"The American experience in Iraq is evil." Sgt Major Myers

[understandinglife]

I think it useful to compare the comments of Sgt Major Myers and retired Sgt Major Eric Haney, an original member of Delta Force.

Today, at DKos, Sgt Major Myers posted a diary entitled When People Die from which I've excerpted the following:

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Now you may ask why I am posting this diary on a political blog site. The answer is this. War is the perfect storm of death and all the varied experiences of death. Soldiers may and often do experience all that I have written above in a single day in war. They take life and loose friends and family through violence, accident, suicide and natural causes within the span of months, weeks, days, hours, or minutes and sometimes experience their own death as a cruel bonus while living the horror of war. A very minuscule few come back from the pull of death mostly broken and maimed, but those are the minuscule few.

These experiences that I have expressed above are happening every bloody second of every bloody day in Iraq. I write about this because when soldiers have to experience these things for all the right reasons it is bad.....very, very, very bad, but when they experience it for all the wrong reasons it becomes evil....very, very, very evil.

The American experience in Iraq is evil. It is evil because the American people were lied to, misled, and deceived into an unnecessary illegal preemptive war and subsequent insurgency and civil war by those who were and are charged with, and constitutionally responsible for, showing the light of truth and defending the constitution of the United States. It is evil because each and every day the perfect storm of death flows over the Iraqi countryside taking lives that should not be taken for reasons that are not reasons. The brave, the innocent and the guilty share death equally. They share an equal death that is promulgated by those who know nothing of death. Those who have no understanding of service to country and the ultimate sacrifice that may well be asked, because they have always shirked their duty when called and never struggled to defend the democracy they so enjoy. It is not necessary to list the violations of laws and the constitution that have been put upon the American people by this administration leading up to the war with Iraq, executing the war with Iraq and occupying Iraq because I believe that any rational, thinking human being capable of speaking, hearing, seeing and reading should know all of these things by now.

When people die it is because their leaders have failed. That is simple truth.

Link:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/3/27/174250/231

In a Q&A entitled 'Unit's' military expert has fighting words for Bush, TV Critic David Kronke, interviewed Sgt Major Haney, a portion of which includes:

Q: What's your assessment of the war in Iraq?

A: Utter debacle. But it had to be from the very first. The reasons were wrong. The reasons of this administration for taking this nation to war were not what they stated. (Army Gen.) Tommy Franks was brow-beaten and ... pursued warfare that he knew strategically was wrong in the long term. That's why he retired immediately afterward. His own staff could tell him what was going to happen afterward.

We have fomented civil war in Iraq. We have probably fomented internecine war in the Muslim world between the Shias and the Sunnis, and I think Bush may well have started the third world war, all for their own personal policies.

Q: What is the cost to our country?

A: For the first thing, our credibility is utterly zero. So we destroyed whatever credibility we had. ... And I say "we," because the American public went along with this. They voted for a second Bush administration out of fear, so fear is what they're going to have from now on.

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The harm that has been done is irreparable. There are more than 2,000 American kids that have been killed. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed ñ which no one in the U.S. really cares about those people, do they? I never hear anybody lament that fact. It has been a horror, and this administration has worked overtime to divert the American public's attention from it. Their lies are coming home to roost now, and it's gonna fall apart. But somebody's gonna have to clear up the aftermath and the harm that it's done just to what America stands for. It may be two or three generations in repairing.

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Link:
http://www.dailynews.com/entertainment/ci_3641046

Death does not revert.

The vast horror that Bush and his neoconster minions have unleashed on humanity will not be repaired. The best we can do is stop it. Humbly apologize. And, then face a simple reality and a starkly obvious truth.

"We the People ..." now must confront the only choice we have - start over or succumb.

Ike's worst fears are now indelible American history. American militaristic corporatists and their government minions relentlessy pursue imperialistic goals solely to advantage the scale of their personal wealth and power.

We cannot repair the American legacy, we literally have to create a new "America": one whose behavior matches its ideals of inalienable human rights.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." --Declaration of Independence as originally written by Thomas Jefferson, 1776. ME 1:29, Papers 1:315

This time, "We the People ..." must mean all PERSONS - everyone, irrespective of gender, racial or cultural distinction.

And, "We the People ..." must commit to preserving and nurturing the inalienable rights of each person - their precious and only life, their liberty, and their ability to pursue happiness.


Peace.