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There Are No American Heroes in Iraq
December 5, 2006

The Republican administration, its self-proclaimed spokesmoron Rush Limbaugh, and other supporters of the war in Iraq have adopted a shameful and dishonorable tactic to counter critics of the war.

Their most popular response to criticism of continued U.S. involvement in Iraq has become a well-rehearsed accusation that critics undermine our heroes on the battlefield. That statement is divisive, idiotic and absolutely FALSE. It infers an expectation that we should shut our mouths and look the other way while more and more American soldiers die for nothing.

War critics concerned about continued American deaths in Iraq do NOT undermine American soldiers in Iraq or anywhere else in the world. I use the word “soldiers,” not “heroes,” because that is what we have in Iraq, soldiers.

These are America’s sons and daughters involuntarily caught up in Bush’s unexplained vendetta against an ousted Sunni regime. To be sure, there are isolated individual acts of heroism in Iraq, but the average soldier is not a “hero.” If every soldier was a hero, every soldier returning from Iraq would be wearing the Medal of Honor. War supporters call our soldiers heroes for the sake of argument, but do not treat them as such.

Our soldiers are average, hard-working men and women paid to do a job that can sometimes cost them their lives. Most of them follow orders because they incurred a voluntary contractual military obligation, and their personal integrity keeps them marching in that direction. Others follow orders merely because failure to follow orders has dire consequences.

Many military officers perform their duties in frustrated silence because the military justice system will hold them to account if they openly criticize high level officials. I don’t make this up. The Punitive Articles section of the Uniform Code of Military Justice states:

Article 88, Contempt Toward Officials
Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

If you’ve ever wondered why more military officers don’t criticize the war in Iraq, you just learned the reason.

There is no longer a job to do in Iraq. The unkempt little girl with an expectant smile reaching out for a candy-bar yesterday was blown to pieces today by an improvised explosive device. The older teenage girl who smiled at an American soldier yesterday was shot by her family today because they suspect she consorted with Americans. The Iraqi policeman on the street who rendered the mock salute to a passing American convoy was shot by a Shi’ite terror squad last night because he was a Sunni. Tonight his brother or father will seek revenge in the same way.

And in America, yet another sad, confused and tearful little boy or girl will ask their mother, “Mommy, why is daddy dead?” And mommy won’t have an answer. Because nobody has an answer.

Our government debates endlessly (and appears willing to continue the debate for years) over Iraq’s unsolvable problems while the American soldier body count continues to rise.

The last time our government behaved in this manner, 58,000 American soldiers were dead and 350,000 were wounded before it ended. Looking back, every one of those American lives sacrificed in Viet Nam ended up having been for nothing. I don’t remember anybody referring to them as heroes.

We will always honor our fighting and dying soldiers. That is our desire, our duty and our only option. We can however, make a distinction between our soldiers and the people who send them out to die without good reason. George W. Bush, Donald H. Rumsfeld and Colin L. Powell; I leave you a quote from your own Uniform Code of Military Justice:

Article 107, False Statements
Any person subject to this chapter who, with intent to deceive, signs any false record, return, regulation, order, or other official document, knowing it to be false, or makes any other false official statement knowing it to be false, shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

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