The other day, I wrote:
"A good way to do that would be to proactively hold their civilian leadership accountable. Have you done anything proactive to hold the civilian leadership of the military accountable for the way they use the military, Carla?"
To which you responded:
"Why don't help Carla and give her some of your own real life examples of how it's done.
Warlock "
While I am involved in trying to hold the civilian leadership of the military accountable, I thought the following blog post by a soldier serving in Iraq might be a more pointed and powerful "example", as you requested. I refer you, Warlock, to SPC Freeman's item number 13 (highlighted) below:
From: http://calmbeforethesand.blogspot.com/
Friday, May 25, 2007
If The Shoe Fits...
25/05/2007
Memorandum for Record: Military Spending Concerns
FROM: SPC Freeman, Milo; US Army, Iraq
TO: Senate Democrats, Republicans, and "American Idol" viewers across the nation.
1. You. Punk. Ass. Pantywaisted. Bitches.
2. You had a chance. You could have put your money where your mouth is--could have put some ass behind all those claims of "favoring an end to war."
3. And you fucking choked.
4. Let me explain something to you. Your children; your spouses; your lovers and friends and parents and CONSTITUENTS are hostages to this war. They're dying for a conflict with no concrete objective. They're losing marriages and childhood moments to a neverending cycle of extended tours. Their equipment, their morale, is stretched thin. And some of them--those of us smart enough not to buy the fucking hype--were counting on you to find your fucking testicles and put an end to this shit. We were counting on you to save us from ourselves; to find a way to put us to use serving our country in ways perhaps more effective in rebuilding our nation.
5. And you. Fucking. Choked.
6. I haven't gotten a current edition of the paper in months. It's always a day behind. I don't get to check the news--I barely have the time. So what am I to think when I read yesterday's Stars and Stripes, and hear about this shit? Is that supposed to tell me that my leaders, my countrymen give a flying FUCK about what happens to me or my wife? Is that the message I'm supposed to glean from this STUNNING lack of cojones? Because I gotta tell you, America, I'm not seeing it.
7. I'm so sick of hearing this wretched war talked about in terms of Victory or Defeat. "If we leave, the terrorists will win."
8. Fuck that.
9. Today it's Terrorists. Yesterday it was Blacks/Gays/Jews/Hippies. Before that it was Communists. Before that, it was Uppity Colonials with Secondhand Muskets and Pitchforks. It's always fucking something with you people, isn't it?
10.You just need your little wars to feel good about yourselves, don't you? Something to make you feel threatened; something to make you feel heroic; ANYTHING to make you feel like your pathetic lives are more than just you against the Big, Black, Scary Infinite. Well, obviously, it's working.
11. You don't magically "win" an occupation. It's an inevitable bleed-out. We're stuck in a situation beyond our powers to fix, in a country that WE voted to destroy, whose history and people we neither understand nor care to try. We bought the hype, hook-line-and-sinker.
12. Fuck Victory. Fuck Defeat. Any way you slice it, This. War. Is. Wrong.
13.You don't keep trying to win the game after it turns out you bribed the refs. You fire the coaches and/or players responsible, and you hand over the Title.You take your lumps like a fucking man and try to rebuild. Accept it.
13. Hope you're happy, America. Clutch your pearls about all those dirty liberals who voted against the proposal ("They didn't Support The Troops!"). Whine about all the evil elderly schoolteachers and librarians protesting the war on a Saturday morning outside your courthouse.
14. But when your son or daughter or spouse or first lay comes home airfreight, mangled into a closed-casket service by a daisy-chain of 155s buried under Route Tampa, remember this:
15. It won't be the dirty liberals who put them there.
16. Hoo-ah.
//
ORIGINAL SIGNED
Milo Freeman, SPC
United States Army, Iraq posted by Spc. Freeman at 5:56 PM14 commentslinks to this post