Only Bush-Cheney could succeed in dumping troop morale into the realm of the immoral.
As if this national nightmare in Iraq isn't bad enough. The news that My Son the Marine and his fellow troops are being "shortchanged," as Bob Herbert put it in yesterday's New York Times piece "Lift the Curtain," by not being able to rely on decent medical care at Walter Reed should they be wounded or disabled, is beyond despicable.
As I mentioned in my diary the other day, we only just learned that my son was commended for bravery in pulling out wounded and dead Iraqi soldiers from a bus hit by a roadside bomb during a midnight convoy back in January.
How unspeakably galling it is to know that my 20-year-old son and his comrades in arms selflessly -- voluntarily -- provide a degree of professionalism, respect and devotion to duty in aiding wounded Iraqi soldiers that the U.S. government doesn't extend to its own troops.
And what DOES affect troop morale?
Here is military correspondent Tom Ricks's Top 10 lists on troop morale from his Washington Post email inbox of February 25:
Subject: What affects morale?
There has been much debate recently about whether a congressional resolution of disapproval for the U.S. troop increase in Iraq would undercut the morale of forces there. Here an officer who has served two combat tours in Iraq reports on what has affected his morale:
Ten Worst
- getting blown up
- buddies getting blown up
- re-securing a town we secured year before last
- "Taps"
- the "catch and release" detainee program
- colostomy bags
- civilian young men who won't look me in the eye when I'm in uniform
- any scene from any shopping mall anywhere in America
- editorials pointing out that casualties are "light by historical standards"
- lies
Ten Best
- Iraqis willing to fight for their country
- good sergeants
- clean, dry socks and T-shirts
- cigarettes and chai without body armor
- the USO at the DFW airport
- meeting an Iraqi leader from my last tour who's still alive
- "nothing significant to report"
- sleep and KBR macadamia nut cookies (tie)
- dead generals (this one is hypothetical, at least for the past six years, but Ridgeway said "It's good for the troops' morale to see a dead general every once in a while.")
- truth
For the record, I emailed this list to my son earlier this morning. His response? "That list seems pretty accurate...actually very accurate."
After four years, how can any government expect to maintain troop morale when it continues to kill off young kids in a war without cause, plan or exit strategy?
And the answer is....