Another Grim Milestone
A very distressing milestone, and a reason to question why we are here, is it worth the price, and most of all, how many more?
Bush said that the best way to honor the dead would be to complete the mission in Iraq, but then, Bush has never been shy about using the honor of fallen soldiers to justify killing more for his own selfish reasons. Some say that no matter whether we stay or leave, the end result will be the same, that Bush has so totally screwed up this situation that nothing can reasonably expect to bring success now.
And, as always, Bush’s rhetoric is sickening: “We’ve lost some of our nation’s finest men and women in the war on terror,” as he continues his unrelenting fiction that somehow Iraq is related to the war on terror, and follows that by speaking of patriotism and the honor of the soldiers so as to suggest that what Bush himself did was somehow right and just instead of being a criminally fatal and unwarranted blunder. It’s enough to make one physically ill.
I found this story on CNN very sad and yes…I agree Bush and everything about the man makes me physically ill.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/10/25/iraq.soldier.story.ap/index.html
Exactly. When you see videos of the military recruiters approching teenage kids at malls and selling them on enlisting, telling them it’s all cool and you’re gonna be a tough dude and it’s great training and a great career move, etc. etc.–and you also know that 2000 have died, and you have even a small idea of how they die, and especially why… the sight of recruiters doing their thing almost seems obscene, like rape or child molestation to a certain degree. The recruiters are just doing their job and selling the product, telling kids alll the good stuff and leaving out the bad just like any salesman would do. But still, you can almost equate this to coming up to small children, naive in the world, and offering them candy if they’ll get into the car…
As a military spouse, I’m grateful that so much emphasis is placed on milestones, as it keeps our overseas men and women in the news. U.S. Army Colonel Paul Hughes who is now at the U.S. Institute of Peace, says there is another important number besides 2,000.
“It’s not the number of 2,000, it’s the number of one, because we’ve lost a comrade, a buddy, a friend, somebody who was in our family,” Every single person is important.
And believe me, there is no love lost on this end about recruiters — they can behave worse than car stereo salesmen. However, most people aren’t aware of the recruiting of the recruiters, and the bait-and-switch practices used on these poor hapless souls who are just so tired of one more 6 month sea-duty and hope for shore duty as a recruiter. Very few people actually start their military career wanting to become a recruiter. Usually it’s the marine or sailor who has done 3 consecutive tours (my nephew is finishing his third tour of Iraq in 4 months) adn they’re desperate for shore duty. They’re lured in by the same sales tactics. They eventually realize that there’s a monthly quota to fill, and if that doesn’t happen there can be some tough repercussions in rank and in pay. There are some wicked recruiters out there, but many of them are desperate for quota not so much out of nefarious purposes but out of raw fear.