I had an LTE published in a military newspaper. My observations were pretty harsh, and I now have reservations about what a young soldier might feel after reading it.
How do you decide the morality of protecting someone from the truth, when what they need to function, is denial. Maybe even to keep themselves and their buddies alive, they need denial. So have I made one huge mistake in submitting a letter to the editor of a military newspaper that shows the war they are in as a fiasco? Were my printed words, read by some young soldier, enough to shake his commitment to what he had sworn to do, or did it rattle his concentration, just a bit?
More on spilling it to soldiers below.
I pray to God not. But I always wonder when I have a letter published if there is some unintended consequence to what I think of as simple truth telling. Often my words are harsh, and I think sometimes they need to be so that they can shake people out of complacency. But I don't want to bring harm to anybody who is in some horrible place fighting battles and watching friends get injured or killed.
Actually, I don't write LTE's so that enlisteds will have their political minds changed. I have a faint hope that the officers charged with protecting them can influence the brass to either get them the hell out of there, or at least put enough soldiers in country to do the job right. And it wouldn't hurt to properly equip them with gear and shielding, either.
I've had friends deployed to Iraq, who sincerely believed that, at some point, weapons of mass destruction would be found there. When they returned, they didn't believe it anymore. So there is enough disillusionment going on just from the experience.
But mentally picturing some kid, maybe new to the military, as the evidence mounts that he's been sent on a fool's errand, reading my LTE, and becoming disheartened or depressed or missing home more, is something I struggle with before I hit the send button.
Not that my words turn a person around, or that what I have to say is newly illuminating, but rather like a drip drip drip of a faucet, is the push over the edge to depression or despair or feelings of being used.
And, because I can see (and others tell me) my anger about this war and the Bush administration, is leaping off the page, how much of what I write is my selfish catharsis, rather than something nobler like "speaking truth to power", assuming anybody truly powerful reads the military paper or my letter.
So, I'm going to reprint my LTE here that was published last weekend in the Stars and Stripes. You tell me if it's something that a deployed soldier, or one who was about to be, should see. Go ahead and judge me for selfishness or insensitivity. I'm proud that I got a letter published, but I wouldn't be, if it were brought home to me, that I caused harm to a soldier. It could be any one of us over there.
Sick men in power
As predicted, Iraq devolved into civil war, and drug warlords rule Afghanistan. Democracy isn't taking hold, and Iraq's middle and professional classes have fled their country.
The approximately 2,600 dead and 19,000 wounded U.S. soldiers, the [thousands of] dead innocent Iraqis, and the $300 billion taxpayers have spent are not enough to create a stable Iraq. The Bush-Cheney administration's messianic visions alienated our allies, increased Arab sympathy for Hezbollah, and weakened the U.S.
Their incompetence and lying have stupidly ceded Iraq to Iran, increased Israel's vulnerability and strengthened Hamas. Profits soar amid this chaos for Halliburton, KBR, oil companies and the world's slimiest arms dealers. Defense contract fraud is rampant. Central banks rebalance portfolios away from dollars, knowing U.S. war debt is unsustainable.
Had Cheney not withheld intelligence that proved weapons of mass destruction in Iraq didn't exist and an occupation would waste lives and treasure, Congress wouldn't have approved an invasion. Retired Gen. Colin Powell's and President Bush's lies misled the nation.
Manipulated, gullible, right-wing Christians repeat the idiotic scriptural interpretation, "This is all predicted in the Bible" to avoid responsibility for electing Bush and to feign powerlessness. While I try to follow Jesus' teachings, his dumbed-down fan club scares me.
To these "rapturous end-timers" who unthinkingly support Bush policies, war, killing innocents and creating enormous public debt are fine because, like a suicide-bomber, it's the afterlife that counts.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair's obsequious running behind Bush at the St. Petersburg summit, nagging him about U.S. inaction in the Middle East, was typical behavior of the enabling wife of a belligerent dry-drunk. Bush was in no mood to be brought out of his stupor and irritated when reminded of his responsibilities. This embarrassment illustrates what sick, corrupt men are in charge of the only world superpower and our soldiers.