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Sunday, October 09, 2005

Cue the 101st Fighting Swiftboaters
Posted by Jill | 12:28 PM

Here, via Sharon Jumper at Kos, is arguably the saddest post I've ever seen about the Iraq war, from new blogroll entry Sgt. Zachary Scott Singley, currently serving as a translator in Iraq (emphases mine):

There are battles which need to be fought and there are battles which serve no good purpose. Afghanistan and Bin Laden lay forgotten as if they were discarded toys left by a spoiled child.

Iraq is the new frontier of poor foreign policy and poor planning. Even the soldiers can see it. Why do you think nobody is re-enlisting? They don't want to keep leaving their families to go fight a loosing battle and to die for an empty promise. The promise that somehow staying in Iraq makes America safer.

We have created a martyr factory here, and we are beginning to wade through the next Vietnam. How wrong do you want to be before you close down shop and send the troops home? 2,000 dead? Is that wrong enough? How about 10,000?

There is a field back home at Ft. Stewart, Georgia. There a tree has been planted for each soldier who has been killed in Iraq. After we returned in 2003 there were only a few trees, now an entire side of the field is full of them. My sister asked where they would plant more now that the row was complete and sadly I replied, "we still have three more sides to fill." Maybe then when we have enough names for a beautiful war memorial we can leave Iraq.


So much for a country full of young U.S. men and women gung-ho for their mission and madly in love with their commander-in-chief. Some moron tried to tell Randi Rhodes that most soldiers support the President and voted for him last November. Well, perhaps they did, but at this point, I can't even fathom the level of disillusionment with ALL American institutions that these kids must be living with now. Everything they believed has turned out to be wrong. We can bind up the wounds and provide prosthetic limbs, but how do we heal the wound of cynicism?
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