http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/12/1135/As In Vietnam, Casualties Rise In Iraq While U.S. Dithers
The Wall Is A Reminder That It’s Costly to Keep Troops In Combat While We Hope Another Idea Comes Up.
by David Sarasohn
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And every day in Baghdad, and on a wall in Washington, we see the costs of a policy of just keeping U.S. servicemen in combat while we hope another idea comes up.
“What do you want us to accomplish over here? We aren’t hearing any end state. We aren’t hearing it from the president, from the defense secretary,” Sgt. 1st Class Michael Eaglin, on a base in Baghdad, recently told Ann Scott Tyson of the Washington Post. “We’re working hard, and the politicians are arguing.”
Spec. Adam Hamilton added, “It’s almost like the Vietnam War. We don’t know where we’re going.”
Washington doesn’t know where we’re going in Iraq, either — except that we’ll keep going there until at least September.
The original destination — a democratic, united, secular Iraq, a beacon for change throughout the Middle East — vanished from the itinerary a long time ago. Now we’re just looking for a place to get off.
“No one believes there’s a victory at the end of the tunnel,” National Public Radio senior foreign editor Loren Jenkins, who visits Iraq several times a year, recently told the American Journalism Review. “It’s how long you hold on and pretend.”
And how many casualties pile up while you do it.
And for the next 40 years.