Open Letter to U.S. Troops Serving in Iraq
This letter comes to you from someone -- like most of the elected officials in Washington giving you military orders --
who has never served in the armed forces. So you may be tempted to dismiss what I say as not relevant to your very real
and scary daily experiences in Iraq.
But I speak to you as someone who, like you, loves our country, and who is very worried about both your continued
survival and about the effects on you from what you're being asked to do in Iraq.
And, just so you'll know where I'm coming from, I'm also writing as a citizen who was deeply involved in supporting the
troops in Vietnam in the '60s and '70s -- most of whom, unlike you, were drafted to serve -- while I disagreed
vehemently with the policies of the U.S. government that sent them there. More than 58,000 American soldiers died in
'Nam, for no good reason, and more than two million Vietnamese were killed there, for no good reason.
We who are opposed to Bush Administration's Iraq policies do not want you to die or be maimed in Iraq. And we want to
save the lives of Iraqis as well, most of them innocent civilians. As you know, it's estimated that 100,000 Iraqis have
been killed to date as a result of this war, many of them women and children -- to use the Pentagon's jargon,
"collateral damage."
You have been thrust into guerrilla-type warfare, where anybody can be, and often is, the enemy. Some of the insurgent
forces are foreign fighters, anxious to kill Americans in the name of religious jihad. Some, no doubt, are ex-Saddam
soldiers, out for revenge. But the bulk of the insurgency, our intelligence services tell us, are ordinary Iraqis who
are angered by the ongoing American occupation of their country. In short, from these Iraqis' point of view, they are
desperate patriots fighting for their land.
As we now know, you were sent to that country without the requisite armor, weaponry and supplies, in a military campaign
that was based on lies, misinformation, and deficient planning.
We all were told by our elected officials in Washington that Saddam Hussein had huge stockpiles of "weapons of
mass-destruction" (WMD) -- nuclear, chemical, biological -- and was ready, willing and able to use them on his
neighbors, on the U.S. mainland via drone planes, and on any American troops that might invade. Thanks to innumerable
statements by our elected leaders, echoed by a compliant media, we all were told that Saddam Hussein had a working
relationship with al-Qaida and thus was somehow partially responsible for 9/11.
It has now been proven that none of those statements and suggestions was true. The official investigations have
determined that there were no WMD -- supposedly the reason that justified the invasion -- and no working relationship
beween Iraq and al-Qaida with regard to 9/11.
TRYING TO STOP THE BLOODBATH
Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq began in March of 2003, more than 10 million citizens around the world went out into
their respective countries' streets to peacefully oppose that looming war, and to assert their strong belief that there
were no WMD and no believable Iraq/al-Qaida link. The United Nations' weapons inspectors were in Iraq, seeking the WMD
but not finding any, when the Bush Administration announced that time was up and began its "shock" assault.
It was this invasion, based on untruths and haste, that put you and your fellow soldiers into harm's way in Iraq. And
not much has changed since that time: You remain in harm's way, and are forced to try to nation-build at the same time
you're being attacked by a shadowy insurgent force that uses munitions lifted easily from unguarded arms dumps around
the country. Bad military planning.
Indeed, virtually every step of the way during the Iraq Occupation, your bosses at the Pentagon have made gross and
costly errors in tactics and strategy and troop-levels required -- thus endangering you -- and have wound up alienating
more and more citizens of that country, to your detriment. To date, nearly 1600 U.S. troops have died as a result of the
invasion, nearly 20,000 have l eft the battlefield with extreme injuries, and, as others have documented, about 100,000
Iraqis have died in the war.
TERRORISM GROWS LIKE TOPSY
Are you, are we, any safer as a result of this war? It certainly wouldn't appear so. The insurgency -- which like a
magnet has attracted trained terrorists to Iraq -- moves and acts at will as a strong, tactically-adept guerrilla force.
The number of acts of terror in Iraq is growing, rather than receding. There have been about three times the number of
terrorist incidents around the globe than before the war began. Much of the Islamic world has come to see the United
States as its enemy. And most of the world's leaders and peoples believe we are engaged in unconscionable tactics in
Iraq.
At home, a clear majority of the U.S. public now has come to believe that they were lied into the war and that it's in
America's longterm interests to get out of there as quickly as possible.
So why are we still there, with indications that U.S forces will remain there for many years? Why are you and your
buddies in uniform still getting killed and blown up by homemade bombs?
IT'S ABOUT OIL AND CONTROL
The invasion seems to have had nothing to do with WMD, 9/11, or even with deposing Saddam -- though the latter reason
was seized on by the Bush Administration only when the previous justifications couldn't stand up to scrutiny. The facts
indicate that you and your buddies are fighting for oil and in order for the Bush Administration to make major
readjustments in the geopolitical landscape of that region.
The underlying motive is a desire for the U.S. to effectively control the huge oil/gas reserves in the Greater Middle
East -- with the huge permanent military bases in Iraq aiding in this effort. To affect these ends, Iraq is being used
as a negative role-model, a warning to the other leaders in the region and around the globe: Either bend to our will, or
we'll effect your removal from power.
Now I realize that, like my neighbor's Marine son, there are those in-country who sincerely and firmly believe they are
in Iraq for all the right reasons, that America as the lone superpower should use its might to remove bad guys from
office and set up democracies that will be more U.S.-friendly. They are proud to serve their nation in carrying out the
aims of the neo-con theorists in the Bush Administration.
But even if it were a worthy goal to bring "democracy" and "free-market" economies to the largely autocratic
nation-states of the Islamic Middle East by force or coercion, idealism often runs headlong into reality, with
disastrous, unintended consequences. Even people the U.S. is "liberating" chafe at America's bullyboy way of organizing
the "new world order."
Witness what is happening in Iraq right now. The U.S. has overthrown a bad man and, through its military and political
might, has engineered a governmental system that supposedly will do America's will. But the U.S. military's clumsy,
inefficient occupation -- aided and abetted by its policy of state-sponsored torture -- has managed to alienate huge
segments of that country, of that region, of the world.
PUTTING THE HOMELAND IN DANGER
The U.S. is regarded across the globe as an international pariah, an arrogant imperial bully, feared but not respected.
In addition, Bush Administration policies have provided terrorists with just the propaganda they need as they recruit
more to their side every day. (I'm referring to the policies of invading and occupying and torturing, and not forcing
the Israelis to end their occupation of the Palestinian West Bank.) Such wrongheaded policies not only further endanger
you and your buddies on the ground in Iraq but the American homeland as well.
Whether you agree with me or not about whether the Bush Administration's Iraq plan is correct, I think you'll agree that
our forces there are engaged in actions that guarantee more death and destruction not only aimed at you, but at those
you love back home. In the Vietnam War, the local guerrillas attacked U.S. troops only, but in our current high-tech
era, the war easily can be brought to our shores here in America, with a few suicide bombers, shoulder-fired missiles, a
vial of biological agent, whatever.
In sum, the national interests of the United States (not even mentioning your lives) have been put at great risk in the
service of an unproven theory of militarist "regime-changing" across the globe that not only is in violation of national
and international law but unlikely of success.
THE VIETNAM PARALLELS
In this, and in so many other ways, Iraq resembles Vietnam. It took a good share of a decade until the citizenry at home
and the troops on the ground in 'Nam came to realize and admit that their government had taken them into an immoral and
unwinnable war. They began to organize to oppose that war and negotiate a face-saving way out. In the end, the
guerrillas won and the U.S. exited hastily, a much embarrassed superpower.
There are signs that the opposition to this war is developing further, faster, both inside the U.S. and in Iraq.
Desertion rates are way up, fewer troops are re-upping (especially among the overused and abused Reserves and National
Guard forces sent to Iraq ), military recruitment is way down, support for the war is falling rapidly in the polls, even
many conservatives and military officers think we're engaged in the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place.
Nobody wants to die for a mistake, but until the U.S. finds a quick way out of Iraq, that's the position you and your
buddies are placed in over there. Granted, you signed up for the military and thus have even less leverage than draftees
in terms of opposing the war. But know that your fellow citizens at home pay great attention to what the troops on the
ground say and do. (Just one soldier asking Rumsfeld why the grunts weren't receiving proper body armor had a great
impact; or another example, those truckers who went public with their refusal to transport goods without proper
vehicle-armor and protection.)
So, in the service of your country -- and of your own necks -- I urge you to start to speak up more, ask more questions,
reveal information that needs to be discussed. (Several soldier heroes did just that in exposing the Abu Ghraib
tortures.)
With ordinary citizens like me and others working from the outside, and you and others working from the inside, we can
help create a momentum that might get you back home earlier, in one piece -- receiving plaudits and huzzahs from
American citizens, not spit and derision as happened when 'Nam vets returned home -- and that might restore America's
rightful place in the international community as a moral country worthy of respect and wide support once again.
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Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., has taught at numerous universities, worked as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle,
and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers ( www.crisispapers.org). Send comments to crisispapers@comcast.net.
First published at The Crisis Papers and Democratic Underground 5/3/05.
Copyright 2005 by Bernard Weiner.