The US military, including General Petraeus, ought to be very worried about what is taking place in this country. We citizens who are members of MoveOn.org number now in millions.
We know, and our military leadership knows also, that the Bush Administration has politicized the military and run it into the ditch. We know, and our military leadership also knows, that the War in Iraq was a catastrophic mistake.
The US military has become complicit in the dissemination of misleading statistics and outright misstatements of fact about the tragedy that is this Iraq War.
That is why the MoveOn.org advertisement in the New York Times which has generated so much discussion was entirely appropriate and even necessary.
Update #1
I've updated the title based on great comment feedback. Diary text not edited yet to match title change emphasis. When I've completed the diary edit, I'll repost Diary text.
Thanks to many readers for great comments.
What it did was to put the Bush Administration, the Congress, and the military also on notice that citizens of the United States, were not uninformed about the institutional and moral catastrophe that the War represents.
- 3700+ dead US servicemen
- Tens of thousands of Americans wounded
- Over a million dead Iraqis (as estimated by at least two serious research organizations)
- Over two million Iraqis (close to 10% of the population) uprooted from their homes
- An ethnic cleansing that has been stemmed only by the building of unscalable walls between neighborhoods of religious factions.
- $600 US Billion dollars spent with no end to the spending in sight
And for what good did we, the United States, light the match that led to this result? Well, everyone but George Bush true believer extremists is now clear that there were no good reasons. All but the most extreme American-Iraq War dead-enders understands that our participation in this war was secured through lies.
We citizens who are members of MoveOne.org will not be silent about the human and financial costs of this war. We cannot be silent. We are driven by our faith, by our love of country, and by basic human decency to speak the truth to the powerful who refuse to acknowledge their catastrophic errors, reverse course, and/or resign in disgrace.
- Our dissent remains unabated after John McCain called for us to be "moved out of the country".
- We are indifferent to Congressional resolutions, Washington DC pundits, and other elitists who tell us that only they have the right to criticize military officials who, on account of personal ambition, willingly distort facts of military success to hide the failure of George Bush to resolve fundamentally political questions.
- And do you imagine, even for a moment, that we would regard the condemnation of a man with the blood of a million people on his hands—President George Bush—as anything other than a badge of moral and patriotic honor?
There is a clear and specific reason for the US military to be worried about MoveOn.org, worried about me, worried about my neighbors around the country, and worried about you. The worry stems from the fact that, because of technology, because of the internet, facts can be known and analyzed and debated virtually in real time, unimpeded by government and media institutions which have the objective of managing access to the facts.
The fact is, when the last body is buried and counted, when the last wound has healed, there can be no easy washing off of the blood of innocents from guilty hands with a shrug and a statement that "we’re sorry, we didn’t know the facts and what we were doing." You see, the facts were available, they are available, and we were able, in enough real time to be politically relevant, to know that a military officer with responsibility in Iraq was dissembling.
And we placed an ad, in political real time, calling attention to the fact of that military officer's dissembling.
The military has to be worried because the facts, the clarity, and the capability to disseminate the facts with clarity cannot be taken away from us.
We will not be silent. We cannot be silent.