Retired Special Forces Soldier's Letter to Congress

[Amerpie]

In case you don't know Stan Goff


To Congressman David Price, District 4, North Carolina.  http://www.house.gov/price/contact_david.htm  (He could use lots more.)

Congressman Price,

I know you don't want to hear this, because you’ve never welcomed anything I had to say, but I'm not going to be the last to say it.  I said last July that the US was losing the war in Iraq because the political contradictions there cannot be sustained.  I am reiterating that now.

Just ten years from now, people will look back and take account of who said and did what, when.  And they will see Iraq was a geopolitical and moral crime on par with Vietnam.  The inane discourse from officialdom and the media has an effect, but that effect is to prolong through continued public acquiescence the very thing that these asinine narratives have no effect upon, and that is the spread of Arab and Muslim rage, the downward spiral into a military quagmire, the destabilization of a dangerous region, the destruction of an already frangible domestic economy, the destruction of countless lives, and the acceleration of the loss of US prestige in the world... already at zero.

Ten years from now, people will say - dissembling again - that this is 20/20 hindsight, but some will look closely at the record and say that there were those of us who faced these realities right now, while others pursued their little footnote careers in evasion, denial and self-delusion.

The Democratic Party is showing its usual shameful spinelessness in the face of this war, trotting along timidly behind every wind-change in the polls, dodging decisions and positions, and aping the language of cover-up that continues to insist that Iraq is not about controlling energy supplies.

What was already a political defeat in Iraq is rapidly transforming itself into a military defeat.  I am a veteran of more than one of those, so you really should listen to me.  You never do, but let’s at least get it on the record.  You offered no response to the evidence I sent you of war crimes being committed by US forces, not even a return note.

History will not treat kindly anyone who sits on the sidelines as this devolves into another Vietnam result while people again dither for a decade while the corpses mount up.  We will lose this war.

We probably should.  It was illegal and immoral from the beginning, and it was an act of brazen plunder.

Some can salvage a bit of virtue for the history books, but to do it they shall have to call for immediate, unilateral, and unconditional military withdrawal from Iraq.

Yours,
Stan Goff
US Army (Retired)

[mike_c]

1. truth to power....

Kudos to Mr. Goff!