“Slandering” Troops

A Marine major writes:

As a Marine reservist who was mobilized last year and has returned, I find your cartoon about our current troops committing torture very saddening.  I wish you could spend some time in Iraq with the troops to see first hand how our troops interact with the Iraqi people.  

Thank you for your service, but I can’t help noticing the way that you gloss over the proven, photographed, widely documented acts of systematic torture committed by many US troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba and elsewhere. The fact is, many soldiers who may not condone such behavior become tarnished by it because their sense of loyalty and embarrassment prevents them from speaking out against it. The truth is, it’s more the duty of honorable US soldiers to condemn torture by Americans than it is mine or anyone else’s–but they’re not doing it.

Our troops today are patient, kind and disciplined.  To characterize them as sadist only aids the enemy’s propaganda efforts. 

 
It would be more accurate to say that some are patient, kind and disciplined. Others–many others–clearly are anything but. If you watch the documentary “Gunner Palace,” various reports from embedded reporters on CNN and elsewhere, or if you have personally witnessed the behavior of US troops in the battlefield (as I did in Afghanistan), you can’t help but be stricken by the horrific, rude, unprofessional and abusive behavior of many (not a few bad apples, but many) American soldiers acting as our representatives and ambassadors to the rest of the world. Breaking into people’s homes, particularly in the Middle East where such an act is considered a personal transgression of the highest order, is simply unaccptable. Placing bags over men’s heads, holding down their heads with one’s foot, using plastic handcuffs–these are all acts of abuse that inspire hatred and contempt against US forces and, by extension, the United States. And rounding up people for indefinite detention, without being charged, is simply inexcusable, and puts on a similar moral footing with our worst enemies of the past. Even Nazi Germany pretended to adhere to the Geneva Conventions related to the treatment of POWs, but we do not in Afghanistan, Gitmo, or other US concentration camps.
The best way to avoid being characterized as sadistic by enemy propaganda is to stop practicing sadism.

I wish people would stop politicizing the war on the left or right.  I wish that people would realize for the G.I. in the field is a simple matter of us completing our mission and establishing a democratic Iraq or letting the terrorist win and vindicating their strategy of murdering innocents to achieve political gain.  (If the terrorist win, terrorism will only grow exponentially.)

The war was politicized from the start because it was launched by the right, without the support of the left but rather over its loud objections. The right’s unwillingness to build consensus, or if such a thing was impossible to give up the enterprise entirely, is responsible for our current divisiveness. Characterizing Iraqi resistance fighters as “terrorists” when the Pentagon itself estimates that 90 percent of them are native nationalist Iraqis is not helpful or useful. What is sad here is that the G.I. in the field, as you put it, has been assigned an impossible task in an unwinnable war using insufficient force strength and equipment. A democratic Iraq can never emerge from the occupation. Hell, right now there isn’t an Iraq at all, but rather a de facto independent Iraqi Kurdistan and a rump Iraq minus Kurdistan. The various political and ethnic factions will fight their civil war until long after we’ve withdrawn. That became inevitable when we removed Saddam Hussein, the tyrant of a nation without any viable political rivals. As for murdering innocents, well, the United States can hardly claim that it doesn’t do that in Afghanistan and Iraq. Oh, right–those are “accidents.” Well, that’s what the insurgents say too.

I am personally very close to a Baghdad family who lost their father to Saddam’s reign of terror.  The former regime and the Baathist insurgents tortured, killed and oppressed almost the entire population including children.  More than 400,000 dead mass graves should speak for themselves.   I was in Bosnia twice and Iraq’s tyranny was much worse.

There’s no need to exagerrate Saddam’s crimes. He was a barbarous dictator. But nothing close to 400,000 graves have ever been unearthed, and the gassing of the Kurds is a far more complicated affair than Bush would have us believe. Let’s just say that no one misses Saddam, except perhaps Iraqis who long for regular electricity.

My wife is a Navy nurse currently on her way to Al-Anbar province.  We also have a two year old daughter.  I politely request that you honor our family’s personal sacrifice by not charactering us in this way.  We wear the uniform and you have slandered us.  It is very frustrating to see propaganda like this coming from your fellow countrymen when you are putting your life on the line for people seeking to be free of fear and terror.
I recommend you read Natan Shransky’s book “The Case for Democracy” to get a perspective on the Middle East.  I have spent significant time there and also have a M.S. in Int’l Relations with a Middle Eastern focus.

Suffice it to say, I’ve spent enough time in the Middle East to have my own perspective about US relations with same. And I’ve also read enough propaganda books by wide-eyed neo-conservatives who think we should rebuild the British Empire.

I know if is just a cartoon, but it is filled with ignorance and slanders those who are making great sacrifices for their country and freedom.  Criticize political leaders all you want, but don’t please do not slander the troops.

It’s not slander if it’s true. If we don’t want it to be true, we need to change our troops’ behavior.