You know, a while back, I met a young man named Seamus. He was a good-looking kid, 6'2", 6'3", clear-eyed, with an easy smile. He told me he served in the Marines in the Iraq War. And as I listened to him explain why he'd enlisted, the absolute faith he had in our country and its leaders, his devotion to duty and service, I thought this young man was all that any of us might hope for in a child. But then I asked myself: Are we serving Seamus as well as he is serving us?
I thought of the 900 men and women; sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors, who won't be returning to their own hometowns. I thought of the families who were struggling to get by without a loved one's full income, or whose loved ones had returned with a limb missing or nerves shattered, but still lacked long-term health benefits because they were Reservists.
When an American president sends our young men and women into harm's way, he has a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they are going, to care for their families while they're gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.
In the 2002–3 run-up to war, mainstream media outlets systematically suppressed evidence that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. They couldn’t have gotten away with it in the age of Twitter.
jacobin.com