An open letter to the GIs in Iraq...

[kalian]

http://www.viewzone.com/soldiers.html

Saturday 15 November 2003

An Open Letter to GIs in Iraq
Dear American serviceperson in Iraq,

I am a retired veteran of the army, and my own son is among you, a paratrooper like I was. The changes that are happening to every one of you‹some more extreme than others‹are changes I know very well. So I'm going to say some things to you straight up in the language to which you are accustomed.

In 1970, I was assigned to the 173rd Airborne Brigade, then based in northern Binh Dinh Province in what was then the Republic of Vietnam. When I went there, I had my head full of s**t: s**t from the news media, s**t from movies, s**t about what it supposedly mean to be a man, and s**t from a lot of my know-nothing neighbors who would tell you plenty about Vietnam even though they'd never been there, or to war at all.

The essence of all this s**t was that we had to "stay the course in Vietnam," and that we were on some mission to save good Vietnamese from bad Vietnamese, and to keep the bad Vietnamese from hitting beachheads outside of Oakland. We stayed the course until 58,000 Americans were dead and lots more maimed for life, and 3,000,000 Southeast Asians were dead. Ex-military people and even many on active duty played a big part in finally bringing that crime to a halt.

When I started hearing about weapons of mass destruction that threatened the United States from Iraq, a shattered country that had endured almost a decade of trench war followed by an invasion and twelve years of sanctions, my first question was how in the hell can anyone believe that this suffering country presents a threat to the United States? But then I remembered how many people had believed Vietnam threatened the United States. Including me.

When that bulls**t story about weapons came apart like a two-dollar shirt, the politicians who cooked up this war told everyone, including you, that you would be greeted like great liberators. They told us that we were in Vietnam to make sure everyone there could vote.

What they didn't tell me was that before I got there in 1970, the American armed forces had been burning villages, killing livestock, poisoning farmlands and forests, killing civilians for sport, bombing whole villages, and committing rapes and massacres, and the people who were grieving and raging over that weren't in a position to figure out the difference between me‹just in country‹and the people who had done those things to them.

What they didn't tell you is that over a million and a half Iraqis died between 1991 and 2003 from malnutrition, medical neglect, and bad sanitation. Over half a million of those who died were the weakest: the children, especially very young children.

My son who is over there now has a baby. We visit with our grandson every chance we get. He is eleven months old now. Lots of you have children, so you know how easy it is to really love them, and love them so hard you just know your entire world would collapse if anything happened to them. Iraqis feel that way about their babies, too. And they are not going to forget that the United States government was largely responsible for the deaths of half a million kids.

So the lie that you would be welcomed as liberators was just that. A lie. A lie for people in the United States to get them to open their purse for this obscenity, and a lie for you to pump you up for a fight.

And when you put this into perspective, you know that if you were an Iraqi, you probably wouldn't be crazy about American soldiers taking over your towns and cities either. This is the tough reality I faced in Vietnam. I knew while I was there that if I were Vietnamese, I would have been one of the Vietcong.

But there we were, ordered into someone else's country, playing the role of occupier when we didn't know the people, their language, or their culture, with our head full of bulls**t our so-called leaders had told us during training and in preparation for deployment, and even when we got there. There we were, facing people we were ordered to dominate, but any one of whom might be pumping mortars at us or firing AKs at us later that night. The question we started to ask is who put us in this position?

In our process of fighting to stay alive, and in their process of trying to expel an invader that violated their dignity, destroyed their property, and killed their innocents, we were faced off against each other by people who made these decisions in $5,000 suits, who laughed and slapped each other on the back in Washington DC with their fat f***ing asses stuffed full of cordon bleu and caviar.

They chumped us. Anyone can be chumped.

///more///

...by...
Stan Goff is the author of "Hideous Dream: A Soldier's Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti" (Soft Skull Press, 2000) and of the upcoming book "Full Spectrum Disorder : The Military in the New American Century" (Soft Skull Press, 2003). He is a member of the BRING THEM HOME NOW! coordinating committee, a retired Special Forces master sergeant, and the father of an active duty soldier.

[not_buying_it]

1. Accountability?????

Although I respect your opinion, no doubt derived from experiences that I can not imagine, I can't help but wonder how you reconcile the accountability that the former Iraqi leadership owns. As a retired Special Forces master sergeant, you no doubt value accountability in leadership.

Mass graves, rape rooms, chemical attacks, attacks on other nations, and routine torture of civilians aside, the leadership of Iraq was challenged by the most powerful military in human history to prove NBC disarmament, and chose not to comply.

No fly zones were ignored, UN resolutions were ignored, UN inspectors were denied access, and documented proof (or even an attempt to document proof) of destruction of NBC was not produced. Eleventh hour negotiations were routine.

I am not arguing that this is not a human tragedy of epic proportions, but I am not convinced that allowing a supporter of terror to "respectfully disagree" when asked to disarm in a war on terror is in the best interest of our nation.

I will no doubt be 86'd from this website for writing this. I hope you get this before I do. I will pray for your son's safety.

[Skittles]

2. what is it you are not buying?

you apparently bought every piece of propaganda there is. I notice in your little screed you never mention WMD - THAT'S the reason BUSH INC gave for INVADING IRAQ. And it is a LIE.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Skittles]

4. you don't get it, do you?

The 9/11 hijackers were from SAUDI ARABIA, a country which supports terrorists. SO WHY ARE WE ATTACKING AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ? If you think Bush's cozy relationship with Saudi isn't part of the answer, you are a fool. And if you think the war in Iraq has ANYTHING to do with the phony "war on terror", you are a MAJOR FOOL.

And by the way, we have found no NBC in Iraq either.

[HawkerHurricane]

7. As a current USN non-com..

I know what accountability is.
Mass graves dating from the 1980's when we supported Saddam Hussien.
Chemical attacks with weapons bought with money we provided.
Attacks on other nations that we encouraged and approved of.

And the leadership of Iraq was challenged by us to prove a negative: Prove that you do not have these weapons.
Anybody who has taken basic logic knows that you cannot prove a negative.

As far as UN resolutions go, read my current sig line.

You want accountability from the leaders in Iraq? How about accountability from the leaders of the US?

Bush lied about WMD in Iraq.
Bush lied about connections between Saddam and 9/11.
Bush lied about the danger of Iraq toward the US.
Bush lied and hundreds of American servicemen and women DIED BECAUSE OF IT.
You want accountability?
So do I.

[G_j]

8. please visit

www.bringthemhomenow.org

Write him a letter if you wish.
Stan is a highly informed person who has been personally caught in the web of lies, he knows well what he's talkng about.

[G_j]

9. something else to think about, accountability according to Nuremberg

Statement by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson
Chief U.S. Prosecutor
at the Nuremberg Tribunals

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/jack02.htm

on War Trials Agreement;

There are some things I would like to say, particularly to the American people, about the agreement we have just signed.
For the first time, four of the most powerful nations have agreed not only upon the principles of liability for war crimes of persecution, but also upon the principle of individual responsibility for the crime of attacking the international peace.

Repeatedly, nations have united in abstract declarations that the launching of aggressive war is illegal. They have condemned it by treaty. But now we have the concrete application of these abstractions in a way which ought to make clear to the world that those who lead their nations into aggressive war face individual accountability for such acts.

<snip>
"We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which
their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the
war, but that they started it. And we must not allow
ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war,
for our position is that no grievances or policies will
justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced
and condemned as an instrument of policy."
<snip>


http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/jack02.htm

[Skittles]

5. WELL, NBI, I have to go to sleep now

I must add that I am a veteran too and it SICKENS me that any REAL VETERAN can support an illegal invasion by an unelected AWOL piece of GARBAGE. Our soldiers don't stand a CHANCE if people like you can be so easily FOOLED.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.