When Supporting the Troops With Magnetic Ribbons & Rhetoric is Not Enough. (Another Inconvenient Truth)

The Troops Belong to All of Us

UPDATED, 2/23 (below)

War Casualties in detailed numbers, here.

Supporting the troops means different things to different people. Normally, I wouldn't bother arguing with the morons who say everyone who's against the Iraq war is not supporting the troops and is giving comfort to the enemy. Usually, those people are either war profiteers, or confuse the meanings of loyalty, duty, patriotism and dissent. Many others, just wear an American flag lapel, and put a magnetic sticker on their cars but haven't done much else to make sure our troops are indeed supported, beyond the rhetoric.

I wonder how many Americans actually want to know what exactly goes on in Iraq. Yes, sometimes depictions of violence and its aftermath should be more readily available to the public. Why? Because the sanitized view of a horrific event only helps to perpetuate the horrors. Why isn't most of the media covering the war as it happens--not as a general abstraction--with all the unpleasant details. The American public has been misled about this war of choice, and although today most of us want this war to end, the administration and many elected representatives--some of them with presidential aspirations--are arguing for an escalation instead of a quick end!

How come those in charge of this horrible situation have not been shamed to crawl under a rock or chased out of town? Every American should read this article in the Washington Post about our troops being neglected, here at home! We know that this administration went into the occupation of Iraq with no realistic plan and without providing our troops with the armor they needed. We now have over 3,150 dead and well over 25,000 injured, many severely--like double amputees. Let's not forget that every one of the dead was a person who'll never experience all those good things in life the rest of us take for granted. Look into their faces and weep.

Wait, save some of your tears for this:
Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By Dana Priest and Anne Hull Washington Post Staff Writers, Sunday, 2/18/07

[read the entire article]

When you're done weeping, make sure you don't remain silent. Make sure you understand your obligation as a citizen to be informed and be active in the affairs of our nation. Let no one manipulate your patriotism for their gain. The last resort of a scoundrel is an appeal to patriotism. As MLK said, Our lives begin to end the moment we become silent about things that matter.

Update, 2/20

I read Paul Krugman's piece in the NYT (2/19/07), but I failed to include his points earlier in this post. John at AmericaBlog didn't miss it. This is why, Wrong is Right, is worth reading.

..For the last six years we have been ruled by men who are pathologically incapable of owning up to mistakes. And this pathology has had real, disastrous consequences. The situation in Iraq might not be quite so dire — and we might even have succeeded in stabilizing Afghanistan — if Mr. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney had been willing to admit early on that things weren’t going well or that their handpicked appointees weren’t the right people for the job....

The base is remarkably forgiving toward Democrats who supported the war. But the base and, I believe, the country want someone in the White House who doesn’t sound like another George Bush. That is, they want someone who doesn’t suffer from an infallibility complex, who can admit mistakes and learn from them....

Mrs. Clinton’s problem. For some reason she and her advisers failed to grasp just how fed up the country is with arrogant politicians who can do no wrong. I don’t think she falls in that category; but her campaign somehow thought it was still a good idea to follow Karl Rove’s playbook, which says that you should never, ever admit to a mistake. And that playbook has led them into a political trap...

This is the Iraq we don't see. Iraq: The Hidden Story, is UK Channel 4's documentary of the harsh reality. It poses some serious questions as to what people whose country is involved in a war should know about the horrors of war... [warning: this 48-minute long video displays graphic violence]

UPDATE 2/23

Apparently this story of neglect and disrespect has touched many nerves. The top brass has apologized for the mess at Walter Reed Medical facilities. One day, the president (through his spokesman) is aware of the situation, the next he doesn't know anything about it. Now, the Army Surgeon General, Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, is accusing the Post and all those who shed light into this black hole that the story is based on a "pack of lies." Oh, I see. "But, remember, more than half [the soldiers'] rooms were perfectly OK." He said. What a knucklehead!

In line with the rhetoric, "Support the Troops," the top brass says, those problems that are based ..on a pack of lies will be fixed asap. That is, while the 600,000 claims for disability are being sorted out. Oh, I forgot, the medical benefits of the National Guard troops run out a month after they return from the front.