Psyche, Science, and Society

Letters and calls from GIs in Iraq

November 26th, 2006

From Traveling Soldier and GI Special [via Uruknet], here are three reports from the US military in Iraq:

1. Military Mom gets Call From Baghdad:

My son called this morning, he’s ok. But we had a really good conversation.

A lot of it was about the increase in activity there. But he’s starting to defy the officers. He refused to wear his flame suit on patrol this morning because he said, “a lot good it does, we just lost 4 guys and they were wearing them, we just have them because of war profiteering. The government gives money to the companies who make this shit and say ‘oh, let’s give it to the soldiers!’”

Then we started talking about movies, and he refuses to watch anything related to 9/11. He said, “Ma, did you watch that WTC movie yet? We have it here and I won’t watch that stuff because it just gets everybody pissed off again and I am tired of hearing that we should kill more people because of 9/11.” He then said, “Ma, by the year 2050 we will still be killing in the name of 9/11!!” “Probably when I die and go to heaven people will still be saying, let’s kill because of 9/11!” “Enough with killing in the name of 9/11!” I tell all my friends here that we should just move on and get over it. We aren’t proving anything.”

I almost fell out of bed. But he was able to talk freely because he was told to stay back from patrol because he wouldn’t wear his flame suit. He said “I lost it.” They said “how the hell did you loose it?” He said it disappeared! Then he said to me, “so what are they going to do to me? Make me go to Iraq?” “I’m not taking part in any war profiteering. I was reading all about it in Newsweek last issue we got here.” “That’s some shit!”

Anyway, we talked about 45 minutes while his company was on patrol, and then they returned so he got off the phone waiting to be yelled at. He said, “so they yell at me, who cares.”

- A Military Mom

2. Vietnam vet in Balad:

From: SSG XX, Iraq

To: GI Special

Sent: November 17, 2006

Subject: In Iraq

I am a Viet Nam vet who spent his 55TH birthday in Ramadi and will be spending my 56TH in Balad in a week. I feel I have a unique slant on this “war”.

When people say “It’s just like Viet Nam”, I have to chuckle.

Apart from the fact that the politicians have involved the military in a conflict that is micro-managed to the point of being un-winable, it is nothing like Viet Nam.

I am looking at it from the point of the everyday soldier and his daily life.

It seems that they are so intent on making it so much like “Home”, what with the Burger King, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and Subway. The cable TV and inter-net service are just ways to desensitize to what is actually happening here.

Everyone here and in the states have their knickers in a knot over a casualty count of less than 1000 a year, but you hear nothing of 6000+ 14 to 19 year olds who die in motor vehicle accidents every year. I may be jaded, but I am suspicious of the true concern over “loss of our valued youth” that comes out of the mouths on both sides of the issue.

The true crime here is what we have done to the people of Iraq. Not that I think that Saddam was great for them by any means.

But from what I have seen over the last year is we could not have fucked it up any worse than we have if we had tried.

What I fear the most is the way the American public is willing to give up so many Civil Liberties for such a cheap price.

I mean a few thousand lives, and a false sense of security is a shameful price to surrender Habeas Corpus.

The Founding Fathers are turning over in their graves.

I guess I’ll get off my soap box now. I hope that our country will survive this mess in spite of ourselves.

Thanks for the chance to vent.

SSG XX

Balad, Iraq

3. “A solid number, perhaps a majority, of the ordinary soldiers believed this war was bullshit”:

I was at FOB Summerall, the former Iraqi Air Force base “K2,” near Baiji.

My unit was tasked with base defense, and I [xxxx] the guys and gals in the towers for most of our 9-10 months there.

I was able, therefore, to talk with many of the troops, both active and Guard, at length over the months.

Most knew my politics; as the days wore on, more and more of the enlisteds, E-5 & below, spoke with me about their growing misgivings about the war.

Some were openly angry and contemptuous of the officers, generals, and civilian leadership that sent us there.

A few (including one “good-ol’-boy from Oklahoma, an active duty sergeant with 18 years in) commented on how “if I lived here, I’d want to kill us, too.”

Of course, the leadership, especially the officers, all spouted the party line, but it was obvious to me that a solid number, perhaps even a majority, of the ordinary soldiers believed this war was bullshit.

The internet access we had at Summerall was not closely supervised.

We were warned against looking at porn, or passing on information that might be picked up by “the enemy,” (I suppose the insurgents were intercepting our satellite signals), but I visited GI Special at least weekly, as well as other sites that better explained what I knew to be going on around me.

I didn’t have the ability to print anything, so mostly I just shared stories I read with other soldiers in the contexts of our talks.

The Vietnam war ended when the US military ceased to follow orders. It took the military a decade to “rebuild”. Perhaps that process of decay is starting again and will lead to withdrawal from Iraq. If only it had happened earlier, before Iraq had so totally descended into civil war.

In any case, antiwar forces should resist the politician’s temptation to “rebuild” the military once again. The world would be a safer place without a superpower to dominate it.

Entry Filed under: Iraq, Middle East, Social Issues, War and Peace