Live To Tell

While the execrable AWOL President struts around in a flight suit a few yards off the coast of San Diego, and makes a two-hour made-for-tee-vee plastic-turkey-layover in Baghdad airport; those that have actually walked his talk are presenting some of the most compelling eviscerations of the chicken-hawks' policies.

A trio of recent examples make must-reading for those interested in learning what it's really like to be one of the few, the proud.

Vietnam Vet Bruce Patterson, writing for the indispensible Anderson Valley Advertiser, has produced perhaps the finest piece to-date regarding the Bush Administration's Iraq adventures. Patterson explains in excruciating detail the life of the soldier on the ground in hostile territory, and, more heartbreakingly, the public indifference awaiting those veterans returning home with permanent physical and emotional scars.

Thirty-year Veteran (and whose son is currently on duty in Iraq) Stan Goff, whose despatches to Counterpunch have placed him among the very top ranks of its vaunted stable of writers, offers up a truly harrowing speculative analysis (based on his experiences in the military) of Jessica Lynch's experiences before, during, and after the fateful events which made her famous.

Filmmaker Michael Moore has reprinted letters to him from troops in Iraq, which spare no enmity in their scathing denunciation of the fat-assed politicians who've gotten them into this predicament.

Wanna "support the troops"? Do everything in your power to get them the fuck home, now, then make sure they're not abandoned upon their return.

And then, in the words of another Vietnam Vet, "We as a nation must stop thinking of ourselves as exceptional and worthy of special privileges above other nations and peoples. We must stop glorifying war. We must stop praising institutional murder."

Posted by Eddie Tews at December 23, 2003 03:28 PM