Mostly I don't do political posts, but now and again I feel that I must. The media are taking note of the fourth anniversary of the Iraq War. "War. What is it good for?" What do we have to show for the four years but thousands of dead and wounded on both sides of the conflict and a destroyed country. My own country is suffering from a kind of death by a thousand cuts.
Every day I check the numbers of killed and wounded in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. I say a prayer for the dead and for the families and friends of the dead and for the wounded and their families and friends. But the numbers don't portray the reality of the killings and maiming. The numbers count real people.
Yesterday the Baton Rouge Advocate published a tribute to the troops from Louisiana who have been killed in the Iraq War, which included pictures. They number 72 as of today. That brought the consequences home more than just the numbers, but, of course, the reality of the losses are borne by the families and friends of the fallen. The online version, unfortunately, does not include the pictures, just the names and home towns.
Last night a non-political candlelight vigil was held in Baton Rouge to commemorate the deaths of all the troops in the US, which number now stands at 3217.
AlterNet posted a link to a story of one of the fallen from The Texas Observer that caught my eye:
Ted Westhusing was a true believer. And that was his fatal flaw.
A colonel in the U.S. Army, Westhusing had a good job teaching English at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He was a devout Catholic who went to church nearly every Sunday. He had a wife and three young children.
He didn’t have to go to Iraq. But Westhusing was such a believer that he volunteered for what he thought was a noble cause. At West Point, Westhusing sought out people who opposed the war in an effort to change their minds. “He absolutely believed that this was a just war,” said one officer who was close to him. “He was wholly enthusiastic about this mission.” His tour of duty in Iraq was to last six months.
About a month before he was to return to his family—on June 5, 2005—Westhusing was found dead in his trailer at Camp Dublin in Baghdad. At the time, he was the highest-ranking American soldier to die in Iraq. The Army’s Criminal Investigation Command report on Westhusing’s death explained it as a “perforating gunshot wound of the head and Manner of Death was suicide.”
He was 44.
....
When he was in Iraq, Westhusing worked for one of the most famous generals in the U.S. military, David Petraeus. In January, Petraeus was appointed by President Bush to lead all U.S. forces in Iraq. As the head of counterterrorism and special operations under Petraeus, Westhusing oversaw the single most important task facing the U.S. military in Iraq then and now: training the Iraqi security forces.
....
...“Something he saw [in Iraq] drove him to this,” one Army officer who was close to Westhusing said in an interview. “The sum of what he saw going on drove him” to take his own life. “It’s because he believed in duty, honor, country that he’s dead.”
The officer said that “strength of character was Ted’s defining characteristic. It was unflinching integrity.” That integrity, he said, was also Westhusing’s great flaw. “To be a true flaw, the personality has to have great strength. And that characteristic caused his downfall.”
....
At about 1:15 in the afternoon, Westhusing was discovered in trailer 602A. Near his body was a note addressed to his commanders, Petraeus and Fil. Written in large, block letters, it read:
"Thanks for telling me it was a good day until I briefed you. [Redacted name]—You are only interested in your career and provide no support to your staff—no msn [mission] support and you don’t care. I cannot support a msn that leads to corruption, human right abuses and liars. I am sullied—no more. I didn’t volunteer to support corrupt, money grubbing contractors, nor work for commanders only interested in themselves. I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored. I trust no Iraqi. I cannot live this way. All my love to my family, my wife and my precious children. I love you and trust you only. Death before being dishonored any more. Trust is essential—I don’t know who trust anymore. [sic] Why serve when you cannot accomplish the mission, when you no longer believe in the cause, when your every effort and breath to succeed meets with lies, lack of support, and selfishness? No more. Reevaluate yourselves, cdrs [commanders]. You are not what you think you are and I know it.
COL Ted Westhusing
Life needs trust. Trust is no more for me here in Iraq."
Ted Westhusing was a casualty of this evil, stupid war just as much as if he had been shot or killed by a bomb. Why did he do this just one month before he was to return home? He was an honorable man, who believed in the justice of the war. I don't understand how anyone could believe that the Iraq War was justified, but apparently honorable people did. Ted Westhusing came to see that the Iraq War was not one that was worth fighting. I pray Ted Westhusing rests in peace and that his family and friends are healing from their great loss.
I was never a true believer in this war, because, from the beginning, there were dissenting voices to the "evidence" that the Bush maladministration presented to "prove" that Saddam was a clear and present danger to us here in the US. The dissent might have been on page 17 of the newspaper instead of page 1, where it belonged, but it was there.
Current members of the Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, who supported the war, are rushing to declare their outrage in being sucked into that support by the lies of the Bush maladministration. Perhaps some of them were fooled, but others knew, as well as I and many others did, that the intelligence leading up to the war was flawed, yet they were too frightened to oppose Bush at the time.
A few days ago, I learned that I had free access to New York Times Select because my husband is retired from the local university and retains a small cubicle and an email address there. Their columnist, Frank Rich, wrote recently in The Ides of March 2003:
...That’s why a revisionist history of the White House’s rush to war, much of it written by its initial cheerleaders, has already taken hold. In this exonerating fictionalization of the story, nearly every politician and pundit in Washington was duped by the same “bad intelligence” before the war, and few imagined that the administration would so botch the invasion’s aftermath or that the occupation would go on so long. “If only I had known then what I know now ...” has been the persistent refrain of the war supporters who subsequently disowned the fiasco. But the embarrassing reality is that much of the damning truth about the administration’s case for war and its hubristic expectations for a cakewalk were publicly available before the war, hiding in plain sight, to be seen by anyone who wanted to look.
Rich quotes from a piece from the Washington Post from March 16, 2003, by Walter Pincus, that actually was on page 17. I knew there was a reason why I kept using that number:
Despite the Bush administration’s claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, U.S. intelligence agencies have been unable to give Congress or the Pentagon specific information about the amounts of banned weapons or where they are hidden, according to administration officials and members of Congress. Senior intelligence analysts say they feel caught between the demands from White House, Pentagon and other government policy makers for intelligence that would make the administration’s case ‘and what they say is a lack of hard facts,’ one official said.
Frank Rich is right.
Here's the link to Rich's column, but you can only get to it if you have access to Times Select.
I was drawn to link to Ted Westhusing's tragic story to put a human face on the numbers that I read every day in this war with no end in sight.
Presently, Generals Petraeus and Fil are running the war in Iraq. It's way past time to honor the sacrifices of the dead and the wounded by bringing their brothers and sisters serving in Iraq home, beginning now.
I hate this war.
ReplyDeleteI put up a thought today about calling it the Iraq Occupation and not the Iraq War. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteAnn, I hate this war, too. Can you tell?
ReplyDeleteDennis, I left a comment at your blog.
Dennis, I've been calling it exactly that for some time now.
ReplyDeleteThis morning as I heard a bit of Condoliar going on and on about making sacrifices, I couldn't help but think of Katherine talking about making sacrifices.
Seems like those who are talking about making sacrifices aren't the ones making the sacrifices.
An Iraqi veteran was on Countdown actually laughing at Condi's statement today, and he made the point that she has no credibility whatsoever. Nor does Bush. The question was asked, "Who is he talking to?" Hardly anyone believes him any more, except the diehard 30%. I guess he's talking to them.
ReplyDeleteI understand that the majority of the estadounidense have guns. My suggestion is that you all take up your arms and march on the White House and scare the s*** out of the presnit and his club of cowards. You wouldn't have to fire a shot; they are a big bunch of chicken hawks but the people have let them think that they are in charge. Otherwise we will continue with this immoral and illegal war, and even the Democrat elected in 2008 will have trouble ending this thing. Stand up, Estadounidense!
ReplyDeletethis is a powerful posting about Col. Westhusing by the way.
ReplyDeleteI also think it important to keep in mind that the damage goes far beyond the numbers killed.
ReplyDeleteMyself, personally, I know none who have died. But I still come across many whose lives have been ruined.
There is one family I know in which the father, in his forties, was called to active duty. His wife could not alone raise the kids and run the family business. They lost everything, and he came back terribly hurt and in a hospital five hundred miles away from their home here in Northern New Mexico.
I also know a young man whose health was ruined by the anthrax vaccine. He is in continuous pain, and his immune system is shot, and he is sterile. The courts will not help him. And the vaccine, by the way, has made a lot of money for a consortium of pentagon officials who took the company private. This is another story our "patriotic" media seems to miss.
Last month the driver of the bus I commute on was called up and shipped off to Iraq. Even with the whole country seeming to come to its senses on this adventure, ordinary and anonymous citizens keep getting sucked into it.
Aside from the deaths and severe maimings we see today, the emotional and psychological effects will be horrendous for many veterans and their families for years to come.
ReplyDeleteI know one young couple who divorced several months after he returned home from Iraq, because he could not settle back down to married civilian life.
I happened to stumble across this blog and thought I'd drop by.
ReplyDeleteI'm Malaysian and everyday I witness the fervent anti-American sentiment increasing.
Is It Really A War Against Terror?
No one seems to be winning.
"My suggestion is that you all take up your arms and march on the White House and scare the s*** out of the presnit and his club of cowards."
ReplyDeleteThe problem with this scenario, other than the obvious one, is that, ultimately, the problem is not so much with Bush as with us.
In 2000 Bush probably lost. But in 2004 we, the electorate, knew practically everything about him, and about Cheney, and about the war, that we know now. In 2004 everyone knew that Bush would not govern as as centrist. And we--collectively--re-elected him anyway.
(My wife always goes nuts when I talk like this "I never voted for him!", she says. Of course. Neither did I. But there is is "we" that did.)
We have now started to desert him--a little late, as usual. But I think there needs to be some painful recognition that Bush didn't go into Iraq as part of some great coup. By and large the country, and a shameful percentage of Democrats, cheered him on.
So, Bush and Cheney have much responsibility. But in a sense they were doing what democratic politicians are supposed to do: execute the will of the majority.
We wanted blood. They gave it to us. We wanted terrorists roughly handled. We did it for us. (Good article in today's Slate about how no one cares about the confession to responsibility for 9/11, because no one believes it wasn't coerced.) We wanted to show the world how ruthless we could be. We did. And we reap the consequences.
Rick, I agree with much that you say; I guess I was reacting as a person in Central America. Here in Panama the people go out into the streets if the government decides to raise the bus fare. In the U.S., the administration leads the nation in to war, steals elections, and breaks all manner of laws and the majority of the country puts the bastids back into power. When Bush was first rattling his sabre the bishop here asked me, "What is going on in your country? Have they all lost their minds?" I had to tell him that it looked that way to me but I'm no longer in the U.S. and I really don't know what they are thinking.
ReplyDeleteI think it's just the oldest story in the book: the desire for revenge. Bush and Cheney offered to exact it for us, all the while assuring us that we were doing the right thing, and accomodating our desire not to know the messy details.
ReplyDeleteOccupation it is. Iraq in 2007 is Norway in 1944.
ReplyDeleteAnd this war was started as a tool to further the follies de grandeur of ideologues who had never been out of the States!
It has made terror and torture commonplace. And it is no longer as in the 1960ies a dirty secret but the stated policies of a nation that used to be a great one, but has wasted its moral standing as well as its finances for the foreseeable future.
Crankshaft, for what it's worth, I believe that the world, including those of us here in the US, are much less safe because of the war in Iraq.
ReplyDeleteRick and Padre, we reap what we sow. I think Al Gore won in 2000. The US Supreme Court elected Bush. In 2004, "we" elected him, whether we, as individuals, voted for him or not.
He may actually turn out to be the worst president ever, or, at the very least, near the top of the list of bad presidents.
Goran, yes to what you say. Our presence in Iraq is now an occupation. A majority of Iraqis want us gone.
In earlier times, we had, at least, a remnant of a sense of shame, and therefore we kept the dirty secrets hidden. Today, any feelings of shame by those running the show seems to have been trumped by the idea that the US is always right.
Mimi, MadPriest said to channel comments for him your way. Do you have an email address I could use to write you? Write me off list at centauri12@gmail.com if you don't mind.
ReplyDeleteI hate the war too. I support our troops but not this bloodbath. I support the peaceful and productive Iraqi people and pray God's mercy on them as they are caught between our men and women trying to do something, and those who blow themselves up to prevent a lasting peace. I grieve for them all...
Might I suggest you all visit Seething Mom at her blog? She has some ripe things to say about the "don't ask, don't tell" policy and Gen Pace [how ironic that his name in Italian is "peace".].
ReplyDeleteOT I know but there it is.
Today I sat amongst young men returning from Iraq on two week leave. They wanted to talk about ordinary things - how was the hot dog? where are you headed? But, one man, obviously older than the others, began talking about how hard it was for his family - coming home on emergency leave to bury his sister-in-law and take responsibility (with his wife) for her teenage daughter. Now he is home for two weeks of leave, and he's saying on the phone to his wife, "I'll handle that when I'm there."
ReplyDeleteI live in a military area and am accustomed to seeing men in uniform, but seeing these kids who are no longer kids in desert fatigues and hearing their desperately lonely voices was almost more than I could take.
I told them I kept them in my prayers, and one said, "Pray for American, too."
Share Cropper, even the troops who come home alive and sound in body will be marked for life from what they have gone through. To come home for two weeks and then have to return to the war must be excruciating for them and their families.
ReplyDelete