War & Peace: November 2004 Archives

I don't know how I got there (thanks Google!) but I got treated to Rush Limbaugh's broadcasting excrescence (oops!) today:

How many of you have seen the story in the New York Times today about all these prison abuses at Guantanamo Bay? It's Abu Ghraib all over again. Sigh. The International Red Cross is the source here, and they're just shocked and outraged at the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Well, if you ask me -- and I know you did because you're listening -- the International Red Cross is a joke. Folks, there are terrorist-supporting regimes throughout the world, there are dictatorships slaughtering their own people everywhere, but the International Red Cross focuses on us because we make our prisons available to these thugs and of course the New York Times is once again the media outlet of choice for the U.S. bashing as in Abu Ghraib, and then the IAEA leak about our supposed failure to secure munitions in the last week of the campaign, and now G'itmo. You know, this paper, I don't know. It appears to me the New York Times just hates this country. They hate red states. They hate traditional marriage. They hate our military. It's just amazing. Here, the International Red Cross, for crying out loud! The International Red Cross never once reports on the abuses of thugs and dictators and what they're doing to their own country.

We never heard from the Red Cross, International Red Cross on Saddam Hussein. We don't hear from them about what goes on in Korea, North Korea, or in China. We don't hear from the International Red Cross about what goes on in Iran. But, no, lo and behold, when there's abuse at G'itmo, when the people committing these atrocities around the world are in our prisons, we become the bad guys. Just typical. Just typical. And this is the kind of thing that's going to continue to inspire backlash among the American people, because the American people do not think that what we're doing with prisons at G'itmo is horrible, is bad. It's going to cause this pro-American backlash among Americans as the New York Times continues down its path to who knows where.

And Rush continues down his path to who knows where too. The road to hell is paved with incoherent half-completed sentences. Anyway, Rush? The Red Cross handles disasters and... oh yes... wars. Those Gitmo prisoners are there because of a war. The treatment of prisoners of war is very much a Red Cross area of interest. No doubt they'd like to tell countries how to treat their citizens too, but that's not their field. They did get involved in the Iran/Iraq war, for what it's worth... but North Korea, no luck, not until a shot is fired. (You were hoping?)

And the Red Cross hates traditional marriage? What the hell?! I think Elizabeth Dole would like an apology. Now.

Oh, and I'm not even getting into what he said about the torture itself. All I can say is... if he ever has to do time, maybe he can go to that prison in Arizona where they make the inmates wear pink underwear. That would be kinda cool.

From the November 25 L.A. Times

 "I'm a cop. I've got a career, a house, a family, a college degree," said one sergeant, who lives in Southern California and spoke, like most of the soldiers, on condition of anonymity.

 "I came back to the National Guard specifically to go to Baghdad, because I believed in it, believed in the mission. But I have regretted every day of it. This is demoralizing, demeaning, degrading. And we're supposed to be ambassadors to another country? We're supposed to go to war like this?"

Read the whole thing...

This Village Voice article drives home this very simple fact.

One thing military officials are not saying is that the behavior of the Marine in the video closely conforms to training that is fairly standard in some units. Marines call executing wounded combatants "dead-checking."

The war is doing terrible things to soldiers' psyches.

There were other times when the enlisted men in the unit fell into violent quarrels with others whom they felt were too aggressive and risked civilian lives. In one instance, enlisted men nearly came to blows with an officer whom they accused of firing a weapon into a house that they believed contained civilians. Despite their concern, terrible mistakes were made. I was standing next to a 22-year-old Marine from the Humvee I rode in when he fired his machine gun prematurely at a civilian car approaching a roadblock, striking the driver, an unarmed man, in the eye. The unit was subsequently ordered to drive past the car without rendering aid. I sat next to the gunner as we crept past, listening to the dying man gasp for breath. The gunner didn't talk for the next three days. A few days earlier, the youngest Marine on the team had shot a 12-year-old boy four times in the chest with his machine gun, mistakenly thinking a stick the boy had been carrying was a weapon. When the mother and grandmother of the boy later dragged him to the Marines' lines seeking medical aid, the sergeant who led the team dropped down in front of the mother and cried.

The conclusion...

Another Marine in the unit I followed—a Democrat's dream, he returned home from fighting in Falluja in time to vote for Kerry—added, "Americans celebrate war in their movies. We like to see visions of evil being defeated by good. When the people at home glimpse the reality of war, that it's a bloodbath, they freak out. We are a subculture they created and programmed to fight their wars. You have to become a psycho to kill like we do. To most Marines that guy in the mosque was just someone who didn't get hit in the right place the first time we shot him. I probably would have put a bullet in his brain if I'd been there. If the American public doesn't like the violence of war, maybe before they start the next war they shouldn't rush so much."

Via DailyKos, one vet's very affecting story. Oh, and apparently giving a vet a copy of Chicken Soup for the Veteran's Soul is a very very bad idea.

You can give grocery certificates to military families, or donate phone cards to deployed troops so they can call home. If you want to help in some other way, Operation Truth has a list of other support organizations. Also consider supporting Disabled American Veterans... unfortunately, their numbers are likely to grow for some time to come.

I just heard 16 troops have been killed so far. We won't know how many civilians we've killed, because we've seized the local hospital. This really, really, really, really sucks. The rest of the world, and history, are not going to judge us kindly.

Some words of inspiration as we prepare to bomb the bejeezus out of Fallujah:

"To treat a patient when (his) brain is coming out ... ," she said, before her voice trailed off. "There are things that I will never understand. It's beyond my comprehension; a higher power will have to explain why these things have happened." — Melissa Kaime, Navy surgeon.

Enjoy your war!

Now that the election and wedding are done, I think my next project is to put together a list of resources for helping soldiers in Iraq, and for helping the Iraqis. This list from Operation Truth looks like a good place to start.