An Open Letter to the Troops: You’re Not Defending Our Freedoms!

[dvinman]

Dear Troops:

On Memorial Day — some people asserted, once again, that you are “defending our freedoms” overseas.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Those people are just repeating tired old mantras. The reality is that you are not defending our freedoms with your actions overseas. In fact, it is the exact opposite. Your actions overseas are placing our freedoms here at home in ever-greater jeopardy.

Consider your occupation of Iraq, a country that, as you know, never attacked the United States, making it the defender in the war and the United States the aggressor. Think about that: Every single person that the troops have killed, maimed, or tortured in Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

Yet, the countless victims of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have friends and relatives, many of whom have become filled with anger and rage and who now would stop at nothing to retaliate with terrorist attacks against Americans.

Pray tell: How does that constitute defending our freedoms?

It was no different prior to 9/11. At the end of the Persian Gulf War, the troops intentionally destroyed Iraq’s water and sewage facilities after a Pentagon study showed that this would help spread infectious illnesses among the Iraqi people.

It worked. For 11 years after that, the troops enforced the cruel and brutal sanctions on Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. (See “America’s Peacetime Crimes against Iraq” by Anthony Gregory.) You’ll recall U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it.”

By “it” she meant the attempted ouster of Saddam Hussein from power. You will recall that he was a dictator who was the U.S. government’s ally and partner during the 1980s, when the United States was furnishing him with those infamous WMDs that U.S. officials later used to excite the American people into supporting your invasion of Iraq.

The truth is that 9/11 furnished U.S. officials with the excuse to do what their sanctions (and the deaths of all those Iraqi children) had failed to accomplish: ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein and replacing him with a U.S-approved regime.

That’s what your post-9/11 invasion of Iraq was all about — to achieve the regime change that the pre-9/11 deadly sanctions that killed all those children had failed to achieve.

No, not mushroom clouds, not freedom, not democracy, and certainly not defending our freedoms here at home. Just plain old regime change.

In the process, all that you — the troops — have done with your invasion and occupation of Iraq is produce even more enmity toward the United States by people in the Middle East, especially those Iraqis who have lost loved ones or friends in the process or simply watched their country be destroyed.

In principle, it’s no different with Afghanistan. I’d estimate that 99 percent of the people the troops have killed, maimed, or tortured in that country had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.

Why did you invade Afghanistan or, more precisely, why did President Bush order you to do so?

No, not because the Taliban participated in the 9/11 attacks and, no, not because the Taliban were even aware that the attacks were going to take place

President Bush ordered the troops to invade Afghanistan — and, of course, kill Afghan citizens in the process — because the Afghan government – the Taliban — refused to comply with his unconditional extradition demand. You will recall that the Taliban offered to turn bin Laden over to an independent tribunal to stand trial upon the receipt of evidence from the United States indicating his complicity in the 9/11 attacks.

Bush responded to the Taliban’s offer by issuing his order to the troops to invade Afghanistan, kill Afghans, and occupy the country. In the process, U.S. officials installed one of the most crooked, corrupt, and dictatorial rulers it could find to govern the country, one who is so incompetent he cannot even hide the manifest fraud by which he has supposedly been elected to office.

In the process of installing and defending the Karzai regime, the troops have killed brides, grooms, children, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, and countrymen, most of whom never attacked the United States on 9/11 or at any other time. They simply became “collateral damage” or “bad guys” for having the audacity to oppose the invasion and occupation of their country by a foreign regime. (It should be noted for the record that U.S. officials considered these types of “bad guys,” as well as Osama bin Laden and other fundamentalist Muslims, to be “good guys” when they were trying to oust Soviet troops from Afghanistan.)

Was there another way to bring bin Laden to justice? Yes, the criminal-justice route, which was the route used after the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

That’s right. Same target, different date. In fact, the accused terrorists — Ramzi Yousef in 1993 and Osama bin Laden in 2001 — were ultimately located in the same country, Pakistan.

In Yousef’s case, he was arrested some three years after the attack, brought back to the United States, prosecuted, and convicted in federal district court. He’s now serving a life sentence in a federal penitentiary.

No invasions, no bombings, no occupations, no killing of countless innocent people, no torture, no war on terrorism, and no anger and rage that such actions inevitably would have produced among the victims, their families, and friends.

In bin Laden’s case, we instead got a military invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, where the troops have killed, maimed, tortured, and hurt countless people who had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

How in the world have your invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq defended our freedoms here at home? Indeed, how have the assassinations and bombings in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and who knows where else defended our freedoms?

All these things have accomplished is keeping foreigners angry at us, thereby subjecting us to the constant and ever-growing threat of terrorist retaliation here at home. As I have pointed out before, the U.S. military — that is, you, the troops — have become the biggest terrorist-producing machine in history. Every time you kill some Iraqi or Afghan citizen, even when accidental, ten more offer to take his place out of anger and rage.

That’s the same thing that was happening prior to 9/11. In fact, there were some, including those of us here at The Future of Freedom Foundation, who were warning prior to 9/11 that unless the U.S. Empire stopped what it was doing to people in the Middle East (including the deadly sanctions on Iraq, the support of Middle East dictators, the stationing of U.S. troops near Islamic holy lands, and the unconditional money and armaments to the Israeli regime), Americans would be increasingly subject to terrorist attacks. On 9/11, we were proven right, unfortunately. (See Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire by Chalmers Johnson.)

How does the constant threat of terrorist retaliation arising from your actions in Iraq and Afghanistan make us freer here at home, especially when you — the troops — are responsible for engendering the anger and rage that culminates in such threats, owing to what you are doing to people over there?

Consider also what the U.S. government does to our freedoms here at home as a direct consequence of the terrorist threat that you, the troops, are producing over there. It uses that threat of terrorism to infringe upon our freedoms here at home! You know what I mean — the fondling at the airports, the 10-year-old Patriot Act, the illegal spying on Americans, the indefinite detention, the torture, the kangaroo tribunals, Gitmo, and the entire war on terrorism — all necessary, they tell us, to keep us safe from the terrorists — that is, the people you all are producing with your actions over there.

In other words, if you all weren’t producing an endless stream of terrorists with your invasions, occupations, torture, assassinations, bombings, and Gitmo, the U.S. government — the entity you are working for — would no longer have that excuse for taking away our freedoms.

This past Sunday, the Washington Post carried an article about American wives who were recently greeting their husbands on their return from Afghanistan. Newlywed Anne Krolicki, 24, commented to her husband on the death of one of her friends’ husband: “It’s a pointless war,” she said.

That lady has her head on straight. She’s has a grip on reality, doesn’t deal in tired old mantras, and speaks the truth. Every U.S. soldier who dies in Iraq and Afghanistan dies for nothing, which was the same thing that some 58,000 men of my generation died for in Vietnam.

Please don’t write me to tell me that you all are good people or that you’re “patriots” for simply following whatever orders you are given. All that is irrelevant. What matters is what you are doing over there. And what you are doing is not defending our freedoms, you are jeopardizing them

-Jacob G. Hornberger. President The Future of Freedom Foundation

 

[Mr. H.]

That letter might work if addressed to a drafted military.

 

[BolshevikHunter]

I think that because of the fact that you are blaming our Men and Women for serving their Country, you're not gonna get many people to respect what you're saying. When people decide to serve, they do it because they want to serve the United States of America and defend their country.

Listen, They don't decide what politicians get elected or their foreign policy. Do I agree with SOME of what you have said, Yes I do. I also understand that by attempting to influence these good people, that you might prevent the internationalists from brainwashing our young people even more. However, If you want to prevent people from supporting this New World Order, You might want to start prior to them enlisting. Once they give their oath, and I personally understand that, You have no grounds to judge these good people for their good intentions.

= Never connect people in the service with Politicians or their foreign policy. Nobody can blame them for honoring their oath. No matter how much alot of us know about the corruption that is going on. We should always support those who put their life on the line once they are on the ground. Just my personal opinion on the matter because I have thought about it alot.

Check out "House to House" By SSG David Bellavia. It's his personal account of his experience in the Battle Of Fallujah, In Iraq. This book will shock anyone with a heart, and no matter who you are politically (unless you're a scum bag) you will learn to respect those who serve our Country no matter what the motives of the politicians that control them are. ~BH

 

[RetiredGySgt]

No one claimed Iraq had anything to do with 9-11. And Afghanistan was invaded because it was harboring Bin Laden and refused to turn him over.

EPIC FAIL.

 

[Toome]

Well, have to admit that it's pretty gutsy to post such a message online from the comfort of one's living room. Kinda like jerking off and claiming to know all there is to know about sex.

 

[Douger]

You can't defend something you don't have.

 

[old navy]

Freedon ain't free. Someone had to maintain the freedom required to spout such spew and I submit that that someone is the very people that Joe Genius is writing this letter too. Go back to Cuba with your Che Guevara t-shirt.

 

[daveman]

An Open Letter to Jacob G. Hornberger From the Troops:

Fuck off, you asshat.

 

[ogibillm]

Freedon ain't free. Someone had to maintain the freedom required to spout such spew and I submit that that someone is the very people that Joe Genius is writing this letter too. Go back to Cuba with your Che Guevara t-shirt.

here's the thing - as of right now there is no affront to our freedom. our military actions abroad are protecting american interests but they are not protecting our freedoms.

now one could argue that by their existence our military is passively protecting our freedoms. i certainly wouldn't disagree.

all that being said i think it's in poor taste to complain to people that have volunteered to serve their country about the policies and decisions that dictate the form that service takes.

and if believing that they are fighting for our freedoms instead of our interests gives the servicemen or their families comfort it's an illusion i'll gladly support.

 

[bluemoon22]

Wow, thanks for sharing. I agree wholeheartedly. There are no "freedoms" to be saved overseas. By going over there we have enraged people that already hated us and denied the so called freedom we are fighting for to millions of people.

 

[Warrior102]

Dear Troops:

On Memorial Day — some people asserted, once again, that you are “defending our freedoms” overseas.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Those people are just repeating tired old mantras. The reality is that you are not defending our freedoms with your actions overseas. In fact, it is the exact opposite. Your actions overseas are placing our freedoms here at home in ever-greater jeopardy.

Consider your occupation of Iraq, a country that, as you know, never attacked the United States, making it the defender in the war and the United States the aggressor. Think about that: Every single person that the troops have killed, maimed, or tortured in Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

Yet, the countless victims of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have friends and relatives, many of whom have become filled with anger and rage and who now would stop at nothing to retaliate with terrorist attacks against Americans.

Pray tell: How does that constitute defending our freedoms?

It was no different prior to 9/11. At the end of the Persian Gulf War, the troops intentionally destroyed Iraq’s water and sewage facilities after a Pentagon study showed that this would help spread infectious illnesses among the Iraqi people.

It worked. For 11 years after that, the troops enforced the cruel and brutal sanctions on Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. (See “America’s Peacetime Crimes against Iraq” by Anthony Gregory.) You’ll recall U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it.”

By “it” she meant the attempted ouster of Saddam Hussein from power. You will recall that he was a dictator who was the U.S. government’s ally and partner during the 1980s, when the United States was furnishing him with those infamous WMDs that U.S. officials later used to excite the American people into supporting your invasion of Iraq.

The truth is that 9/11 furnished U.S. officials with the excuse to do what their sanctions (and the deaths of all those Iraqi children) had failed to accomplish: ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein and replacing him with a U.S-approved regime.

That’s what your post-9/11 invasion of Iraq was all about — to achieve the regime change that the pre-9/11 deadly sanctions that killed all those children had failed to achieve.

No, not mushroom clouds, not freedom, not democracy, and certainly not defending our freedoms here at home. Just plain old regime change.

In the process, all that you — the troops — have done with your invasion and occupation of Iraq is produce even more enmity toward the United States by people in the Middle East, especially those Iraqis who have lost loved ones or friends in the process or simply watched their country be destroyed.

In principle, it’s no different with Afghanistan. I’d estimate that 99 percent of the people the troops have killed, maimed, or tortured in that country had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.

Why did you invade Afghanistan or, more precisely, why did President Bush order you to do so?

No, not because the Taliban participated in the 9/11 attacks and, no, not because the Taliban were even aware that the attacks were going to take place

President Bush ordered the troops to invade Afghanistan — and, of course, kill Afghan citizens in the process — because the Afghan government – the Taliban — refused to comply with his unconditional extradition demand. You will recall that the Taliban offered to turn bin Laden over to an independent tribunal to stand trial upon the receipt of evidence from the United States indicating his complicity in the 9/11 attacks.

Bush responded to the Taliban’s offer by issuing his order to the troops to invade Afghanistan, kill Afghans, and occupy the country. In the process, U.S. officials installed one of the most crooked, corrupt, and dictatorial rulers it could find to govern the country, one who is so incompetent he cannot even hide the manifest fraud by which he has supposedly been elected to office.

In the process of installing and defending the Karzai regime, the troops have killed brides, grooms, children, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, and countrymen, most of whom never attacked the United States on 9/11 or at any other time. They simply became “collateral damage” or “bad guys” for having the audacity to oppose the invasion and occupation of their country by a foreign regime. (It should be noted for the record that U.S. officials considered these types of “bad guys,” as well as Osama bin Laden and other fundamentalist Muslims, to be “good guys” when they were trying to oust Soviet troops from Afghanistan.)

Was there another way to bring bin Laden to justice? Yes, the criminal-justice route, which was the route used after the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

That’s right. Same target, different date. In fact, the accused terrorists — Ramzi Yousef in 1993 and Osama bin Laden in 2001 — were ultimately located in the same country, Pakistan.

In Yousef’s case, he was arrested some three years after the attack, brought back to the United States, prosecuted, and convicted in federal district court. He’s now serving a life sentence in a federal penitentiary.

No invasions, no bombings, no occupations, no killing of countless innocent people, no torture, no war on terrorism, and no anger and rage that such actions inevitably would have produced among the victims, their families, and friends.

In bin Laden’s case, we instead got a military invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, where the troops have killed, maimed, tortured, and hurt countless people who had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

How in the world have your invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq defended our freedoms here at home? Indeed, how have the assassinations and bombings in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and who knows where else defended our freedoms?

All these things have accomplished is keeping foreigners angry at us, thereby subjecting us to the constant and ever-growing threat of terrorist retaliation here at home. As I have pointed out before, the U.S. military — that is, you, the troops — have become the biggest terrorist-producing machine in history. Every time you kill some Iraqi or Afghan citizen, even when accidental, ten more offer to take his place out of anger and rage.

That’s the same thing that was happening prior to 9/11. In fact, there were some, including those of us here at The Future of Freedom Foundation, who were warning prior to 9/11 that unless the U.S. Empire stopped what it was doing to people in the Middle East (including the deadly sanctions on Iraq, the support of Middle East dictators, the stationing of U.S. troops near Islamic holy lands, and the unconditional money and armaments to the Israeli regime), Americans would be increasingly subject to terrorist attacks. On 9/11, we were proven right, unfortunately. (See Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire by Chalmers Johnson.)

How does the constant threat of terrorist retaliation arising from your actions in Iraq and Afghanistan make us freer here at home, especially when you — the troops — are responsible for engendering the anger and rage that culminates in such threats, owing to what you are doing to people over there?

Consider also what the U.S. government does to our freedoms here at home as a direct consequence of the terrorist threat that you, the troops, are producing over there. It uses that threat of terrorism to infringe upon our freedoms here at home! You know what I mean — the fondling at the airports, the 10-year-old Patriot Act, the illegal spying on Americans, the indefinite detention, the torture, the kangaroo tribunals, Gitmo, and the entire war on terrorism — all necessary, they tell us, to keep us safe from the terrorists — that is, the people you all are producing with your actions over there.

In other words, if you all weren’t producing an endless stream of terrorists with your invasions, occupations, torture, assassinations, bombings, and Gitmo, the U.S. government — the entity you are working for — would no longer have that excuse for taking away our freedoms.

This past Sunday, the Washington Post carried an article about American wives who were recently greeting their husbands on their return from Afghanistan. Newlywed Anne Krolicki, 24, commented to her husband on the death of one of her friends’ husband: “It’s a pointless war,” she said.

That lady has her head on straight. She’s has a grip on reality, doesn’t deal in tired old mantras, and speaks the truth. Every U.S. soldier who dies in Iraq and Afghanistan dies for nothing, which was the same thing that some 58,000 men of my generation died for in Vietnam.

Please don’t write me to tell me that you all are good people or that you’re “patriots” for simply following whatever orders you are given. All that is irrelevant. What matters is what you are doing over there. And what you are doing is not defending our freedoms, you are jeopardizing them

-Jacob G. Hornberger. President The Future of Freedom Foundation

Do you agree with this?
If so, please move to Tehran STAT

 

[daveman]

Wow, thanks for sharing. I agree wholeheartedly. There are no "freedoms" to be saved overseas. By going over there we have enraged people that already hated us and denied the so called freedom we are fighting for to millions of people.

This woman says you're an idiot.

 

[The Gadfly]

An Open Letter to Jacob G. Hornberger From the Troops:

Fuck off, you asshat.

Now, now, let's be polite to the permanent civilian (I know the above is what a lot of us who have served/are serving would LIKE to tell him, but his species does not know any better); I say we enlighten him, something along the lines of the following. Dvinman, since you posted Mr. Hornberger's letter, perhaps you could be good enough to send him this reply:

Dear Mr. Hornberger,
Since the troops to whom you addressed your letter telling them just how they are "not defending our freedom" are just a bit too busy doing just that, in carrying out the missions they have been deployed to perform, and since you brought up Vietnam. I trust you will not mind if a soldier from that conflict replies on their behalf.

I must admit that I am somewhat mystified as to just what it is you expect the troops serving in our current conflicts to do about your letter. I do feel I can tell you with certainty what they are NOT going to do. They are NOT going to start disobeying the lawful orders of their superiors (whether or not said orders meet with your approval), nor are they going to desert en masse. You see, they happen to be made of the same stuff as those who fought at Belleau Wood, those who stormed Omaha Beach sixty-seven years ago today, those who fought on Tarawa, and Okinawa, those who landed at Inchon, and yes, those who held Khe Sanh and Dak To. They are the latest version of American troops, even stronger, tougher, and better trained than those before them.....and they don't quit. As I recall, Americans with your point of view sent much the same message to those of us fighting in Vietnam some forty years ago. We didn't quit, either.

As I remember it, I believe that your comments to the troops fighting today are very much an echo of the ones made to us in those days. Let's see; by killing the VC we were "winning hearts and minds for communism all over the world" through our "brutal and unconscionable tactics". Naturally any mention of the brutality of the enemy, who conveniently often did not see fit to wear a uniform, or observe any of the other laws of land warfare, who hid among, fought among, and committed atrocities against his own civilian population, was usually omitted. Whenever this was grudgingly admitted, it was asserted that they were only doing it "because American soldiers were there" (this despite the fact that they had been doing precisely the same thing before the first American ever set foot in Vietnam). I cannot help but observe the striking similarity to your own assertions regarding the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. I seem to recall it was also asserted that by fighting there, we were "turning the whole world against America" and that for every VC we killed, ten, twenty or a hundred more "enraged peasants" would take their place. Sound familiar? The facts, sir, are that by the time we were ordered to abandon Vietnam, the VC had been decimated. Uncle Walter may have told America on the six o'clock news that we could "never defeat them"; I am here to tell you we were doing precisely that. I find those suggestions to the contrary back then eerily similar to your remarks today as well.

We were, we were told, fighting and dying for nothing, and "murdering innocent peasants and freedom fighters for nothing". Well, not exactly. Vietnam was one battle in a prolonged Cold War with the former Soviet Union. It might have been fought somewhere else, perhaps under better circumstances, but it would have been fought somewhere, sometime. What we know today, is the end result of the larger conflict of which Vietnam was a part: the Soviet Union is DEAD! It is dead, because it committed suicide, trying to impose its aggressive expansionist will on the world, because it could not overcome the one obstacle to that aim-American military power. We stopped them, and despite what all the pundits said, we didn't "start WW III" in doing it. What those who fought and died in Vietnam did, and what those service men and women who remained on guard through years of uneasy peace did, was prevent just such a conflict. I would say that is a lot more, than "nothing".

So, when you say that American troops today, are only "creating more terrorists" and "murdering thousands of innocents", I hope you can understand my skepticism; because remarks like that have been made before. They were inaccurate then, and they are inaccurate now.

It also appears, that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what troops do, and why. Troops do not make national policy; they are the instruments of that policy. Those policies are made by elected officials, and their political appointees, and passed down through the National Command Authority to military commanders and troops in the field. Troops take an oath to obey the lawful orders of their civilian and military superiors. They do not decide, who, where and when to fight, or under what rules of engagement to do so. Yes, they do make moral decisions, often under extreme duress; to shoot, or not, and who/what to shoot at. The difference is, that those decisions are not an abstract exercise; troops live (or die) by those decisions, and carry the results with them the rest of their lives. However, they are not tasked with moral judgments about whether the conflict they are fighting is "justified" in your eyes, or not. If you do not like this arrangement, please address your complaints/comments/suggestions to those elected officials who make the policies in question. As it is, you are talking to the wrong audience.

What do you suppose would happen, if the troops today took your advice? What if they all decided to just quit and go home? What if they all decided to just quit standing guard, on the grounds that they are only making more enemies, instead of defending freedom? Do you honestly believed the terrorists would all just quit fighting and go home too? Do you think those nations who are restrained to merely wishing us ill, by the threat of American military power, would suddenly love America? With all due respect, you and I both know what would happen, and it wouldn't be pretty. There would be a fight for freedom, a desperate, no second chance one, right here in the streets and fields of America, not halfway around the world. We are talking about people and countries that wouldn't believe we would even fight them if they attacked us on our own soil, unless and until we proved we would fight them on theirs for less. Let me put it another way: how many of your children do you propose to let a rabid wolf eat, before you shoot him, instead of going out and killing him before he gets to the playground?

The fact is, your freedom has been and still is defended, by those people dedicated and disciplined enough to serve a higher purpose than their own well-being, or even their own feelings. Every single one of them who has seen war hates it; loathes it in a way you cannot begin to understand. To them, it is not some abstract thing of the imagination; it is hard reality,and the horror and terror of it live in their hearts and minds. They bear that burden willingly, not because they love war, but because they love America, and they love liberty. They are obligated by their oath to defend your freedom, even when you accuse them of doing otherwise. They are not, however, obligated to appreciate the way you denigrate their service, insult their honor and character, and question their morality and their patriotism. Neither am I, and this American veteran is both angry and ashamed that you or any other American would misuse the liberty you have been given, and at such a price, to make the statements you made in that letter. In the same way the troops you have gratuitously insulted represent what is decent, unselfish, and honorable, you represent that which is egocentric, self-obssessed, and more than a little pretentious. It frankly sickens me, that better men and women than you have given their lives, to allow you the freedom to display yourself as a pompous, elitist, judgmental, moralizing ass.

Conscience? Who the hell are you to speak of conscience? Who are you to sit in judgment of troops whose boots you could not and would not walk in? Go back to your armchair and your ivory tower, whine some more, and dream of how important you think you are, because in my book, you ungrateful, self-righteous puke, you ain't shit!

 

[The Gadfly]

Wow, thanks for sharing. I agree wholeheartedly. There are no "freedoms" to be saved overseas. By going over there we have enraged people that already hated us and denied the so called freedom we are fighting for to millions of people.

I tell you what I want you to do; I want you to go find one of the Vietnamese refugees who we had to abandon because of ideas like yours. Some of them survived being tortured in communist re-education camps, and eventually made it to America. Ask them whether what little liberty they had before South Vietnam fell was worth protecting, and who tried to protect it-the VC, or us Americans who were supposedly "oppressing them". Go ask them, and see if THEY think they had "no freedom worth saving".

 

[daveman]

John Stuart Mill had this Hornberger weenie nailed:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.

 

[MikeK]

Well, have to admit that it's pretty gutsy to post such a message online from the comfort of one's living room. Kinda like jerking off and claiming to know all there is to know about sex.

Truth is a bitter pill.

 

[Dr Grump]

The OP is correct of course. American freedoms are not being defended. However, they are trying to defend those of Iraq and Afghanistan...Whether that is a good thing or bad thing is up to the individual.

One of the Aussie troops who won a VC in Afghanistan believes in what they are doing and are making a difference...

But, as stated, the OP Ed is correct...

 

[Dr Grump]

Well, have to admit that it's pretty gutsy to post such a message online from the comfort of one's living room. Kinda like jerking off and claiming to know all there is to know about sex.

Nice to see you believe in freedom of speech. Do you know what you are fighting for?

 

[MikeK]

Dear Mr. Hornberger,

Since the troops to whom you addressed your letter telling them just how they are "not defending our freedom" are just a bit too busy doing just that, in carrying out the missions they have been deployed to perform, and since you brought up Vietnam. I trust you will not mind if a soldier from that conflict replies on their behalf.

[...]

From 1941 to 1945, our armed forces defended us against two nations both of which had deployed powerful, well-trained, well-equipped ground armies, navies and air forces against us in an effort which was frighteningly capable of invading and occupying the United States.

At the present time our extremely corrupted and increasingly authoritarian, imperialistic government has seen fit to invade and occupy a nation which for nine years had been so methodically and effectively bombed by us as to render it virtually defenseless. We already had totally destroyed this nation's army and its air force and it never had a navy worth mentioning. Its economy has been so completely ravaged that it can barely afford to provide electric power to its population for more than eight hours each day.

So much for Iraq.

In another part of the world we have been expending blood and treasure in armed conflict with guerilla fighters in the mountains where invading armies from that of Rudyard Kipling's Britain to Napoleon and, of late, the Soviet Union have been forced to withdraw. These Afghani guerillas are not even an army. They comprise widely scattered groups of guerilla fighters, most of whom are homeless and can barely afford ammunion for their well-worn weapons and a second pair of sneakers. Between these Mujihadeen and those former Iraqi soldiers-turned-resistance-fighters, combined, are you suggesting that the purpose of our military activities in those two badly broken countries is that of defending us against such pathetic, barely surviving nationals?

Referring again to WW-II, I was alive during that era. And while I don't have vivid recollection I do have sufficient memories of it to tell you that was war. What our government has our troops doing in Iraq and Afghanistan is not war. It is something else. And those troops who have been forced to participate in it, much like those who were forced to participate in the Vietnam debacle, are being very badly misused!

[...]

 

[MikeK]

Dear Mr. Hornberger,

[...]

I must admit that I am somewhat mystified as to just what it is you expect the troops serving in our current conflicts to do about your letter. I do feel I can tell you with certainty what they are NOT going to do. They are NOT going to start disobeying the lawful orders of their superiors (whether or not said orders meet with your approval), nor are they going to desert en masse. You see, they happen to be made of the same stuff as those who fought at Belleau Wood, those who stormed Omaha Beach sixty-seven years ago today, those who fought on Tarawa, and Okinawa, those who landed at Inchon, and yes, those who held Khe Sanh and Dak To. They are the latest version of American troops, even stronger, tougher, and better trained than those before them.....and they don't quit. As I recall, Americans with your point of view sent much the same message to those of us fighting in Vietnam some forty years ago. We didn't quit, either.

You are defending a castle which has not been stormed. The discipline, training and fighting capabilities of our troops has not been questioned.

A weapon may be used either defensively or aggressively. There is no in between. The same circumstance applies to a nation's armed forces. And the simple fact of the matter is we invaded a sovereign nation which not only did nothing to provoke our action but was utterly incapable of harming us militarily. We did it only because we were lied to by our President. And because that president has not been charged as a war criminal and prosecuted for his crime does not mean it didn't happen. Nor does it mean the invasion and occupation of Iraq was in any way necessary, justified -- or defensive.

Again, these circumstances have nothing to do with the integrity and functional capabilities of our troops. A weapon which is misused is not the fault of the weapon but that of the user.