http://select.nytimes.com/2006/07/10/opinion/10herbert.html?th&emc=th
A Vietnam Lesson, Unlearned By BOB HERBERT NY Times Op-Ed: July 10, 2006 By 1971, after years of mindless fighting, dying and widespread atrocities in Vietnam, portions of the U.S. military had fallen into a horrendous state of affairs. Morale had plummeted. Drug use was widespread. Soldiers in units that had previously fought bravely and well were threatening mutiny. Officers and N.C.O.'s were targeted for death by frightened and resentful enlisted men. Racial conflicts abounded. The biggest lesson we failed to learn from Vietnam was how utterly tragic it was to pull the trigger on an unnecessary war. Now once again we are condemned to suffer the consequences, and those consequences are not always self-evident. For example, the U.S. military - its capabilities and its reputation so painstakingly rebuilt in the decades since Vietnam - is again falling victim to lowered standards, breakdowns in discipline and a series of atrocities that are nothing less than a betrayal of the many honorable men and women in uniform and the country they serve. The Army has had to lower its standards because most young Americans want no part of George W. Bush's war in Iraq. Recruiters, desperate to meet their quotas, are sifting for warm bodies among those who are less talented, less disciplined and, in some cases, repellent. John Kifner reported in The Times last week about a study by a watchdog group that showed that recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military. The study, by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist groups, was titled "A Few Bad Men." It said that recruiters and base commanders, under intense pressure to fill the thinning ranks, "often look the other way" as militant white supremacists and anti-Semites make their way into the armed forces. The center quoted a Defense Department investigator as saying: "We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad. That's a problem." This comes 10 years after a Pentagon crackdown on extremist activity in the armed forces. The crackdown followed the Oklahoma City bombing, which was carried out by Timothy McVeigh, a gulf war veteran, and the murder of a black couple by skinheads in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. This is the sort of thing that happens when the military is run by power-hungry amateurs who lack the maturity and the sense of history to temper their arrogance. It was already known that the Army had become more reluctant to release soldiers who were seriously out of shape, or pregnant, or abusing alcohol or drugs. The pressure to put somebody - anybody - in uniform also led to the lowering of standards for admission to the junior officer ranks. For example, minor criminal offenses that previously would have been prohibitive could suddenly be overlooked. As the Abu Ghraib scandal unfolded, I wondered how such completely and obviously unfit characters as Charles Graner Jr. and Lynndie England had not previously been weeded out of the military, which had bragged for so long about how high its standards had become. Now we're faced with the case of American soldiers suspected of raping an Iraqi teenager and murdering her and her family. This is one of at least five cases currently being investigated in which American troops have been accused of killing unarmed civilians. Marines are suspected of slaughtering 24 Iraqis, including women and children, in the western town of Haditha last November - a case that in its horror, if not its scale, recalls the My Lai massacre of Vietnam. Despite the administration's repeated attempts to put the best face on Mr. Bush's war, the predicament confronting the military is growing more, not less, dire. There are still not nearly enough American troops in Iraq to secure the country. Some troops are on their third or fourth tour of duty in the war zone, which is beyond unfair. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the military will be not be able to maintain its current force levels in Iraq for much longer. It doesn't take much imagination to know what happens when you stretch a rubber band too far. The proud American military has been badly hurt by the wrecking-ball policies of the Bush administration. It deserved better. *** http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070906Z.shtml "Packing It In" By Dahr Jamail t r u t h o u t | Perspective Sunday 09 July 2006 Surprise, surprise. In an interview with John King from CNN last Thursday, Dick Cheney said that withdrawing US forces from Iraq would be the "worst possible thing we could do." Doing his best to stoke the always simmering fears of so many US residents (let us be careful how we use the word "citizen"), Cheney said of the terrorist groups in Iraq, "If we pull out, they'll follow us." Because according to Cheney, "This is a global conflict. We've seen them attack in London and Madrid and Casablanca and Istanbul and Mombasa and East Africa. They've been, on a global basis, involved in this conflict. And it will continue - whether we complete the job or not in Iraq - only it'll get worse. Iraq will become a safe haven for terrorists. They'll use it in order to launch attacks against our friends and allies in that part of the world." Lovely to watch how people like Cheney, and the minions who support his ilk, conveniently forget that there was no terrorism in Iraq prior to the US invasion/occupation. And one must love his "logic." For according to Cheney, "whether we complete the job or not in Iraq" his beloved "terrorism" will "continue" ... "only it'll get worse." Then why stay in Iraq, Dick? Because when Dick said, "only it'll get worse," if he'd been referring to the situation on the ground in Iraq, he'd have been 100% accurate. For starters, things for the US military continue to disintegrate. With raping and pillaging being carried out by soldiers who have long since surrendered the war for "hearts and minds," other lesser reported developments underscore the trajectory of the military in Iraq. According to the Arabic al-Sharqiyah Television channel, on July 6th : "Gunmen shot down two US Apaches in al-Zur village, north of al-Miqdadiyah in Diyala Governorate, northeast of Baghdad. Security sources and local residents said that both gunships were seen crashing in one of the village's farms, and reported that a US APC carrying 15 US soldiers was destroyed in clashes that raged in the cities and villages located north of al-Miqdadiyah. The US Army is yet to comment on the incident, which comes at a time when US and Iraqi forces are besieging areas north of al-Miqdadiyah, including al-Zur village." This comes at a time when the US military are once again aggressively attacking the forces of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr - an action which threatens to spread violence deeper into southern Iraq as well as unifying Shia and Sunni against the occupation forces. Think March and April, 2004 - a time when Shia and Sunni were, at times, literally fighting side by side against US soldiers in places like Najaf and Fallujah. While the military futilely spins its giant wheels in the bloody sands of Iraq, it continues to be the Iraqi people who are suffering the most. Here is a recent email from an Iraqi friend: Dear Dahr, How are you doing? I hope you are fine. I'm sorry for not keeping in touch with you, but as you know the situation is bad here and it gets so much worse and worse that words cannot describe it. I really want you to remember someone named Abdul Razak who you met one day here. He was responsible for the corpses' freezer at one of the hospitals where you visited. This was the man who helped you as you nearly fainted when you tried to enter the freezer. This man, unfortunately, was found killed and his body thrown away on a street on the 4th of April of this year. I met his wife and his five children. The oldest child is a girl who is 20 years old and the youngest is 6 years old. They live in a rented house. The father's salary was the only source of money for the whole family. Now, as he is dead, they have no source of money. I tried to help them by getting some donations for them from the staff working in the hospital where he used to work, but it seems that it is not enough. Of course for a big family like his, this makes it more difficult. But I hope we can ease their pain and help them manage their life by finding someone who can donate some money. I am wondering if you can get some donations for this family to start a new life and construct a small project to help them manage their life. Thank you in advance ... I get these regularly, and several of my colleagues who have also worked in Iraq are telling me that they too are receiving requests for help nowadays. Here is another email I received the day before the aforementioned, from another friend in Baghdad: Dear friend, Maybe this is the last message I am going to send ... really I don't have anyone here. I am like a foreigner in my own country. I am really feeling very afraid. I am living next to Al Sadr City and the Al Sadr militia is killing anyone who is Sunni, especially when any explosion attacks the Shia. They come to our zone and take Sunni people from their houses and kill them. They killed one of my relatives. They killed my neighbor, who was only 26 years old. My friend, the situation now in Baghdad is very bad. Do you know that there is no work and no safety, even in my own house? I'm very sad to tell you that I am very tired from changing my house. My family and I leave the house every month for three weeks and we run away like some one who did a crime. What is our crime? We are in a very bad situation. It is so bad now. Please help, is all that I ask as we need help now. We are living, just waiting for our turn to die ... Please help us if you can ... I don't have any one to ask but you. So while Iraqis are being killed or fearing death as they suffer through the daily hell that is the US occupation, Cheney, the real force behind this "administration," tells CNN, "No matter how you carve it - you can call it anything you want - but basically, it is packing it in, going home, persuading and convincing and validating the theory that the Americans don't have the stomach for this fight." Guess what, Dick - moral and sane Americans "don't have the stomach for this fight" because this fight should have never taken place. And anyone with a soul, let alone a conscience, should be more than happy to see US troops in Iraq "packing it in." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist who spent over 8 months reporting from occupied Iraq. He presented evidence of US war crimes in Iraq at the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration in New York City in January 2006. He writes regularly for TruthOut, Inter Press Service, Asia Times and TomDispatch, and maintains his own web site, dahrjamailiraq.com. ------- ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Something is new at Yahoo! Groups. Check out the enhanced email design. http://us.click.yahoo.com/SISQkA/gOaOAA/yQLSAA/7gSolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
