Wash. Post: Some soldiers question how and why war is being waged

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6214573/

Now, two months into a seven-month combat tour in Iraq, Perez said he sees little connection between the events of Sept. 11 and the war he is fighting. Instead, he said, he is increasingly disillusioned by a conflict whose origins remain unclear and frustrated by the timidity of U.S. forces against a mostly faceless enemy.

"Sometimes I see no reason why we're here," Perez said. "First of all, you cannot engage as many times as we want to. Second of all, we're looking for an enemy that's not there. The only way to do it is go house to house until we get out of here."

Perez is hardly alone. In a dozen interviews, Marines from a platoon known as the "81s" expressed in blunt terms their frustrations with the way the war is being conducted and, in some cases, doubts about why it is being waged. The platoon, named for the size in millimeters of its mortar rounds, is part of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment based in Iskandariyah, 30 miles southwest of Baghdad.

"I feel we're going to be here for years and years and years," said Lance Cpl. Edward Elston, 22, of Hackettstown, N.J. "I don't think anything is going to get better; I think it's going to get a lot worse. It's going to be like a Palestinian-type deal. We're going to stop being a policing presence and then start being an occupying presence. ... We're always going to be here. We're never going to leave."

[BOSSHOG]

1. Leadership 101

Always listen to those who do the tasks; those on the ground floor; those on the hangar decks; those on the battlefield. Its all about the power of perspective. And the dems were right in passing out rose colored glasses at the debate. Maybe bush should send them to the troops so they would see things the way he does; and stop whining.

[nostamj]

2. "We're always going to be here. We're never going to leave."

as rocknation posted stated this morning in another thread:

There's no exit strategy because they have no intention of exiting. They're not building 14 bases just for practice.

sad, 22 years old and he doesn't see a future of anything other than continued pointless bloodshed...

[Out the Parasites]

3. That is so sad really -

I thought this part was very enlightening:

"We feel they care more about Iraqi civilians than they do American soldiers," he said.

Asked if he was concerned that the Marines would be punished for speaking out, Autin responded: "We don't give a crap. What are they going to do, send us to Iraq?"

[AG78]

4. Funny

They're in the military. Whay does that mean? You go where the empire wants you to go. If it wants you to go there to die, you die. If it wants you to go there to kill, you kill. If it wants you to go there to occupy, you occupy.

And the other post is correct. We didn't go into Iraq to leave. Have we ever left a country? Maybe 50 years later, like in Korea. But even that exit plan is only over 10 years. The same with Germany.

We can't leave. We're an empire, and geopolitics dictates that we have to be in the Caucasus, MidEast, Central Asia part of the world. If our empire isn't there, someone else's empire will be. Basically human history boiled down to one sentence.

[Ezlivin]

5. Why aren't these soldiers supporting our troops?

This is giving aid and comfort to the enemy!

How dare them!

Next thing you know, they'll want body armor or training.

[Randi_Listener]

6. Overdeployed

It's time to start rotating these guy out of there. They are suffering and need regular rotation back to the US.

[Karenina]

7. Rotation, indeed...

Take them HOME. NOW!

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

8. This will be worse than the "Nam Flashback" syndrome...

...soldiers traumatized by their Viet Nam experience? There's a big difference in Iraq. During the Viet Nam war,

1). There was no "Internet"
2). There was "network news," NOT "multiple 24-hour cable news channels"
3). There were no "Bloggers" (see #1 above)
4). People did not communicate via e-mail (see #1 above)
5). People could not post incriminating political evidence on their web sites (see #1 above)
6). Presidencies were, by and large, EXACTLY as Bush likes them: SECRET.

So, you have George W. Bush, PERSONAL messenger of GOD ALMIGHTY, doing God's work as his appointed messenger on earth, while a HUGE portion of the civilized world is calling Bush the devil incarnate, the AntiChrist, and speaking in similar terms of those who "do his bidding." And ALL OF THIS is getting back to the soldiers on the ground. Bush says that criticism of the war "demoralizes our troops."

WRONG.

Having George W. Bush as our president is what demoralizes our troops.

Same thing in Viet Nam. These soldiers were doing their duty. They were told that they were defending their country, doing their patriotic duty, and they DID it. The difference between them and the men and women currently fighting in Iraq is the PRESIDENCY that got us there, the NEWS MEDIA that's covering it, the FREQUENCY of the coverage, the DEPTH and BIAS of what's being reported, and statements (once again, from our fearless leader) about it being "a long war" and how we "will not quit until we're done." As long as Bush is president, NO ONE is going home, unless it's in a body bag.

The only ADVANTAGE, if you can call it one, is that many learned a lesson from the treatment of returning U.S. troops during the Viet Nam war. There were no "hero's welcomes." These folks were, more often than not, simply SCREWED. At least we've gotten to the point where we can see MORE of the equation. That doesn't mean that 100% of Abu Ghraib should land on Rumsfeld's shoulders. But it also means that Lynndie England and the rest, REGARDLESS of what they did, weren't the "masterminds" who made it happen.

I think this is really what lies at the heart of Kerry's drive to take on this job. We need the kind of leadership that will NEVER allow this to happen again. We need a vice president who isn't lining his bank account with the spilled blood of innocent American men and women. We need a president who understands that relationships involve more than one person, and they take turns speaking AND listening. We need people who are in charge of sending our soldiers to war who HAVE BEEN TO WAR and UNDERSTAND IT. And if they haven't, they at least can look back at Cheney and the chickenhawks and see the devastation.

I can't even imagine the hundreds of thousands of traumas that are going to have to be dealt with in the generations to come as the result of George W. Jesus Christ Himself Bush.

[knowbody0]

9. amazing

old bad war new bad war
im thinkin it would be really kool if we could focus on evolving

[Randi_Listener]

12. Back to the real world

It's time to rotate them out of the Middle East and deploy fresh troops to replace them. They cannot remain combat effective for 18 or more months.

[Karenina]

14. Will YOU be joining

those "fresh troops" in your "real" world? :shrug:

[Kanary]

10. What really pisses me off.... each generation learns this same lesson!

Generation after generation, we get suckered into the same mess, yet we don't seem to be able to learn enough to pass it on to the next generation.

Why is that?

Until we learn the lesson deeply enough, and teach the succeeding generations, we'll keep repeating and repeating until we destroy the planet.

Kanary, who knows the children of the current crop of cannon fodder will be gung-ho about whatever war is declared in their generation

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. Echoes of another lost war.

Deja vu all over again. "Who wants to be the last man to die.."

For nothing but the ambitions of politicians and the bottom lines of corporate America.

[venus]

13. Kerry was a catalyst for ending the Vietnam war

Now he's a catalyst for ending the Iraq war. What an irony. Of course the Repugs can turn around and say he demoralized the troops in Vietnam, now look, he's doing the same thing with our soldiers in Iraq. I'm particularly troubled by the soldiers comments about the military leaders caring more for Iraqi civilians the our soldiers. Seems to me he should be more sensitive to the plight of the Iraqis since he's questioning our presence there. They must be just plain mad and totally fed up.