Wounded Iraq veteran is weary of negative portrayal of conflict

[Barrett808]

Wounded Iraq veteran is weary of negative portrayal of conflict
By NATHANIEL WEST, Staff Writer

WEST UNION -- After about two years stateside, Aaron Wernz has grown a little frustrated with what he believes is jaded media coverage and politicization of the war in Iraq.

Wernz, who served as a specialist in the Illinois National Guard and was critically wounded in Iraq in February 2004, believes especially that the “goals” imposed on the U.S. military and the Iraqi people by the media and some politicians are unreasonable.

“I think they’ve kind of forgotten what war is,” said Wernz, 27. “War is when everything else is screwed up.”

Now a farmer near West Union, the Marshall native has closely followed the news since his return.

“I think the press gets a little bit down on our military over there,” Wernz said. “It seems there’s almost an element of the country that is rooting for us to lose.”

(more)

http://www.jg-tc.com/articles/2006/07/08/news/news002.txt

[bowens43]

1. Tough shit.

You fight in an illegal , immoral war, expect to be called on it.

Every once in a while a bully needs a good , hard punch in the nose to remind him that attacking others without provocation is wrong.

[saigon68]

26. This idiot needs to Re-Enlist

And go back and fight his tormentors. Those devils who put thoughts in his brain

Or maybe just kill a few guys who wear towels on their heads.

[cantstandbush]

29. My thoughts exactly. He needs to return to Iraq for an update. nt

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. I wonder if this fellow knows any Viet Nam vets

they could maybe explain matters to him.

[Monkeyman]

3. Nope or we tell him the truth

www.john06.com

[ClassWarrior]

4. Yeah, nothing to brighten your family's life like a hunk of shrapnel...

...in your heart. After all, it was taken in glorious service to Halliburton. I'm sure they'd be honored to sacrifice their breadwinner for Cheney**'s bottom line.

NGU.

[rusty charly]

13. did you put "schrapnel" and "cheney" in the same thought?

[Turbineguy]

5. I don't think

I've heard any Americans rooting for the US to loose this war. There seem to be plenty of people who think we got suckered in to it by a bunch of liars. But that's not the same thing.

[ClassWarrior]

9. We WON the war two years ago...

...as George Lakoff recently wrote:

http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/lakoff/occupation

Problem is, we didn't get out once the mission was accomplished. Now we're brutally occupying a foreign nation, the majority of whose citizens don't want us there.

But then that was the goal of the Cons all along.

NGU.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

6. This boy needs to read more and "think" less

but every generation has to learn it's lesson, it seems.

[Monkeyman]

7. Yep ten years after Nam

I awoke to the fact it was all for nothing

[saigon68]

27. It didn't take me that long

Miami Republican Convention (1972)

Ron Kovic in chair on right

[AlamoDemoc]

8. When you occupy foreign country and you kill and rape the innocent

without a cause, we have very little sympathy for you to win.

"I think the press gets a little bit down on our military over there, " Wernz said. "It seems there’s almost an element of the country that is rooting for us to lose."

[uppityperson]

10. Rooting for you to come home, loss has happened already.

You "lost", whatever that means. Time to come home. We are not rooting for anyone to get hurt, but to recognize the reality of the situation and stop.

[Stargleamer]

11. telling it like it is = negative?

when the home team goes down in order or commits errors, what's the announcer supposed to do?

When Zarqawi got killed that's all I heard about for a few weeks.

[daleo]

12. And war just screws everything up even worse, in most cases

“I think they’ve kind of forgotten what war is,” said Wernz, 27. “War is when everything else is screwed up.”

He also says:
“I think this war is getting into politics,” Wernz said. “But it’s something people are dying over, and that’s (politics) wrong.”

As if war could ever be kept separate from politics - it is the ultimate political issue.

[Monkeyman]

14. I just got an email from a brother vet he reminded me

The Republicans in Washington have veterans working for them.Telling America the media is worng about the War. They had a vet in Nevada claim the Media does not know whats going on in Iraq.It was found out he was a paid operative for the Replugs

[bettyellen]

16. he sounds like a paid shill. his statements are all jumbled and confused.

it sounds like he went off script, or the script itself was pretty shitty to begin with.

[MrPrax]

25. There it is again...

What is that thing? It looks like a cat, sorta...

...you win a few wars with this critter...it would scare everybody.

[xchrom]

15. there is a big difference between winning a war and bringing

our troops home from an illegal invasion.

they have no business there period.

and the media -- if they described reality on our telleys -- would be showing many. many more images of the iraqis -- that's the real story.

[Liberal Veteran]

17. Wars of choice, instead of necessity are generally unpopular.

That's the way it is.

If there had been a really good reason to go to war and if it had been handled competently, it would be a different story.

[nealmhughes]

18. Dear Mr. Wernz,

I daresay that there are but a handful of people who wish the United States to "lose" this war. We, almost to a person in the United States and the West wish the Iraqis and Afghans to be free -- free from the Taliban and al Qaeda; free to be able to attend religious services and shop without bombs going off nearby; free to have clean water and electricity and to have hospitals for those with illnesses and not trauma victims. We wish them to enjoy the fruits of their labor, which means that they need to have jobs. We need a police force in both countries that can keep the people safe from criminal activity and not abet such. We want the Shia and the Shiites and the Kurds and the Christians all to have a state in which their rich cultural heritage is extolled as a group effort and not as a marker of being an "other." We want the Afghans to be able to have their independence as Pashun, Baluchis, and the many other nations of that great region, not to be pawns of fundamentalist Arab mercenaries who offer only the lash and religious schools as a form of stability.

No we do not wish to lose this war. This war is two wars: and both of them are rooted in oil. The Arab and Iranian states who finance the Taliban, al Qaeda and the jihadist mentality and the official governments there who seek to keep the ideas of unity and secularity in check.

Saadam Hussein was "dangerous" because he was a Baathist, and while a dictator who committed many atrocities, he was a secularist, his party was a mildly state socialistic one and his ideas were poison to the Arabian monarchies. The Taliban were the result of a series of civil/Russo-Afghan wars, with them ending up in control of Kabul. The Taliban were largely financed by Arab Wahhabi oil monies, as was the al Qaeda who were given sanctuary by the Taliban. al Qaeda's destructive wave was seen in Madrid, the African embassies, London and New York City and Washington.

The United States was totally justified to go to war in Afghanistan to oust the al Qaeda and their Taliban supporters. I am glad we did.
Iraq was guilty of trying to Napoleonic France with Saddam as Bonaparte. Both had great ideas and rhetoric, but the practice was different from the theory. What they had in common was the idea of the threat of the spread of an anti-monarchical secular Arab state (read an anti-hereditary aristorcratic secular pan-European state for the Bonaparte analogy). Now Iraq is in a reign of anarchy and terror unseen in modern times in the West since Lenin and the French Revolution.

No, we don't want to lose the war: we are merely fighting the wrong people with too few troops and no real enemy at tremendous cost in blood, anxiety and damage from every party. What we want to know is if Iraq is worth it when the Iraqis seem almost to desire to become polarized.

[Monkeyman]

19. Well put and it deserves a HooYA

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

20. Quote:

"What we want to know is if Iraq is worth it when the Iraqis seem almost to desire to become polarized."

Several thousand years of tribal blood feuds will create what we are seeing now, once the constraints are lifted.

[brentspeak]

21. He's blaming the media and anti-war politicians for imposing unfair goals

Good grief, the only unreasonable goals that have been imposed on the U.S. military were those imposed by Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. They're the bozos who ignored military advice on the matter of needed troop levels: "I don't like what Gen.Shinseki says. Let's fire him. We know better."

[damntexdem]

22. Yeah, imagine reporting on war crimes, and ...

the lies that got us into this mess where "ëverything else is screwed up"! Why can't all the media just do happy talk on the war, like Faux News does? I listen to the vets who LEARNED something from the war.

[ismnotwasm]

23. War is always negative

With all due respect to Mr.Wernz service, war always has horrid moments. Deaths, maiming, body parts, broken homes, (literally and figuratively,)families who lose loved ones, sometimes whole families lost. Death, destruction disease.
Atrocities that seem unimaginable until that high stress unnatural state we call war.

Add the pointless, illegal nature of the current conflict and it's hard to see any positive outcome at all.

So we're supposed to say-- go get 'em? "Bring 'em on?" Celebrate Iraqi deaths? Celebrate the death sacrifice of American soldiers like some ritual? Do we call Iraqi death's sacrifice as well? Or are they just dead? Are they volunteering?

What part of war would Mr Wernz like to be portrayed as positive? Saddam's trial? Evidently he thinks the Iraqi elections are the high point.

That "rooting for us to lose" is right wing propaganda. I'm sorry to see a soldier sucked into such thinking although I know the military trains them that way. Hard to break out of, and very sad to see.

“I think this war is getting into politics,” Wernz said. “But it’s something people are dying over, and that’s (politics) wrong.”

Mixed message there Mr Wernz.

[columbusdem]

24. some quick points

1. He left Iraq in early '04, when our guys over there were only sort of in the shitter compared to the borderline-civil war chaos right now. Thus, things are more negative.

2. This was a local article for a local paper (from the website: "The Journal Gazette in Mattoon and the Times-Courier in Charleston are located 8 miles apart in Coles County in east-central Illinois.") whose home cities are in Republican heavy southern Illinois.

3. He must have forgotten that in the not too distant past, the media in its pro-administration rah-rah state of mind could barely be bull-whipped into covering the ugly side of the Iraq war.

[rexcat]

28. It is an OCCUPATION, the war has been over for some time!

[Karenina]

30. Dear Mr. Wernz

Extract your head from Dumbya's ass, clean the shit out of your nasal passages, breathe somewhat cleaner air for a day or two, then tell us all about it.

[magellan]

31. The "element of the country rooting for us to lose" is BushCo

Bush** would love nothing better than if we were stuck there forever. Clue in, Wernz, BushCo already couch it in obvious terms. "The Long War".....

If any of these pro-war people could give just one real example of how invading and occupying Iraq has benefited average Americans or average Iraqis, I'd like to hear it. Even the meme they parrot to justify the war has died a deserved death: fighting "them" in Iraq sure didn't stop "them" in Germany from chatting about blowing up the Holland Tunnel, did it?

And I'm fairly confident that like many Iraqis, 14-year-old Abeer would prefer her former life to the "freedom" she and her family received from the barrel of a gun as a direct result of our presence.

[dicknbush]

32. Tough shit fuck em and go to hell you idot...

And you are right there is an element that doesn't necessarily want t to lose the war but there is an element of the population that wants the criminal who contrived this piece off shit war on the US to get what is coming to them that is a trial in the Hague for War crimes against humanity,. The war was a lie the war is illegal the war is a crime and if you support these criminals then you are an accomplice to the crime so shut the fuck up or get on the right side of what this country is about THE LAw !!!!

[IndianaGreen]

33. What did he expect, a victory parade and a laurel wreath?

The harsh reality is that as it becomes apparent that we lost the war in Iraq, the very people that cheered the troops as they marched off to war, will be the same people that won't want anything to do with returning veterans from a war that they will be trying very hard to forget it ever took place.

[BlueStater]

34. He should tell the family of James Brolan and Paul Douglas...

...that the media isn't reporting the "good news" happening in Iraq.

[Javaman]

35. Nothing like a little "free" propaganda...

Yes, this guy is a total idiot, but to me, reading between the lines, this is nothing more than a propaganda piece for moron. Nothing about this "article" reads as being authentic.

[WhiteTara]

36. sorry, the war was lost before it began

it was built on lies and deception and there can never be any honor in that.