5 Long Years. 4000 Dead American Soldiers.

Everybody likes war stories, and this one seems like an appropriate one for me to tell, given the circumstances.

5 years ago I was a private first class in the 101st Airborne Division sitting in the back of a 5 ton with half of my platoon, heading north out of Kuwait to a city named An Najaf in southern Iraq. It had been a crazy week leading up to that four day convoy. Some of you may remember the trial of Hasan Akbar, the American soldier sentenced to death a couple of years ago for the fratricide murders of Captain Christopher S. Seifert of the U.S. Army and Major Gregory L. Stone of the U.S. Air Force. I was at the camp where these murders happened. We were all pretty edgy those days and I’ll tell you when we heard explosions in our perimeter things went from just 'sorta bad' to 'oh f*** sarge, this is really bad'. It was late when we heard the sound of the grenades and we had no idea what was going on, after all, it was Kuwait, and we hadn’t even started warring yet. We had been ducking SCUDs for a week or two and we weren’t sure if the base had just been hit by one, or if the Iraqi army had grown impatient and decided to bring the fight to us in Kuwait. It was like there had been a sale on confusion and everybody’s shopping carts were full. At one point my platoon ended up pulling security on another platoon 100 feet in front of us until our platoon sergeant had his head pulled out of his ass for him in a very vocal manner. I saw a French fighter jet get shot down in near spitting distance from us because he forgot to turn on his friendly beeper, so the Patriot missile didn’t know it was taking down an allied bird. Talk about fireworks. One of my peers was told to GET DOWN because there were explosions and gunfire, and the jack-ass started doing pushups on the spot! Now that’s discipline. I eventually found myself in a bunker with most of my squad and we were being reprimanded by someone because we had developed a wicked mean case of the giggles through the course of the night. Nobody was smiling the next day when we finally found out the details of what had happened that night.

Thinking about that night, it’s hard to believe that it was five years ago. It’s even harder to believe that Capt. Seifert and Maj. Stone would end up being counted among 4,000 other dead soldiers. No way would I have believed then that we would hit 4,000 dead in Iraq.

4,000. Just say that a few times. 4,000. Try to think of 4,000 people. Go ahead. 4,000 people lost their lives in this endeavor, you can lose a few of your minutes thinking about them. 4,000.
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That’s 4,000 American lives we will never get back, all sacrificed because of lies. Lies that will likely go unpunished. 4,000.
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That’s 4,000 American families devastated. The families are only the beginning, think of the friends and the communities that those lives touched.
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So I’m sure that by now we are all agreed that 4,000 is very sad and tragic, so let’s step outside the box for a moment. Let’s think about 8,000, let’s think about 10,000. As long as the corporations are making money, as long as there is oil to be had over there and as long as America remains obediently silent, we will reach 8,000, 10,000, more. That’s not Chicken Little talking, that’s just the way it works. It's happening. It will continue.

And as long as we’re outside of the box, let’s talk about the Iraqi deaths for a moment. If we split the difference between the really big 1.2 million estimated dead and the more palatably big 80,000 estimated dead and say 600k have Iraqis have died, well then, that is the equivalent of a September 11th sized event happening to the people of Iraq about once every 9 days, since the invasion. All wrapped up in the cloak of freedom and democracy. I think our 'thank you' notes must have gotten stuck in the mail.

It’s a nice sentiment to say, “Sorry Iraq, we broke you so we’ll fix you”, but it’s oh so arrogant. Those people have been there what, 20, 30 times longer than America has been a country? I think they’ll be OK without us. In fact, I think it might even be in their best interests to ask us to leave. When we leave, Iraq can truly self determine.

If you’re at all like me, you look at the last five years and you have difficulty finding hope. That’s to be expected. When confronted with the fact that America wants out of Iraq, Cheney sums it up eloquently in one word: SO?

I recently had my hope recharged though. I joined hundreds of my brothers and sisters from Iraq Veterans Against the War from March 13th-16th for Winter Soldier. Many of the veterans relived their pain and opened themselves to right-wing attacks by bearing their souls for the sake of informing this country of the nature of this occupation. I hope that you will take the time to watch some of the testimony and spread the word. Here's just a couple:
Jon Turner
Scott Ewing

I came away from last weekend renewed and ready to keep fighting. Hopefully you can take some energy (or at least soome understanding) from the veterans who spoke. This is just a small sample of the testimony given, there is much more to be seen on the IVAW website. IVAW

Please forgive me for being a little cynical, but I'm personally not prepared to let the fight to end this occupation be entrusted to any politician. Please, join the protests, get in the streets, join the movement. Do something. It's up to us.