.
At Augie's grave, the lieutenant colonel knelt in front of my wife and, with tears in his eyes, handed her the folded flag. He said the only thing he could say openly: "Your son was a true American hero." Perhaps. But I felt no glory, no honor. Doing your duty when you don't know whether you will see the end of the day is certainly heroic. But even more, being a hero comes from respecting your parents and all others, from helping your neighbors and strangers, from loving your spouse, your children, your neighbors and your enemies, from honesty and integrity, from knowing when to fight and when to walk away, and from understanding and respecting the differences among the people of the world.
Two painful questions remain for all of us. Are the lives of Americans being killed in Iraq wasted? Are they dying in vain? President Bush says those who criticize staying the course are not honoring the dead. That is twisted logic: honor the fallen by killing another 2,000 troops in a broken policy?
I choose to honor our fallen hero by remembering who he was in life, not how he died. A picture of a smiling Augie in Iraq, sunglasses turned upside down, shows his essence -- a joyous kid who could use any prop to make others feel the same way.
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But their deaths will not be in vain if Americans stop hiding behind flag-draped hero masks and stop whispering their opposition to this war. Until then, the lives of other sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers may be wasted as well.
This is very painful to acknowledge, and I have to live with it. So does President Bush.
May God bless the soul of Cpl. Edward "Augie" Schroeder II.
Not only are we seeing the continuing cost of a failed strategy, but the troops are more and more recognizing that the "stay the course" strategy is a failed strategy.
Forbes
WASHINGTON (AFX) - Support for
President George W Bush's Iraq policy has fallen among the US armed forces to just 54 pct from 63 pct a year ago, according to a poll by the magazine group Military Times published yesterday.
....
While still significantly more supportive of the president than the broad US population, the fall in support by military personnel tracks a similar decline in the president's popularity among the general public.
'Though support both for President Bush and for the war in Iraq remains significantly higher than in the public as a whole, the drop is likely to add further fuel to the heated debate over Iraq policy,' Military Times said.
'In 2003 and 2004, supporters of the war in Iraq pointed to high approval ratings in the Military Times poll as a signal that military members were behind ... the president's policy.'
However, it said, the new poll 'found diminished optimism that US goals in Iraq can be accomplished, and a somewhat smaller drop in support for the decision to go to war in 2003.'
Meanwhile the violence continues in Iraq:
dawn
BAGHDAD, Jan 2: At least 19 people were killed in Iraq on Monday, including seven new police recruits blown up by a suicide bomber as they travelled on a bus.
The recruits were struck by a car bomb near Baquba, north of the capital, as they headed for the northern Kurdish region to undergo training. Thirteen recruits were wounded.
At least 12 more Iraqis were killed by insurgents elsewhere, including two children whose family was machine-gunned in a car and an ambulance driver shot through the head as he drove to a hospital, security officials said.
Monday's death toll was in keeping with the daily average for the past year, according to government statistics.
On Monday, civilians killed included two boys, aged seven and 10, who died in a drive-by shooting when gunmen targeted their parents' car south of Kirkuk.
Here is a Times Online article discussing the current situation:
Times Online
Reliable reporting from Iraq is now so dangerous that the level of insecurity can be gleaned only from circumstantial evidence. Baghdad outside the American green zone is now all "red zone", off limits to any but the most reckless foreigner. The death rate and the number of explosions are rising. While some rural areas are relatively safe there is no such thing as national security. Iraq's borders are porous. Crime is uncontrolled. The concept of an "occupying power" is near meaningless.
The Americans cannot even protect the lawyers at Saddam's trial, two of whom have been killed. Iraqis are meeting violent death in greater numbers probably than at any time since the Shi'ite massacres of 1991. Professionals are being driven into exile, children are kidnapped, women are forced indoors or shot for being improperly dressed. Those Britons who preen themselves for "bringing democracy to Iraq" would not dare visit the place. They have brought three elections, but elections without security do not equal democracy.
This is no time to rehearse the self-delusion, vainglory, ineptitude and cruelty of this venture. The only sensible debate is how to help Iraq back on its feet after this bungled attempt to "defeat terrorism" in the region. It will not be easy. It requires the victorious Shi'ite leaders to respect a devolution of power and money to the Kurdish and the Sunni minorities, as ordained by the federal settlement in Khalilzad's constitution. Local Sunni and Shi'ite power brokers must fix the boundaries of their domains and the spoils that go with them. Such deals are crucial to a future Iraq. The alternatives are tyranny or separatism, probably both.
Such a settlement will have traction only if negotiated notunder American guns but by plenipotentiary ministers and provincial chiefs. Already such ministers depend for support and protection not on a national army or police force but on private militias and mercenaries. These include those of the interior minister, Bayan Jabr, allegedly responsible for reviving Saddam's killing squads and torture chambers. Governors, mayors and police chiefs depend for their authority on cutting deals with gangs and militias. This, not the occupation, is the fact of power in Iraq.
In reality the occupation cut and ran from Iraq in the course of 2004. This was when the Americans and their allies abandoned the policing of towns and cities and retreated bruised to more than 100 fortified bases. This is not like the Vietnam war, when American soldiers could move round Saigon at will. The bases are like crusader castles dotting a hostile Levant. Movement between them must be by air or heavily armoured convoy. Ferocious search-and-destroy sallies by the US Marines do not project power, only death and resentment.
The recent Anbar operation reportedly turned local support for Al-Qaeda from a trickle to a flood. Money is sprayed at sub-contractors (much of it stolen), but America exerts no executive power outside the capital. It imposes no law and order and cannot even protect infrastructure. This is not an occupation. It is a military squat.
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The exit strategy at present relies on there being a fixed moment when the Iraqi army will pass some notional Sandhurst test. It will be "ready to take on the insurgents" and thus "prevent civil war". Such talk has long brought comfort to the armchairs of Pall Mall. Thus was the Indian army to keep the Empire intact. Thus were Diem's soldiers to take on the Vietcong and Moscow's surrogates to defeat the Taliban. The concept of locals being "almost ready" to replace our boys has long appealed to the imperial imagination.
Having recently visited the Iraq army I can attest to the courage of its officers and the commitment of its instructors. But I was constantly being taken aside and told that it was inconceivable that these soldiers would obey an order from a partisan minister in Baghdad to advance against distant militias except under American protection. That was even assuming that the constitution allowed them to do so, which it probably does not. Only the Kurdish peshmergas would happily fight Sunnis or Shi'ites, and that would not be a good idea. As for the police, the basis of law and order, they are a long-lost cause.
Treating the Iraqi army as the cement that will glue together a new Iraq is unreal. Some Baghdad units might form a new Republican Guard were a strongman to emerge from the forthcoming coalition haggle. But if the most devastating American firepower cannot find, let alone suppress, Al-Qaeda's Musab al-Zarqawi, what hope is there for an Iraqi army? Zarqawi will be suppressed if and only if the Sunni militias take it upon themselves to do so. That must await the end of the occupation. The same goes for the pro-Iranian hotheads in the south.
The operative word is await. All Iraq is waiting. Civil strife is appalling because the militias, gangs and police operate under no political authority and with an army supposedly being prepared to fight them. The idea that American or British withdrawal would "lead to civil war" suggests that Iraq is like Yugoslavia. It is not. Since the foreign troops spend most of their time in bases they have no role in policing Iraq's communal strife. Their departure would rather end what Iraqis regard as a humiliation and remove a recruiting sergeant and target for the insurgency.
The next stage in Iraq is no longer within the capacity of America or Britain to determine. All they can do is postpone it. The country is about to acquire its third government in as many years. Left to its own devices this government might just find enough authority to hold its country together. Imprisoned in its green zone castle as a puppet of the Pentagon, it will certainly not. That is why withdrawal needs a date, and an early one.
I was told by a senior security official last month that the Iraq experience had been so ghastly that at least no British government would do anything like it "for a very long time indeed". Funny, I thought. Why are 4,000 British troops leaving to fight the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, whence even the Americans have fled? Nobody can give me an answer.
It clearly is time to "change course" not "stay the course". Anything other than an orderly withdrawl is irresponsible and hurts our military and costs us unnecessarily in additional blood and treasure.