These are the figures that we tend to refer to when we talk about the costs of war. But with war comes other costs that are difficult to capture in numeric form. These are the hidden costs of war.
This past weekend veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan gathered in Maryland to talk publicly about their experiences abroad. They told tales of war that will disturb any person of conscience that hears them. Stories of innocent civilians killed, ever changing rules of engagement, torture, and casual disregard for human life. Stories of atrocities encouraged and sanctioned by military officers. Stories that reveal the horrifying nature of this war - and of all war. Their story has been largely ignored by the American mass media, but has been made know by the work of the independent media - particularly Amy Goodman's Democracy Now.
It would be easy to dismiss these testimonies as partisan political statements made by veterans opposed to the war. Indeed, those giving testimony are members of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War. But their stories are self-depricating to the extreme. Shame and guilt are the themes that dominate these narratives, not political ambition. They witnessed the horrors of war, and now they oppose it. A simple message, but one that can be too easily lost in today's world of partisan rhetoric.
Their narratives will help Americans understand what it is that plagues so many veterans of the "War on Terror", and may continue to plague them for life. Inside of their head of many veterans the war continues, even long after they come home. Second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, and year by year. For the rest of us wars come and go - they have definitive endings. But for some veterans, the war never ends. It replays in their mind forever.
This mental toll on veterans is one of the hidden costs of war, one which politicians loath to acknowledge and the media tends to ignore. The story of Corporal Jeffrey Michael Lucey, as told by his parents - Joyce and Kevin - the negative impact that war can have not just on the lives of those who fight, but also on the lives of those who love them:
Joyce Lucey:
"My name is Joyce Lucey, and I'm the mom of Corporal Jeffrey Michael Lucey. The last month of his life, he had this flashlight by his bedside, and he was looking for the camel spiders that he could hear running around the room. And when he went over to Iraq, he asked me to hold this coin for him every day, so he'd come home safely. I had no idea that it was after he came home that I should have been holding this coin."
"Jeffrey's death should never have happened. The young man, who in January of 2003 was sent to Kuwait to participate in an invasion in which he did not agree, was not the same young man that stepped off the bus in July. Our Marine physically returned to us, but his spirit died somewhere in Iraq. As we celebrated his homecoming, Jeff masked the anger, the guilt, the confusion, pain and darkness that are part of the hidden wounds of war behind his smile."
"Jeff was in Kuwait with the 6th Motor Transportation Battalion. He was a convoy driver. On the 20th of March, he entered in his journal, which I have here, "At 10:30 p.m., a scud landed in our vicinity. We were just falling asleep when a shockwave rattled through our tent. The noise was just short of blowing out your eardrums. Everyone's heart truly skipped a beat, and the reality of where we are and what's happening hit home." The last entry is, "We now just had a gas alert, and it's past midnight. We will not sleep. Nerves are on edge." The invasion had begun, and Jeff never had time to put another entry in."
"Several months after his return, he said that he would like to complete it. We never knew that he did not—he would never get the time to do that. Our fear the whole time he was over there was that he would be physically harmed. We never imagined that an emotional wound could and would be just as lethal."
"The letters we received from him were brief and sanitized. But to his girlfriend of six years, he said in April of 2003 he felt he had done immoral things and that he wanted to erase the last month of his life. "There are things I wouldn't want to tell you or my parents, because I don't want you to be worried. Even if I did tell you, you'd probably think I was just exaggerating. I would never want to fight in a war again. I've seen and done enough horrible things to last me a lifetime." This is the baggage that my son carried with him when he stepped off that bus that sunny July day at Fort Nathan Hale, New Haven, Connecticut."
"Over the next several months, we missed the signs that Jeffrey was in trouble. We had no way of knowing that during his post-deployment briefing at Camp Pendleton he was told to watch the direction that he was going in his survey, or else he'd be kept there another two to four months. He was careful from then on."
"In July, he went to the Cape with his girlfriend, and she found him rather distant. He didn't want to walk the beach. He later told a friend at college that he had seen enough sand to last him a lifetime. At his sister's wedding in August, he told his grandmother, "You could be in a room full of people, but you could feel so alone." He resumed college in 2003. That fall, we found out that Jeff had been vomiting just about every day since his return, and that kind of kept up right until the day he died."
"On Christmas Eve, his sister came home early to see how he was doing. He had been drinking. He was standing by the refrigerator, and he grabbed his dog tags and he tossed them to her, and he called himself a murderer. We were to find out that these dog tags included two Iraqi soldiers that he feels—or he knows he's personally responsible for their deaths. His private therapist, who saw him the last seven weeks of his life, said he didn't wear them as a trophy, but he wore them to honor these men. He had a nightmare in February. He told me he was having a dream that they were coming after him in an alleyway. After his death, we kind of checked the VA records, and he had talked to them also about having nightmares in which he was running from alleyway to alleyway."
"Spring break 2004 began, three months in which our family watched the son and brother we knew fall apart. He was depressed and drinking. When college classes resumed, he found attending classes very difficult. He had panic attacks, feeling that the other students were staring at him, even though he realized they weren't. He was placed on Klonopin and Prozac to see if it could keep him in class. Jeff's problems just worsened. He was having trouble sleeping, nightmares, poor appetite, isolating himself in his room. He was unable to focus on studies, so he could take his—so he could not take his finals. An excellent athlete, his balance was badly compromised by the mixture of Klonopin and alcohol."
"He confided in his younger sister that he had a rope and a tree picked out near the brook behind our home, but told her, "Don't worry. I'd never do that. I wouldn't hurt Mom and Dad." He was adamant that the Marines not be told, fearing a Section 8 and not wanting the stigma that is connected to PTSD to follow him throughout his life."
"He finally went to the VA, after being assured that they were not part of the military and would not relay any information without Jeff's permission. His dad called and explained what was happening with our son, and they said it was classic PTSD and that he should come in as soon as possible. The problem was getting Jeffrey to actually go in. It was—he kind of—every day it was "Tomorrow. I'll go in tomorrow. I'm tired." He just didn't have the energy to get up. The day he went in, he blew up .328, and it was decided he needed to stay. As it was decided he needed to stay, it took six employees to take Jeffrey down. He had gotten out the door and ran out into the parking area."
"Involuntarily committed for four days, the stay did nothing but make him feel like he was being warehoused. After seeing an admitting psychiatrist, he would not see another one until the day of his discharge. After answering in the affirmative that he was thinking of harming himself and revealing the three methods—overdose, suffocation or hanging—he was released on June 1st, 2003, a Tuesday. We found out later that he told them on Friday, the day that he was admitted, that he had a hose to choke himself. None of this was ever relayed to us."
"They told us while he was there that he would not be assessed for PTSD until he was alcohol-free. But Jeffrey was using this alcohol as self-medication, and he had told us often that's the only way he could sleep at night. That we might—and the VA said that we might have to consider kicking him out of the house so he would hit rock bottom and then realize he needed his help. That wasn't an option for us."
"On his discharge interview, Jeff said there were three phone calls that the psychiatrist took, one of them being just before he was going to tell her about the bumps in the road, the children they were told not to stop their vehicles for and just not to look back. He decided not to, after she took the call, feeling she wasn't really interested."
"On June 3rd, on a Dunkin' Donut run—and this was two days after he was released from the hospital—he totaled our car. Was it a suicide attempt? We're never going to know. No drinking was involved. I was terrified I was losing my little boy. I asked him where he was. He touched his chest, and he said, 'Right here, Mom.'"
"On the 5th, he arrived at HCC, Holyoke Community College, where he was a student. But because of not taking the finals, he would not be graduating. But he arrived there to watch the graduation of his sister. This was supposed to be his graduation also. How he drove his car there, we'll never know. He was so impaired. We managed to get him home, but his behavior got worse. He was very depressed."
"My parents, who saw their grandson often, never saw him like this. His sisters and brother-in-law and my dad took him back to the VA. He did not want my husband to go, because he felt he was going to be involuntarily committed again. They were waiting for him, but he refused to go in the building. He was intelligent, didn't want to get committed again like the weekend before. They decided, without consulting someone with the authority to commit him involuntarily, that he was neither suicidal or homicidal, there was nothing they could do. Our daughters called home in a panic saying it didn't look like they were going to keep their brother. In their records, they say the grandfather pleaded for someone to help his grandson. Neither our veterans nor their families should ever have to beg for the care they should be entitled to."
"My father lost his only brother in World War II. He was twenty-two years old. He was now watching his only grandson self-destructing at twenty-three because of another war."
"Kevin and I went through the rooms when we knew Jeff was coming back. We took his knives, bottles, anything we felt he could harm himself with, a dog leash. I took a stepstool, anything that I thought could trigger something in his mind. His car was disabled not only to protect himself, but to protect others from Jeffrey. Kevin called the civilian authorities. They said they can't—"We can't touch him. He's drinking." My child was struggling to survive, and we didn't know who to turn to. There was no follow-up call from the VA, no outreach, though they knew he was in crisis. We had no guidance—what to say to him, how to handle his situation. You hear a lot about supporting our troops, but I'll tell you: we felt isolated, abandoned and alone."
"While the rest of the country lived on, going to Disney World, shopping, living their daily lives, our days consisted of constant fear, apprehension, helplessness, while we watched this young man being consumed by this cancer that ravaged his soul. I sat on the deck with this person who was impersonating my son and listened to him while he recounted bits and pieces of his time in Iraq. Then he would grind his fist into his hand, and he'd say, 'You could never understand.'
"On Friday, June 11th, around midnight, my daughter got a call from a girl down the street. She asked me, "Where's your son?" And I said, "Debs, he's in his room. He's sleeping." Well, apparently not. He had climbed out the window and gotten into this girl's car. He wanted some beer. She was—this girl who had known Jeffrey all her life was a little bit scared of him. When I saw him get out of the car, I froze. Jeff was in—dressed in his cammies with two k-bars, a modified pellet gun, which the police wouldn't know, and carrying a six-pack. He had just wanted that beer. There was a sad smile on his face like a lost soul. When I told him how concerned I was about him, he said, 'Don't worry, Mom. No matter what I do, I always come back.'"
Kevin Lucey:
"So later that evening, we had decided that we were going to try to go out, because he had become reclusive in the house. We were going to try to go out for a steak dinner the following night. At about 11:30, quarter to 12:00, Jeffrey asked me, for the second time within the past ten days, if he could just sit in my lap and I could rock him for about—well, for a while. And we did. We sat there for about forty-five minutes, and I was rocking Jeff, and we were in total silence. As his private therapist that we had hired said, it was his last harbor and his last place of refuge."
"The next day, I came home. It was about quarter after 7:00. I held Jeff one last time, as I lowered his body from the rafters and took the hose from around his neck."
Last year I worked as an interning staff assistant at the local Congressional office in Dover, New Hampshire. Part of my job was to talk with constituents, recording their concerns for the record and forwarding their questions to relevant staff members. The vast majority of these comments came from people who were either pleased or displeased with the various positions that my Congresswoman had taken on some issue or another. But the ones that stay with me are the calls and visits from veterans and their families, desperate for help. Desperate just to have someone listen to their tales of woe.
The impression I was left with was that our government - and particularly the military and the Veterans Administration - has a tendency to systematically abandon veterans when they need help the most. It seems inexplicable that those who have suffered so much for our country should be denied care based upon some bureaucratic rule or another. Imagine being turned away from care because you forgot to fill out "Form A" or "Form B" thirty years ago. Or worse, because your paperwork was "lost". The veterans I met were all remnants of the Vietnam War, still suffering alone thirty years or more years after they came home. A few were lucky - they had the support of families who helped to share their burden. Many did not. They have truly been forgotten.
The questions that they asked most often always began with one word. "Why?" This was a question I could not answer.
It shames me to think that we as a nation are in the process of creating another generation of forgotten soldiers. We'd like to believe that even if we oppose the war we still support the troops. But how much attention is being payed to those who do make it home alive? When was the last time you even heard the media mention how many soldiers have been wounded in Iraq - never mind detail the fate that awaits them at home?
America was told that this would be a fast, convenient war. It has been anything but that. Our country will be living with the repurcussions of this war for decades to come.
I recommend that those who read this article listen to the testimonials provided by those who served our nation in Iraq and Afghanistan, regardless of where you stand on the war.
Listen Now At:
Iraq Veterans Against the War
Democracy Now
David Anderson is a political correspondent for Gather.com. You can read all of David's past correspondent articles by clicking here
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Comments: 35
I think it pertinent that Dick Cheney spent the 5th anniversary of the war that he engineered, fishing in luxury with the Sultan of Oman.
Americas sons and daughters are dieing for nothing more than the profit of evil men!
This, along with personal stories on this war that became illegitimate when we stopped looking for WMDs, break my heart.
"Never again." - Many younger Americans believed that to be true, so the post 9/11 world is one that defies our expectations and values.
My grandfather returned from World War One with what would today be called PTSD but was then known as "shell-shock". In addition he had emphysema as a result of being gassed. He was unable to work but denied a pension due to the same kind of bureaucratic fudging detailed above. It consigned his family, including my Mom, to extreme poverty.
My father returned from World War Two relatively intact, but certainly an emotional cripple to some degree. He was rarely happy for long in his life, despite having so many reasons to be. He lived a fairly normal, productive life, but there was violence and bitterness and an inability to express his feelings that led to a lot of distress for him and for our family. The government was no help at all in any of this and even questioned his citizenship later in life (he had emigrated to Canada as a three year old child and his citizenship had not been an issue when they put him in uniform).
The moral of the story: never, never, NEVER fight for your country as your country will never, never, NEVER really appreciate the sacrifice, no matter what propaganda they spew to the contrary.
War is not a pretty thing. It's inhuman. It's cruel. It's about death, destruction and worse. The soldiers whose job it is to wage war reach a point at which their feelings stop functioning simply to survive. When they come home, don't they deserve at least some help in re-entering a society from which they have been alienated, whether they liked it or not?
It is only by knowing that we can begin to heal the wound this criminal war has done to our nation.
The only way I can see to avoid this kind of suffering is to ban the military, to stop sending men and women to war, and to let those that are willing to inflick such suffering on others control whatever they want.
As devostating as war is, what alternative do we have for freedom?
What is striking to me, is that there are men and women who with their eyes open, becuase anyone reading this article knows what to expect, choose to go to war. They have found something in themsleves that let's them risk everyhting when noone believes in them or what they do.
There have been some efforts to raise questions about what the administration knew going into the war. Members of the administration have gone before Congress and given testimony about pre-war intelligence. But these hearings have little effect. Administration officials can simply say "I'm sorry, but I do not recall...", "lose" thousands of email communications, or classify information that Congress asks for in order to avoid accountability.
What I am getting at here is that accountability is one way to prevent unnecessary war. It is a bit bizarre that we hold politicians accountable for extra marital affairs, but not for leading the nation to war using questionable justifications.
My concern is that we look at war, this war, through a narrow prism selecting only those colors we want. There is a wide specrtrum of color from the single ray of ligth striking the prism. There is a spectrum of consequeunces of from every war, not a single suffering.
You talk about laws that hold people acconutable, how did we get those laws, why are we able to enforce those laws? Is it simply because you or I say so? No, there are men and women that confront the same suffering that the troops in war do to be the thin blue line. Those troops in Irag and Afganistan, are the internatinal thin red line.
As long as this world is made up of people there will be no clear and distinct truthes or "intelligence" before we go to war. YOu may think that the laws of our land are clear and distinct, and yet justice and fairness are continutally disagreed upon when those laws are enforced.
You may want to blaim Bush, and make him pay. Get over it, he and his will be gone at th end of the year, life goes on.
I want to focus on what those that have found so important that they are willing to risk their all for and see how we can leverage that to better the region and the world.
War is hell, but without those that have been willing to sacrifice in it where would this wolrd be?
But eventually if one believes in progress - which I do - one has to step up to the plate and accept that these things are not inevitable. I suppose that part of the reason I want to see Bush and his team held accountable is that I believe there was a deliberate decision made to use questionable intelligence to lead the nation to war. For us life goes on. But for millions of Iraqis and thousands of Americans things are not so convenient. Bush leaves office as any other president would after 8 years. Where is the justice in that?
War. At times it has led to freedom, at times it has led to liberation. The key is recognizing when it is justified and when it is not. In the case of this war, the question is whether we have achieved either. I do hope peace and freedom come to Iraq, but the method of delivery remains in question.
What is the point of raging on Bush, should be still be discussing Bill Clinton, Bush I, Reagan, ANd if you want to talk about getting into war how about Johnson? Whatever is said about Bush has been said before, and I truly doubt what you or most any one else says it won;t change his feeling about his decsions.
I have heard for the most of my life hhow the US is to short sighted and to needing of immediate gratification. And how the Chinese, Japanese, the Russians, and even the Arabian cultures look at the impact of international actions of a hundred years. Which is it we need to have instant gratification or we shold look at least one or two genrations in the future. Who do you think that at the end WWII that Japan and Germany would become world economic powers?
Has the war in Iraq change their lives for the better, fi it is true that Sadamn and his sons brutalized the people of their country, if they attached and brutalized the peoples around their country, if the corrupted nations by paying companies to circumvent the UN, even corrupted the UN, and now these people can verbally abuse each other and thier government and even the US openly? If the countries around them have to change their practices to be more sensitive to international sanctions and intervention? Then it seems to be that they are better. But that isn't as important is what it will be like in ten or fifteen years, if they are under populous self rule then how are the other countries in the region.
My test is do men and women voluntarily go to war knowing all that they know of its horrors, and do they feel that they are doing good. On a personal level I feel that the sacrifices these men and women are making gives hope to our country and that there is a character in "us" that will fight for those who can;t fight for themsleves and will give up their comforts for an ideal, the one that has given each of us hope.
Unless there is a purpose to talk about how we got here, it is alot of quibiling. I am more interst in what has been accomplished and how more can be accoomplished. I don't discount what war is like and the suffering it creates, but I never let that prevent me from seeing the good that is achieved.
As long as there are people that will resort to violence to accomplish their ends then they will only understand violance to stop them.
How long do you think we can continue to pay people not to shoot at us, anyway?
What I don't get is the preoccupation with Bush. He is history, you may feel you can, I can;t. What I can't change or learn from, I let go of.
We are in the war, what I want to focus on is what good can come out it, what do those people that figth in that war see woth fighting for, and how can we make that happen.
If it was as simple as simply paying people, this war would be cheap. The key is to surpress the destruction long enough for the local people (that region) to begin to realize how much they can gain and are willing to sacrifice for those gains.
You may feel that Bush listens to the 'lalala', but don;t be surprised if those people fighting in Iraq like having a President that they know will support them in their mission as long as they are willing to fight.
I saw an interesting piece on TV the other day. A reporter managed to get in to interview Iraqi soldiers without the usual government official to impede their openness. These people, when asked about the upcoming election, to the man refused to discuss the Republicans. The standard line was that they were living a Republican run war. They wanted to see what Democrats would do.
I don't feel that Mr. Bush refuses to listen to experts, I know he does. There is literally volumes of information showing that. What I personally believe happened is that Mr. Bush believed the war would be fast and that the Iraqis would step up and immediately start governing themselves. This is, in fact, what those who went in right after the fighting stopped were told. They expected to be there no more than 90 days. It's the theory upon which Wolfowitz made his estimate of the war's cost.
When that failed to happen, there was never any Plan B in Mr. Bush's mind. All he had to do was wait it out. So the initial insurgency wasn't suppressed. It was simply disaffected Baathists and was on it's last legs. It would be gone, according to Mr. Cheney, in a few weeks. When it intensified, it became al-Qaeda. When al-Qaeda eventually showed up then they were blamed for everything. At no time did the administration take a cold hard look at reality and ask the question: what do we need to do now that our original plan didn't work out? So they did nothing and made up excuses.
Mr. Bush would have had the support of the people here had there been any indication of a willingness on his part to reform his ideas and recast his plans to encompass reality. He's never once done that. Not to this day. So we have a do-nothing, Iran turning and controlled government there. We have the government socking the oil money into foreign banks (because they say there is too much corruption to spend it) and we are paying for everything while they continue to do nothing.
That's why people oppose Bush and the war. He's never done anything to convince people he actually wanted to win the damned thing. He had this hearts and flowers delusion of people declaring him their liberator and instant democracy and when it didn't happen it wasn't fun any more so he wandered off on one of his endless vacations and let things go to hell.
Can you change what has happened? If not, let it go.
We can discuss the reason, the thoughts in people's heads at the time, how bad things have to be before those not directly involved take actions, how inconveint things are from 10.000 minels away. I just do see it changes anything.
We still have peole railing about the use of the atomic bomb at the end of WWII, all of the talk never has changed history and never will.
What can we do tomorrow and what effect will it have, that is my question.
You can rail on Bush and a every other politician that (of their own free will) voted to authorize the war in Iraq. It never will change that vote. We can sit here and discuss this detail or that, I have got the time.
Why aren't we talking about what we want too see what can and shold happen in Iraq tomorrow? Once we focus on that then we might be able to spend our energy on figuring how we can help make it happen.
I have been talking about what I want to see in Iraq tomorrow. I want to see a plan to fix this mess. I want a clearly enunciated objective and clearly enunciated milestones to measure progress. I want to see diplomatic efforts to stabilize the country to go with the military ones. I want to see our government punish the war profiteers and withdraw their contracts. I want to see this government in close collaboration with the Iraqi government enunciate a series of clearly stated objectives, provide the same clearly measurable milestones, and give approximate dates for progress toward them.
What you're missing is that is also what most of those who oppose the war want. As an ardent Bushie, doesn't it bother you that your CiC still clings stubbornly to stay the course? Don't you want to see a change in direction that would result in the stabilization of the country? Why do you guys keep supporting him when he stubbornly digs in his heels and refuses to deal with the realities on the ground there rather than with his fantasies as to how things "should" have gone?
Bush is gone in months, why dwell on him? Have you ever heard the phrase, "don;t beat a dead horse." Well he is that horse.
You tell me you want clear enuciated objectives and milestones, I agree. When you say you want dipomatic efforts, how would you determine if those efforts are happening and would there be milestones for diplomacy? Who should be include in the diolmatic efforts?
When you say "war profiteers" how do you define them?
What are the milestones and what should happen when those milestones aren;t achieved?
If I am supposed to be missing what most of those who oppose the war want, could it be that you could be missing what most of those who support our efforts in Iraq want?
I look at those guys that are fighting and dying and feel that if they are willing to make that sacrifice then they must see something in Iraq worth all of the risk. One leasson I have learned from the past, is if the people who know what hell really looks like and are willing to walk thourgh if for others, then we shoulld listen to their actions.
Did you ever wonder why the woman and men go off to fight in war, whether it be Iraq, Afganistan, Kuwait, any war? They do have a choice.
Bush is history, a woman, a black man, or an old crippled man our future focus on them and offer them new solutions.
I am I to take your calling me a "Bushie" a slure? I have been called many things and most were probaly justified, but this is a first. And I just one to know where to enter in my personal lexicon.
I define a war profiteer as a those who cheat their own troops by overcharging for their services, billing the government for services not provided, providing shoddy goods for the price, and price gouging in general. Read the GAO report on the Halliburton audits if you want some specifics.
From what I can see, those who still support the war in Iraq want us to stay there and continue to die so that Mr. Bush doesn't look bad with regard to the bad choices and worse decisions he made. They don't care how many of our troops die, and worse they don't believe in insisting on some sort of progress from the Iraqis themselves. To me it looks as if those 31% agree with Mr. McCain that we should stay there and pour our money and lives down a rat hole for another 100 years.
The military does what it is told. The individuals follow orders. They don't have to believe in the mission, all they have to do is what they're told to the best of their ability. And no, once you have joined the military, you absolutely don't have a choice, and should you want out, there is this thing called a courts martial that takes care of that pretty easily. To answer your question, no. I don't wonder why men and women go off to fight a war. They are ordered to do so. They are in the military, and they obey.
I use the term Bushie to designate those who refuse to admit that Mr. Bush has ever made a wrong decision in his life and who refuse to even consider that had he faced reality rather than wallowed in delusions that this war would have gone considerably different in virtually every way imaginable. To me, a Bushie is one who says "stay the course" as if it were a plan and an objective rather than a meaningless slogan. You can't stay the course when nobody ever marked out the course in the first place.
It sounds like dipomacy is when people engaged in the conflict are meeting to explore ways other than armed conflict to find orderly self control of Iragi society without the persacution of any one group. I have reason to believe that even the US militrary is doing that.
I am disappointed that you feel that the men and women who serve in our military are mindless robots and do exactly as told. I see them as well an educated and fully understanding as any group of people in our history. When they (voluntarily) enlist, it is for a specific period of time (a contract for 3, 4, 6 years) and they hav a free will whehter to renew or end the contract (and they do). Once into that contract there are many ways to void that contract short of going to prison. If a person truly believes that what they are doing is wrong or unlawful they actually do have means to act or not act. I am not sure why you think a court martial is so terrible that it would prevent them from taking one, if they refuse to be deployed they could go to jail and get a dishonorable discharge, how bad it that if you truly believe in something.
I wonder if you have ever thought about what you would risk your wealth, your honor, adn even your life for. If you have a family, wuold you risk it for one of them, if you observed a person in a life threatening situation (flood, fire, car crash) would you risk it for them, would you risk it for an ideal? When you thought about it for a moment, consider this every night on the evening news people see a less than applealing view of what the war in Iraq is like, and people still join, why? Tehre are those that have fought there and are willing to return risking it all, there must be simething important to them to do that. I wonder what it is. It surely isn't for the glory, because at best it is a parade for that moment the get of the plane and no more. It surely isn;t the money because with the same sactifice they make for a tour of duty in Iraq they could get sufficient edcuation to get a job earning as much as the US govenrment pays. It surely isnlt because their families and friends, the media, and even their neighbors are encouaregeing them to. You may discount it, but for me it seems very important.
Well maybe I'm not a "Bushie". Since he isn;t a Curler (they walk on water, watch the Winter Olympics) he must have made mistakes. To me the most obvious is his loyalty to staff. AS far as his facing reality, if the media can be trusted then he faces it every time he meets with a family of a deceased soldier.
I do agree with you that war profiteers should be prosecuted.
Bush is history, why would I or most anyone care whether he looks bad. It will 30 or 40 years from now when how he looks is determined.
I would like a better defined outcome, I would like measurable milestones and people to be held accountable for them. However, people in Iraq have hope and simply to walk away if milestones aren;t met would be cruel, it would damage the American psyche, and damage the US for years to come (who would trust our word or even our deed).
To me it is more valuable to decide on what the outcome shoul be then it is to wrangle over how we got here and spend time dengrating a man who in a matter of months will leave power not have any infleunce on the US actions.
I am of the opinion that milestones without consequences for not meeting them are nothing more than words in the wind. One reason the Iraqi government just sits on its hands and diddles is that it knows that where that is concerned the U.S. is a paper tiger, and that the government here wants their oil much more than they care if that government ever does anything.
As for damaging our reputation, I would venture to say that there isn't much left in terms of world opinion left to damage. Nobody trusts us now.
You hit the nail on the head and named the one thing Mr. Bush has stubbornly refused to do for the past five years: decide on and enunciate a goal, then lay out how to get there from here. That's what got us into this mess in the first place.
What types of milestones to you see we need, and what types of consequeunces.
Depending the goals, I can see 6 mo., 1,3 &5 years for milestones. However, those time frames are based on the potential impact of the actions being measured.
I really am not concerned about whether the populous around the world has warm and fuzzies about US, I am more interested in their belief that when we say what we will do they reeally expect we will do it. Especially when we are talking about those that are willing to use violent actions against people or whether they will support those who do.
I am hard pressed to believe that people in the mideast feel we are a paper tiger. There may have been a time when they may felt that, when GIs were injured or killed we would pull all troops to avoid that happening to them.
Are you telling me that the 100,000 they are keeping in are 11B80 types?
I don;t doubt your knowledge of the military, but I am skeptical about your view of how they are controlled. I try to picture a guy seeing his buddy have his arm turned to a pulp of flesh, or sit there and watch the life ebb from a buddy, or watch the bodies of buddies come flying out of the black cloud of an explosion simply continuing to go into battle because someone setting on their butt in the States is threatening him with a court martial.
That makes very good sense. However, to be effective that means we have to be specific about what the mistakes were and give ideas about how they can be addressed. And to do that effectively requires leaving a lot of the emotion/biases/partisanship at the 'door' before the discussion can begin.
I am not sure that all that many are willing to do it.