"The Americans and Their Dust"

On my weekly trek over to Watching America I came across this picture, appended to this opinion article in Iraq's al-Rafidayn. The picture is a marvelous display of what wonders the US has wrought in Baghdad and all of Iraq. The massive dust storm is a fitting introduction to the article, marked as it is by understandable bitterness.

We are in the prime years of our servitude to the U.S and their occupation and yet we “esteemed” citizens have received nothing from our American masters but ruin and fear … and dust! This dust, a hallmark of our bond to our beloved America, is one of the more prominent legacies of American policy in the region.

It began with the American caravans, caravans of solders and of doom that brought the black Baath regime to Iraq and tyranny to the region. It dried up the marshes and killed the people and eradicated the trees- pustules of a war grew throughout the land and American boots churned the ground and wrought destruction. Then came the violence, liberating the people from their lives, compounding the dryness of the land and the dustiness of the air.

This dust, which has sapped us of natural life for generations, reminds us what it is that the American administration truly deserves, culturally, legally, and according to the laws of the United States itself: a trial before the courts for its crimes against society!

The lament reminds us that the US was involved in Iraq long before 2003, just not so blatantly as it was after this second invasion. The devastation brought by the second invasion has quite literally ruined the earth: the fertility has been pounded out of it by bombs, tank treads, and boots.

The author of the article calls for a trial which would result in the US having to fix what it has broken in Iraq. He wants the US to bring rain, but also to bring clinics which will offer treatment for the respiratory illnesses brought on by the dust.

And then he wants US and its soldiers and tanks to leave. It isn't hard to understand those feelings. Not hard at all.

Dying in Vain

It was inevitable that the ex-Darth would bark over from the dark side about letting go his dream war. The exit from Iraq which should have taken place long years ago, and which has wasted lives and our economy, just hurts him so much.

Naturally,the ex non-warrior loves his war, and speaks out against letting it go to waste.

A milestone is being reached today in Iraq. U.S. troops are pulling out of 15 Iraqi cities. It is the first phase of an overall departure plan that has American soldiers out (for the most part) of the country by the end of 2011.

The Washington Times radio show "America's Morning News" spoke with Dick Cheney, one of the architects of America's involvement in Iraq,

"What he says concerns me: That there is still a continuing problem. One might speculate that insurgents are waiting as soon as they get an opportunity to launch more attacks," said Cheney. "I hope the Iraqis can deal with it. At some point they have to stand on their own, but I would not want to see the U.S. waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point."

Waste is the very essence of his war, but of course ex-Darth can't acknowledge that all the lives and the packets of money are his waste. If he had ever actually been involved personally in war, he might have had a better sense of the attitude of soldiers. They are fighting to save lives, not destroy them. In fact, in this assymetrical warfare, they were fighting to save Iraqi lives as well.

Only a total inability to revere humanity and/or life could lead to the attitude that more lives should be thrown into a worthless fray for avoidance of his own regret. One of the most completely evil thugs ever to rise to power in the country is well represented in his statements today, that 'waste' is involved in pulling out to avoid more loss of life.

Only war profiteers like Halliburton gained by this war. For a real indication of ex-Darth's loyalties, the formula is what was true of his former maladministration; "Follow the money".

Failing Stress Tests In Iraq

While the new administration is struggling to find a way to bring our economy back from disaster, a lot of stress outside that fiscal area is demanding attention. For the years of right wing wars, most of us were outside the field of operation. Those who emerged into their earning years, required to find a way to support themselves, the war was something many chose as a career. In order to make that choice, they had to leave youth behind and enter a military commitment.

During the sixties, when I was in that stage of life, Vietnam and the draft brought my generation an awareness of the rift between killing as a craft and our essential value system. The generation going to war then included all levels of our countrymen, and we encountered the war as an atrocity that violated our humanity and demanded we reject a whole area of the world. That didn't work out, and, to simplify, the unjustifiable war ended. We felt a part of our society, and a large part of the troops did, as well.

The generation that has been forced in great part by economic pressures to go into an unjustifiable war is not subject to draft, and largely consists of the less fortunate, the less affluent, and the less educated. Military authorities lately have begun to complain about the lowered standards that have occurred. The troops have increasingly been from the disaffected who haven't benefitted from the kind of care we of the sixties had. They were from the generation that had had the social contract violated, benefits decimated, made the fodder for corporate welfare beneficiaries who spread their Eat the Poor ethic.

What must it have been like to be a cog in that wheel? The stress levels that are occurring, as soldiers were recycled like our trash to keep up a war that no one could feel good about, have subjected ever increasing numbers to destructive mental stress. Suicide rates have soared, and increased scrutiny has led to revelations about the neglect of mental health by our military overseers.

A certain farmboy from nearby Sherman, TX, has made a tragic point; mental stress kills not just the victim, but those who are in the victims immediate circle if pushed too far.

A 2008 Army study established that the rate of soldiers reporting serious mental health problems increases with each deployment. (Russell was on his third.) By the third go-around, 27 percent of soldiers show significant signs of stress. National Guard and Reserve troops are suffering the worst, another report found.
Army suicides in 2009

According to Pentagon figures, 2008 suicides among soldiers reached 140, the most since the Army began keeping records in 1980 – surpassing even the civilian suicide rate. This grim finding, as well as mounting evidence that returning troops struggle with rising rates of depression, drug and alcohol dependency and related problems, prompted Gen. George Casey Jr., Army chief of staff, to announce this spring a new training program on combat-related stress.
(snip)
On Tuesday, the Army announced a probe into where its mental health care for soldiers is coming up short. This investigation must be given top priority – Salon.com reports that the military's 2009 suicide rate is on track to shatter last year's record – and must include listening to spouses and other family members.

Not all casualties of war are physical.

Not all casualties of war are individual, either. Our whole society has been tortured by the mindset that puts its ideology above the law, and above standards the world has arrived at over centuries of armed conflict. It's a mindset that was developed without any education in actual combat, or in resolving conflict.

The mindset that subjected this country to war has been that we are tough, and we are better able to judge for other countries what is best for them than they are, themselves. Coming into the field of the war in Iraq has been desperately disquieting to that ignorant attitude, but that wrong attitude has continued to be pushed on the soldiers we send into war.

Direct confrontation with wrong orientation has caused our troops the kind of suffering that will take them, with guidance from those schooled in mental anguish, a long time to bring into functioning systems of living.

We need to take broad control of the military industrial complex and the agonies it brings about for all of us. The psychology of combatting world difficulties with violence needs to end. It's time to start that action for mental health, and world peace, at once.

******

Thanks, Diane, for your continuing concern for the troops under the strain of unjustifiable war, badly conducted.

Lamentation

One of the hallmarks of the Iraq War has been the nearly complete management of the news surrounding it by the Pentagon. It started with the "embedding" of journalists with the troops and has continued with the careful isolation of journalists from areas of activity. However, although the media are forbidden to take pictures of the flag-draped coffins coming home from Iraq, we at least know how many American soldiers have been killed in combat.

What we don't know is how many Iraqis have been killed since the start of the war, which I find stunning. So do the Iraqis. Fatih Abdulsalam, in an editorial published July 18 in Iraq's Azzaman, laments that the rest of the world doesn't care about such a grisly tally.

Five years ago, international media weighed Iraqi blood drop by drop. Every drop that was shed was newsworthy and occupied their highlights.

That was with the start of the U.S. invasion of 2003.

But as the invasion which the occupiers – the U.S. and the U.K. – sold to us as ‘liberation’ turned into one of the most devastating and destructive military campaigns in man’s history, Iraqi blood started flowing in buckles, then barrels, then streams and then rivers.

It was too much for the media to accommodate. It became commonplace and in media terms no longer newsworthy despite the lakes and oceans that began forming as the streams and rivers started discharging their blood.

Iraqi deaths are no longer important. Their numbers attract no more attention. If the deaths are too many, then a subtitle will do the job.

Iraqis are being killed, injured and maimed in droves on a daily basis. But still that is not enough reason for the media to care. ...

Even the U.S., the ‘beacon’ of democracy and human rights, says it keeps no records of Iraqis it kills. How cheap!

How cheap indeed.

How the news of this war has been shaped has long been evident, if only by the absence of any news at all for extended periods of time. About the only area to get any consistent coverage has been the itineraries of the VIPs visiting the Bagdhad Green Zone for photo-ops. It's clear that the Pentagon wasn't going to make the same "mistake" it made during the Viet Nam War by letting the US public become too aware of the daily carnage wrought because we went to war with a country that was no threat to us.

But that we have absolutely no information available about how many Iraqis are dead or maimed or orphaned by this misbegotten war shocks my conscience. It's as if my government and its press is telling me that it doesn't matter, they're only Iraqis.

I am ashamed.

Hitting Too Close To Home

Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is still stalling on the "security agreement" the White House is pushing. The agreement will result in American forces' remaining indefinitely in Iraq and will extend total immunity to those forces and to those in support positions. Now Mr. al-Maliki has another reason to stand back from the agreement, according to this op-ed piece in Iraq's Kitabat.

At dawn on Friday, a force of the American occupation of approximately sixty fighters with four large Apache helicopters attacked the village of Jnajah in the rural province of Karbala.

After the attack, Aqeel Khaz’al, one of the members of the Dawa Party and who serves as a governor of Karbala and who is connected to the United States operations, condemned the U.S. operation, which he described as a breach of the security agreement to hand over the security operations to the Iraqis in Karbala, and that the American criminals must be prosecuted by the Iraqi justice system. ...

After further investigations, it was confirmed that the American attack was aimed at a rural region inhabited by the tribe of Malik, from the Euphrates region and not the south, and that one of the attack’s victims, Ali abd al-Hussein al-Maliki, was directly related to Nouri al-Maliki.

In other words, the Iraqi Prime Minister was awakened and realized that America does not respect anyone in Iraq, including the cousins of Beni Malik in Karbala, even though he always condoned the crimes of the American forces throughout the years of his control, including the crimes of the American occupation in Sadr City in which the American occupation killed more than one thousand Iraqi martyrs and devastated the city, all without comments from the leaders in the Green Zone. And let’s not forget about the crimes in Sahat al-Nosour (Western Baghdad), and Hayaniya Square and Tanouma in Basra. [Emphasis added]

That's right. The US attack on Karbala, the one the Iraqis say killed 20 civilians, resulted in the death of a member of the Prime Minister's own family. Under the proposed agreement, that state of affairs will continue, a fact that the author of the article, Muhamed Haji Hassan, understandably is appalled by.

...You have seen that they kill and arrest without respect for Iraqi Sovereignty or the presence of the governor of Karbala. And what they did is a message to everyone that they will continue their approach after the agreement on security:

-Killing Iraqis without fear of Iraqi justice

-Detaining Iraqis in American prisons in Iraq

-Unilateral attacks on Iraqi cities without notifying the Iraqi government

-Unimpeded entry and exit of Iraqi cities where no one has a right to stop them.

-Free movement of any military equipment across the Iraqi border, including nuclear wastes which may be buried in Iraqi soil.

What President Bush is demanding is unlimited license for an unending occupation, one that could, as Sen. McCain has suggested with some unseemly glee, last a hundred years. It's unlikely that Iraqis will look kindly upon a Prime Minister who caves in to such a demand.

197 days.

The Hidden Casualties

We hit another milestone this weekend: the number of dead US soldiers in Iraq reached 4,000. That's horrible, but just as horrible is the number of US casualties, those who were badly injured fighting in that illegal and misbegotten war. While the number varies, depending on what the Pentagon feels like telling us on any given day, one number which gets bandied about is 30,000. That means 30,000 families now have to cope with an often brain-injured loved one, and without much help from the government.

There is a heartbreaking story in today's Boston Globe that details just what one wife is having to go through. It was staggering, especially since she pretty much is going it alone. I won't recite the facts of that particular story (although I do urge you to go read the article, because it's stunning), but I will recite some of the facts surrounding the help our wounded and their families get once they come home.

More than 30,000 troops have been wounded in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the care they receive has been a subject of national scrutiny. But little attention has been paid to their families, many of whom now have to live with maimed or traumatized veterans. Injured veterans' families and advocates say the support that exists for such families is insufficient.

"It's still under the radar," said Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq war veteran and director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a private advocacy organization. "This country is still getting its head around the scope of the difficulties facing veterans themselves."

Recognizing that family members of injured veterans need extra help, the federal Department of Veterans Affairs in December announced a $4.7 million package of services for the families of injured veterans that includes help with transportation, respite care, and emotional support. Congress this January expanded the Family and Medical Leave Act to stipulate that employers must allow caretakers to take off up to 26 weeks instead of 12 to care for severely injured service members.

But that is not enough, said Rieckhoff and other advocates. The injured veterans' relatives also need help navigating the bureaucracy of the benefits system; extra money to compensate for jobs they have given up in order to take care of their loved ones; counseling; help with child care and even with such basic things as doing the laundry and getting groceries.

$4.7 million: well, big whoop! That works out to about $155 per family. That's going to go along way with gasoline now costing $3.50 a gallon in many states and a 12 ounce tin of coffee costing just under $5. Yup, that'll pay the rent in a family trying to live on Social Security and a military disability pension because the other worker in the family has had to quit his or her job to take care of the injured warrior.

And I can just hear Vice President Cheney's response to this kind of news:

"So?"

302 days.