More Than 2,920 Americans Dead In Iraq, Thousands Of U.S. Soldiers Maimed For Life...
Mar 30 '03 (Updated Dec 07 '06)
The Bottom Line If you really love America, you'll contact your Senators and Representatives, and have our troops brought home alive.
THE ANTI-WAR WRITE-OFF: COMMENTARY, Viewed 988 Times...
Dedicated to Marc Anderson, Matthew Commons, and Bradley Crose -- America's Best
Part I.
I am firmly against this War in Iraq. It is deeply wrong, and is plunging us headlong into a crisis. I have no trouble publicly contradicting the agenda of Mr. Bush, since he has no interest in doing anything to improve our standing in the World as Peacemakers. It is an unwise man that does not listen to the consensus of the majority. It will probably take a march of more than one million citizens upon Washington D.C. to make these Chickenhawks, who think they're in charge of the Department of War, to start making better decisions. The current set of changes made to American foreign policy by our unelected President and his advisors are going to send us down a very dark path, fairly rapidly. His First Strike doctrine and his cynical actions in launching this War on Iraq, have undermined our honor for the United Nations, and illustrate a deep lack of respect for Human Rights. Do not believe that we are there blasting through the desert to free Iraqis. Believe perhaps, that We are there to liberate them from Big Oil, though. The current Mis-Administration in Washington D.C. has been marked by a series of blunders, bribes, deceptions, intimidations, failures, lies, miscalculations and threats. As Americans, we will all live to rue the day that George W. Bush decided that the USA, as a Nation, could go it alone. And don't listen to that tripe about a Coalition. Only Americans and British are dying in Iraq, and you aren't likely to find any Spanish soldiers there -- in fact 9 out of 10 Spaniards do not support this War. I don't think you can equate a Coalition with countries that simply let us fly over their airspace. Neither do I think there is anything that the small African nation of Eritrea can contribute to a Coalition. The Coalition is highly suspect, and much smaller than any politician in Washington D.C. would have you imagine.
Do you really want Justice done for 9/11? You need to start investigating the facts. Fifteen of Nineteen hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, one was from Egypt, one was from Yemen. There was a twentieth hijacker, he was from Algeria, and his participation in the 9/11 plot was thwarted because he was detained. If not for obstruction within the Justice Department, and among the ranks of the FBI, the whole plot might have been unravelled. Listen to what Coleen Rowley has to say, there's a reason she was on the cover of Time magazine. Listen to Gary Hart, he saw the whole train wreck coming. We shouldn't be bombing Iraq. If you really wanted Justice for 9/11, maybe we'd be bombing Mecca, Medinah, and Riyadh, and seizing the oil fields of the Sheiks in Saudi Arabia instead, they are the ones financing all the Hate.
I have no problem with the way the Taliban were run out of Afghanistan, I think that was fine, and it should have stopped there. The fact that Americans died in Afghanistan would be more acceptable if Osama Bin Laden had been captured or killed, but he is still loose, on the run, and allowed to taunt America by release of sporadic video footage. This is unacceptable and must be stopped.
You might also want to ask yourself why a large sum of money, millions of dollars, was sent to the Taliban before 9/11.
That money, that was sent to the Taliban, it was yours, and mine, and that of American taxpayers.
Why did they receive it?
Regardless that a friendly new puppet government has been installed in Afghanistan, this is an unjust War that is happening in Iraq, and we should not be involved in it. Isn't it ironic, how we, the great U.S.A., build these tyrants, like Noriega, and later have to go in to defeat them? We are reaping what we sowed, and the men in our government now, that are trying to eradicate Saddam, are the same people that created him, and aided his ascent to power in Iraq.
Part II.
If you live in the United States of America, and are under the age of 40, there is a statistically high probability that you have never met anybody that died in a war. That makes me an exception, because I've now already met three people that have died in a War. I personally met three of the six soldiers that were killed in Operation Anaconda, later rechristened Operation Enduring Freedom. They were all U.S. Army Rangers, stationed at Hunter Army Airfield, and all three lost their lives on March 4, 2002, in a nine hour gunbattle with Al-Qaida and Taliban fighters just outside Gardez, Afghanistan.
In one memorable moment in my life, all three of these soldiers were on the salesfloor where I work, in casual clothes, talking, chatting, just before they shipped out to Afghanistan. When they left the store, they were headed off to a bookstore, and that's the last time I saw them. The more you know about them, the sadder the story gets.
Let me tell you about them.
Marc Anderson
Marc was an Army Ranger stationed at Hunter Army Air Field in Savannah, GA. He was a member of A Company, 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. He came into the store with Matthew and Bradley in one instance. Marc attended Case Western Reserve University for two years, and then attended Florida State University, Phi Delta Theta, where he earned a teaching degree. He actually taught seventh grade math at Fort Myers Middle School Academy for a number of years before he went into the military, but he joined the Army in 1998 because he needed help paying off his student loan. When I talked to Marc on the salesfloor in Savannah, he told me it would be easy to remember my name, because he also had a brother named Steve. Marc Anderson died at the age of 30, just three months before he was to be honorably discharged. At the time Marc died, his older brother Steve Anderson, who had just come out of a battle with cancer, said "People will call him a hero, but I would rather have him home and not a hero." Marc's father, David Anderson, was an Army Ranger for 21 years and served in Vietnam. The father said of his son, who was sad to leave teaching, that "on a teachers salary, when they're taking $550 a month out to pay the student loan, you have nothing left."
Matthew Commons
Matthew was an Army Ranger stationed at Hunter Army Air Field in Savannah, GA. He was a member of A Company, 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. Matthew was originally from Boulder City, Nevada. He made a comment to me that Savannah was really different from Boulder City, and I think he meant it in a good way. Matthew was an avid soccer player. His friend Bradley convinced him to come into the store and apply for a computer. He was a genuinely nice guy, with a quiet demeanor, kind eyes, and seemed a little shy. I remember him walking around the salesfloor with a young woman at a previous time. Maybe they were dating. Matthew was the one of the three that I talked to the least, but he was always with Bradley, or another Ranger, when I encountered him on the salesfloor.
Bradley Crose
Bradley was an Army Ranger stationed at Hunter Army Air Field in Savannah, GA. He was a member of A Company, 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. I talked to him a few times over a course of several months. Bradley was a little husky, with short dark red hair, and a natural smile. He was apprehensive about going to Afghanistan. He was active in Tae Kwan Do. He had been a Ranger for 3 and 1/2 years and and was schedule for discharge in October of 2002. His grandfather in Graniteville, South Carolina was very proud of him. Bradley Crose had plans to attend college, restore his 1981 Corvette, and hike the Appalachian Trial after getting out of the Army. He was one of the soldiers killed in Operation Anaconda when the helicopter he was on crashed. I talked briefly to Bradley's father, Ricky Crose, on the salesfloor a short time after his son's death, and only came to realize it through photos published on the internet. I am so sorry for what happened to your son, Mr. Crose. Your son Bradley, he was easygoing, and he was so proud of that red 1981 Corvette.
While some people say these young men died getting back at the terrorists for what they did to us, the reality is, they were EMTs, and they died while trying to save a Navy SEAL.
To another local writer, Tom Barton, who wrote of the Rangers in the Savannah Morning News, "But do Savannahians really know them? Probably not," I have to reply, Yes, a few did. And the ones that did meet them, will never forget them.
It has to be easy to be for War, when all you seek is Vengeance.
But it is all the easier to be against War, after you have met American's that have died in one.
I don't want anymore Americans to die in battle, as the extended outcome of 9/11. It's as simple as that.
Nineteen year old white girls, like Jessica Lynch, from economically depressed counties in West Virginia, shouldn't be turning up as POWs -- because they were exposed in an unprotected supply line in the middle of the desert -- because people like the Secretary of Defense want to pretend like they're John Wayne, in True Grit, when they've never fought on the battlefield.
It is hard to stomach the photos of dead and bloodied Iraqi children that can easily be found on the Internet. It is even harder to stomach the photos of dead American GIs thrown together in a pile, that can be found on Middle Eastern news websites. Media consolidation in the U.S. shows us nothing but an Antiseptic War, but this is not a War Game that we are playing in the desert, and real lives are ending, and much blood is being shed, and many people are questioning the motives of the people behind this War that has been launched, people that were born into privilege, and power, and that should know better. Too many people in the current administration have ties to the Carlyle Group, and Defense Contractors, and Arms Manufacturers. And alternately, many of them never fought in a war when they could have, and avoided it themselves, at all cost.
The current Anti-War movement, already more vast than that of the 1960s, is necessary. It took months and years of body bags coming home before that Anti-War effort could claim any kind of success.
If you are against this War for Oil that our President has launched the country into, it is your duty as an American to start talking. Speak your conscience, now, or be prepared to live later with the bad hand we are all being dealt. We will only have Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Assembly, or our other Constitutional Rights as long as we are willing to use them.
Let's work together to put a stop to this war and bring our troops home immediately. There have already been at least 706 U.S. deaths in Iraq, and those are 706 too many!
The problem is not with the number of the people we are losing, the problem is the caliber of the people that are being lost.
Like Kendall Waters-Bey.
Like Raheen T. Heighter.
People like Michelle Witmer.
It's time to start writing letters, lean on your Congressman, and then maybe Matt Maupin can come home alive if you do.
Part III.
Let me say this, this has been a very difficult piece to write. I don't want anybody that reads this to try to assail me for my personal opinion. This is still America, the last time I checked, and I am entitled to my opinion, and invite you to express your own, in your own essay, and to be kind in your comments. What I write is a matter of true conviction. I feel strongly that the War that is being pursued in Iraq, by a small bloodthirsty cabal of men, is of great danger to our men and women in uniform, of whom I take a compassionate outlook, and I pray only for all the murdering to be put to a stop. I have a brother at Prince Sultan Air Force Base, myself, and if anything happened to him, I would be absolutely devastated.
Don't call me a hippie, or tell me to move to France, or anything like that. My grandfather, Lowell Tharp, fought with the Air Force in WW II and lost the vision in one eye as a result of serving his country. My own father, who was stationed at Hunter Air Field (when it was an airfield) in the early 60's, who shelved books at the library on Hunter and also ran the Theater on Hunter, and later toured in Vietnam, stayed in the Air Force after Vietnam and became a 20 year veteran. Two of his brothers served, one in the Navy, one in the Air Force. And two of my own brothers have served in the Air Force. I have even personally donated money to the political campaign of Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, a moderate Democrat, who is pro-military by default, because she is the daughter of a military family. At one point, even I had considered joining the military, when I hit a financial rough patch back in 1995. Luckily, I found a way to get around that problem back then, and pay off my student loans, or otherwise I might have been writing you this from the hills of Nasiriya. (257/1,038)
I am "For The Troops, and Against The War!"
I see no dichotomy here.
UPDATE: I knew when I wrote this, that I would dread the day I had to change the number in the title to 1,000. Let's hope I don't have to later update it to say 2,000.
THE ANTI-WAR WRITE-OFF: HOSTED BY JAY1051971
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Member Messages to the Epinions Community:
My Contribution to the Write Off...
http://www.epinions.com/user-matthewn.
Sadako & the Thousand Paper Cranes:
A Thousand Cranes... A Cry For Peace
http://www.epinions.com/user-briandalsmom.
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Feel Free to Crash this Write-Off, and Post Links Liberally
If You Are Seeking Information About How We Might End
This War, Here Are A Dozen Safe Sites To Turn To:
AlterNet.org (Real News!)
http://www.alternet.org/
Anti-War.com
http://www.antiwar.com/
Non-Violence.org
http://www.nonviolence.org/
Patriots for Peace
http://www.patriotsforPeace.org/
Rock the Vote
http://rockthevote.org/
September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows
http://www.peacefultomorrows.org/
True Majority
http://www.truemajority.com
United for Peace & Justice
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/
Veterans for Common Sense
http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/
Volunteers for Peace
http://www.vfp.org/
Vote No War
http://www.votenowar.org/
Working for Change
http://workingforchange.com/
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