[Peace-discuss] Returning vets

[C. G. Estabrook]

Welcoming someone home is fine, but it's important to distinguish 
welcoming soldiers home from celebrating what they've been doing -- 
especially when the USG is working hard to identify those two.  We all 
know that "Support the Troops" is a covert way of saying support the 
war.  We heard it again Tuesday night.

Independent accounts of the American military in Iraq (viz., from the 
foreign press) have routinely emphasized how ill-trained, undisciplined, 
brutal and trigger-happy they are (e.g., a British correspondent on the 
scene typically describes the 82nd Airborne as "thugs").

One can argue (correctly I think) that this state of the military is at 
least in part due to the wretched way the Pentagon has run the war: the 
Germans didn't have this much trouble conquering France.

But we also found after the fact that My Lai was not an aberration.  It 
was an example of how the US ran the war in Vietnam.  And revulsion at 
what they were being asked to do was one element in the revolt of the 
conscript army a generation ago.

A test to see if something is proper to say about US soldiers in Iraq is 
to ask whether it could also be said of the members of the Wehrmacht 
(e.g., that they were victims as well as perpetrators -- as they were). 
  Invading armies both, the principal thing that separates them is time. 
  --CGE


Karen Medina wrote:
> ...
> For those coming back from Iraq, they are suffering. Studies 
> show high incidences of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and
> other problems that are hard to diagnose. Our society suffers
> with them. In so many ways, the cost of this war is uncountable.
> 
> I really do want to welcome the Illinois troops home, as
> people who have travelled too far and seen too much; and what
> they have seen has been war. 
> 
> For those of us who have travelled in safer situations, those
> experiences stay with us all our lives and influence the way
> we see the world. How much more so this would be if we had
> seen the ugliest side of the world. 
> 
> There is nothing uglier than war. My brothers and sisters have
> witnessed it. I will welcome them home.
> 
> -karen medina