Interesting

[wacki]

I was at the bars last night with a bunch of Marines and they had similar thoughts. Vulturesrow, since you were over there do you agree with this as well?
http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/...o_One_Asked_Us

No One Asked Us
By Major Stan Coerr, USMCR

George Bush coalesced American support behind invading Iraq, I am told, using two arguments: Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and the capability to deliver them, and Iraq was a supporter of Al-Qaeda terrorism, and may have been involved in the attacks of 9/11. Vicious words and gratuitous finger-pointing keep falling back on these points, as people insist that “we” were misled into what started as a dynamic liberation and has become a bloody counterinsurgency. Watching politicians declaim and hearing television experts expound on why we went to war and on their opinions of those running the White House and Defense Department, I have one question.

When is someone going to ask the guys who were there?

What about the opinions of those whose lives were on the line, massed on the Iraq-Kuwait border beginning in February of last year? I don’t know how President Bush got the country behind him, because at the time I was living in a hole in the dirt in northern Kuwait. Why have I not heard a word from anyone who actually carried a rifle or flew a plane into bad guy country last year, and who has since had to deal with the ugly aftermath of a violent liberation? What about the guys who had the most to lose—what do they think about all this?

I was there. I am one of those guys who fought the war and helped keep the peace. I am a Major in the Marine Reserves, and during the war I was the senior American attached to the 1 Royal Irish Battlegroup, a rifle battalion of the British Army. I was commander of five U.S. Marine air/naval gunfire liaison teams, as well as the liaison officer between U.S. Marines and British Army forces. I was activated on January 14, 2003, and 17 days later I and my Marines were standing in Kuwait with all of our gear, ready to go to war.

I majored in Political Science at Duke, and I graduated with a Masters degree in government from the Kennedy School at Harvard. I understand realpolitik, geopolitical jujitsu, economics and the reality of the Arab world. I know the tension between the White House, the UN, Langley and Foggy Bottom. One of my grandfathers was a two-star Navy admiral; my other grandfather was an ambassador. I am not a pushover, blindly following whoever is in charge, and I don’t kid myself that I live in a perfect world. But the war made sense then, and the occupation makes sense now.

As dawn broke on March 22, 2003, I became part of one of the largest and fastest land movements in the history of war. I went across the border alongside my brothers in the Royal Irish, following the 5th Marine Regiment from Camp Pendleton as they swept through the Ramaylah oil fields. I was one those guys you saw on TV every night- filthy, hot, exhausted. I think the NRA and their right-to-bear-arms mantra is a joke, but by God I was carrying a loaded rifle, a loaded pistol and a knife on my body at all times. My boots rested on sandbags on the floor of my Humvee, there to protect me from the blast of a land mines or IED.

I killed many Iraqi soldiers, as they tried to kill me and my Marines. I did it with a radio, directing airstrikes and artillery, in concert with my British artillery officer counterpart, in combat along the Hamar Canal in southern Iraq. I saw, up close, everything the rest of you see in the newspapers: dead bodies, parts of dead bodies, helmets with bullet holes through them, handcuffed POWs sitting in the sand, oil well fires with flames reaching 100 feet into the air and a roar you could hear from over a mile away.

I stood on the bloody sand where Marine Second Lieutenant Therrel Childers was the first American killed on the ground. I pointed a loaded weapon at another man for the first time in my life. I did what I had spent 14 years training to do, and my Marines - your Marines - performed so well it still brings tears to my eyes to think about it. I was proud of what we did then, and I am proud of it now.

Along with the violence, I saw many things that lifted my heart. I saw thousands of Iraqis in cities like Qurnah and Medinah - men, women, children, grandparents carrying babies - running into the streets at the sight of us, the first Western army to arrive. I saw them screaming, crying, waving, cheering. They ran from their homes at the sound of our Humvee tires roaring in from the south, bringing bread and tea and cigarettes and photos of their children. They chattered at us in Arabic, and we spoke to them in English, and neither understood the other. The entire time I was in Iraq, I had one impression from the civilians I met: Thank God, finally someone has arrived with bigger men and bigger guns to be, at last, on our side.

Let there be no mistake, those of you who don’t believe in this war: the Ba’ath regime were the Nazis of the second half of the 20th century. I saw what the murderous, brutal regime of Saddam Hussein wrought on that country through his party and their Fedayeen henchmen. They raped, murdered, tortured, extorted and terrorized those in that country for 35 years. There are mass graves throughout Iraq only now being discovered. 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, out of Camp Pendleton, liberated a prison in Iraq populated entirely by children. The Ba’athists brutalized the weakest among them, and killed the strongest.

I saw in the eyes of the people how a generation of fear reflects in the human soul.

The Ba’ath Party, like the Nazis before them, kept power by spreading out, placing their officials in every city and every village to keep the people under their boot. Everywhere we went we found rifles, ammunition, RPG rounds, mortar shells, rocket launchers, and artillery. When we took over the southern city of Ramaylah, our battalion commander tore down the Ba’ath signs and commandeered the former regime headquarters in town (which, by the way, was 20 feet from the local school.) My commander himself took over the office of the local Ba’ath leader, and in opening the desk of that thug found a set of brass knuckles and a gun. These are the people who are now in prison, and that is where they deserve to be.

The analogy is simple. For years, you have watched the same large, violent man come home every night, and you have listened to his yelling and the crying and the screams of children and the noise of breaking glass, and you have always known that he was beating his wife and his children. Everyone on the block has known it. You ask, cajole, threaten and beg him to stop, on behalf of the rest of the neighborhood. Nothing works. After listening to it for 13 years, you finally gather up the biggest, meanest guys you can find, you go over to his house, and you kick the door down. You punch him in the face and drag him away. The house is a mess, the family poor and abused — but now there is hope. You did the right thing.

I can speak with authority on the opinions of both British and American infantry in that place and at that time. Let me make this clear: at no time did anyone say or imply to any of us that we were invading Iraq to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction, nor were we there to avenge 9/11. We knew we were there for one reason: to rid the world of a tyrant, and to give Iraq back to Iraqis.

None of us had even heard those arguments for going to war until we returned, and we still don’t understand the confusion. To us, it was simple. The world needed to be rid of a man who committed mass murder of an entire people, and our country was the only one that could project that much power that far and with that kind of precision. We don’t make policy decisions: we carry them out. And none of us had the slightest doubt about how right and good our actions were.

The war was the right thing to do then, and in hindsight it was still the right thing to do. We can’t overthrow every murderous tyrant in the world, but when we can, we should. Take it from someone who was there, and who stood to lose everything. We must, and will, stay the course. We owe it to the Iraqis, and to the world.

Stan Coerr is a SuperCobra attack helicopter pilot and Forward Air Controller, and was recently selected for Lieutenant Colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve. He lives in San Diego.

[wacki]

Let me make this clear: at no time did anyone say or imply to any of us that we were invading Iraq to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction, nor were we there to avenge 9/11. We knew we were there for one reason: to rid the world of a tyrant, and to give Iraq back to Iraqis.

None of us had even heard those arguments for going to war until we returned, and we still don’t understand the confusion. - Odd thing to say. Do marines not watch regular news?

[vulturesrow]

I'd say thats a pretty good summation.

[nothumb]

Interesting article indeed. Very well written. Inspires sympathy and admiration.

So I will respond the way bisonbison responded to the last one of these. "So I guess this makes the war and planning a good idea after all."

The soldiers might believe this for these reasons (and they have to, their lives depend on it) but did the American public? No. Would they have? No. That's why Bush 'sexed up the evidence' as they say in Britain.

The debate over whether invading Iraq for these reasons would have been correct is indeed interesting, but moot.

NT

[lastchance]

I wonder how much EV one would get if one decided to invade for these reasons. I wonder how many liberals would jump on Bush's bandwagon and how many conservatives would oppose it...

[durron597]

[ QUOTE ]
I wonder how much EV one would get if one decided to invade for these reasons. I wonder how many liberals would jump on Bush's bandwagon and how many conservatives would oppose it...

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm a conservative, and it's for these reasons that I support the war; nothing to do with WMD.

I'm not in favor of some people being "more equal" than others (affirmitive action, welfare, etc.) but I am in favor of the concepts of Freedom, Liberty, and the blood that must be shed to guarantee these concepts. One does not cause the other; that is known as the "slippery slope" fallacy.

[Chris Alger]

[ QUOTE ]
When is someone going to ask the guys who were there?

[/ QUOTE ]
Well, there's the obvious: combat troops in any war usually have little insight about the arguments that they're killing and dying for bad reasons, much less about the cause of those who are trying to kill them. It's not like they receive a health dose of "on the other hand" during the indoctrination lectures. And they are, after all, presumably busy with other things.

But I guess the real answer he's looking for is this: only when somebody smashes the liberal media conspiracy that prevents TV journalists from asking troops in the field and their families from whether they support the war or otherwise "stand behind the President." Maybe I don't watch enough TV, but I've never seen or read any human interest stories like this, ever.

In other words, one should stop reading at this point because what follows will assuredly be the usual rightwing dumbguy sucker punch, pablum for weak-minded robots who need a constant supply of reassurance of American exceptionalism.

Of the 2,288 members of the U.S. Individual Ready Reserve ordered during these past few months to report for active duty by October 17, more than 800 or 37% have simply failed to appear or ask for more time. They join the already hundreds of others who have essentially told the President to take his wars and shove them up his ass. Aljazeera If you want something to think about instead of a daily propaganda dose, ask those troops what they believe.

[ QUOTE ]
"I don’t know how President Bush got the country behind him, because at the time I was living in a hole in the dirt in northern Kuwait."

[/ QUOTE ]
A major who "lived in a hole" isolated from all news of the world from August 2002 (when the war campaign began in earnest) until the March 2003 invasion? No radio transmissions from the Armed Forces network? No CNN or even Stars and Stripes? Sure. (While patrolling on nuclear alert in my submarine, going months without breaking the surface, we received the news almost every other day, and this was in the early 1980's).

[ QUOTE ]
I can speak with authority on the opinions of both British and American infantry in that place and at that time. Let me make this clear: at no time did anyone say or imply to any of us that we were invading Iraq to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction, nor were we there to avenge 9/11.

[/ QUOTE ]
So of the more than 150,000 U.S./UK troops in Iraq, none were informed about how the official justification for the war was the purported WMD threat. Not even Gen. Franks even heard even an implication of this claim. You have to have a low opinion of your audience to write garbage like this. Judging from some of the responses in this thread, he was right.

[ QUOTE ]
We knew we were there for one reason: to rid the world of a tyrant, and to give Iraq back to Iraqis.

[/ QUOTE ]
Bush spun a big wheel with the names of the world's tyrants, and lucked out when the clicker stopped on the one with the second largest oil reserves. Another claim that's so wildly unbelievable that he has to bury it deep in the text because up front, no one would read it. Imagine an article that began: The U.S., unlike every other great power in history, will selfless sacrifice blood and treasure for the cause of liberating the oppressed and giving them political power, without regardl to national interests or even self-defense, but simply because it's the right thing to do.

Interesting avoidance of the definite article "the" before Iraqis in "give Iraq back to Iraqis." He knows that it's not "the" Iraqis that we want to impower, but just "Iraqis" on our approved list. These are the lucky ones who get $30 million from U.S. taxpayers in "technical assistance and training for moderate and democratic political parties in Iraq" through the National Endowment for Democracy, according to the State Dept. yesterday.

[Chris Alger]

[ QUOTE ]
I am in favor of the concepts of Freedom, Liberty, and the blood that must be shed to guarantee these concepts

[/ QUOTE ]
As well as believing in or at least tolerating mass official lying and misleading propaganda to ensure the survival of freedom and liberty, except the freedom and liberty of most to make informed choices about public policy involving mass official violence. In other words, you believe in the liberty and freedom to make policy that others will have to follow without the encumbrance of democracy.

Another tyranny apologist for "liberty," the loudest yelps about which, said Johnson over 200 years ago, come from "the drivers of Negroes." Yes, you're a "conservative."

[ohiou]

Why can't we all just simply thank our soldiers for a moment and leave the politics behind?

No matter what you think of the war, there are Americans fighting it who deserve a thanks from both sides of the aisle for [censored]'s sake.

[Foggy]

[ QUOTE ]
Why can't we all just simply thank our soldiers for a moment and leave the politics behind?

No matter what you think of the war, there are Americans fighting it who deserve a thanks from both sides of the aisle for [censored]'s sake.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, let's bury our heads in the sand (DYSWID?) and forget to ask whether our elected officials lied to us just because people we don't know are at risk because of those same lies....not sure I follow your logic.