Iraq: We Broke It. We Owned It . . .

. . . . and we walked away from it after thousands of American lives were lost and tens of thousands of American souls returned to our shores with severe physical injuries or the psychological consequences of PTSD.  To what end?

 

Old Glory at the Bridgewater Municipal Complex

That is the disgraceful result of what is today’s Iraq.  It soon is to be our fate in Afghanistan, unless the hapless policies which have emanated from Washington during the last two administrations change and align themselves with the realities that rule The Middle East.

The biggest policy mistake of Washington was to not have recognized and acknowledged what dominates the core of governance in the Arab nations of The Middle East and in Persian Iran:

Religion, and its influence upon every facet of life in that region, particularly the intertwined bond that glues it to the area’s political structures.

When George W. Bush invaded Iraq and naïvely thought that the U.S. could establish an enduring democracy through the electoral process in that country, he made perhaps the worst foreign policy calculation of his career.

When Barack Obama declared that the war on terrorism was over shortly after the killing of Osama bin Laden, he compounded Bush’s mistake by pulling out all U.S. troops too soon, one of the worst foreign policy calculations of that career.

A Nurse Encounters a Soldier

Jeannine, shown visiting with family
 on Lake Winnipesaukee, NH.
(Bergeron Image.)

Yesterday, our family received this e-mail from Priscille’s sister Jeannine, who lives in Florida.  Although J. is now retired, she has had a long career in nursing, most of it with the VNA in Connecticut.  Always helpful, always cheerful, J. will go out of her way, always offering kindness and hospitality to others.

Below is J’s unedited account of her serendipitous encounter on Friday with one of America’s heroes, an Afghanistan veteran.  It is presented below in its entirety and with her permission.

"Good morning to all:  Would like to share a little story which shows how paying it forward can be rewarding to all of us.

Yesterday afternoon on my way back from running errands, I decided to stop at Five Guys to use the rest of a gift card.  In line in front of me, was a young man with a Vietnam emblem on a vest and on a cap as well.  He had 2 leg braces, 2 arm braces and crutches and was struggling to get to his wallet.

The 9/11 Wars: A Survivor

Last month, on a Tuesday in the second week of our vacation in New Hampshire, we had gone out for a walk and sightseeing in the picturesque lake town of Meredith.  On the edge of its main thoroughfare, we waited at a crosswalk that would take us to Town Docks where tourists regularly line up for great lobster rolls.



The undaunted courage of our American soldiers

 returning home manifests itself as much on an ordinary

 sidewalk, as it did in foreign fields of fire.

Cars had stopped to let us by, and one of them was honking for us to get on with it, but I was too preoccupied with observing the young man and woman walking away from us.  I would have only a moment to snap a telephoto shot of the American hero which you see in the accompanying image. 

I don’t know which of our three wars he fought in.  Nor do I know how many tours of duty he may have served on behalf of America.  But it seemed from his age and injury that it must have been Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan.  Which one of those military theaters of operation was the cause of his missing limb, I wondered?

PTSD and the Wars that Won't go Away

Book Jacket.   (Dick Bergeron Image)

Potomac, MD.  The testimonials on the back of the book jacket for “In the Name of Honor” don’t do it justice.  I wonder if any one of those whose names appear on it ever read the book front-to-back, if at all.

The author, Richard North Patterson, is a master storyteller with a disciplined grip on the English language. 

Throughout this highly readable 400-pager, he skillfully employs words and phrases to buttress his main thesis – that the deadening  impact of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) on American families and their loved ones returning home from Iraq has not been counted into the price of that war.

The forcefulness and validity of that message is wrapped within the story of two military families.  The first can boast of an intergenerational West Point succession of high-ranking Army officers whose current patriarch is a general and the Army Chief of Staff.  He is slated to become head of the Joint Chiefs. 

America’s Warriors

I had just finished reading Eric Greitens’s book, The Heart and the Fist, when I heard the news of the downing of an American Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan which resulted in the death of 30 of America’s best, brightest, and toughest, including 22 Navy SEALS from SEAL Team 6. 

The account of a humanitarian and Navy SEAL (Photo/Bergeron)

Earlier this summer, I had read the first two books by Richard Marcinko, Rogue Warrior and Red Cell.  All three books were written by former Navy SEALS from Seal Team 6.  Written in the 90’s, Marcinko’s first two books describe personal accounts of his early efforts and training which eventually led to the establishment of SEAL Team 6.

In the other book published this year, Eric Greitens, a Rhodes Scholar who earned a PhD from Oxford University, describes his humanitarian work in Bosnia, Rwanda and Bolivia, prior to his becoming a Navy SEAL.

Greitens writes of how he was troubled by his firsthand observations of the suffering being inflicted in those countries and elsewhere by regular as well as rogue military forces.  That’s when he decided that there were times when the proper application of force becomes necessary as a  balance to compassionate civilian help. 

The Campaign and the Presidency

There is an ocean of difference between waging a campaign studded with promises of hope and change and delivering on those promises.

There were many commitments made to the American people during Obama’s candidacy.  In the race for the 2008 presidential prize, I zeroed in on the one which I felt 100% certain that he would not deliver on if elected:  His commitment to begin the drawdown of American troops from Afghanistan by July, 2011.

Don’t ask me about all of my reasons why, because I could write an interminable essay on it, but the single most important point of skepticism is that he was expressing an idealistic point of view upon which I felt certain that he simply would miss the mark. 

In his recent book, “Obama’s Wars,” Bob Woodward telegraphed President Obama’s intent to extend the Afghanistan timeline when he wrote that the president would reveal a new strategy by December 2010.  Right on schedule, Mr. Obama now says that we are there until at least 2014.

What Mr. Obama did not explain is just what the end game is and how much it will cost us in more lives and treasure.  

American soldiers are being undermined by the inept leadership of Afghanistan’s puppet President Hamid Karzai who cares more about his personal security and precarious political position.  

The man hunkers down in the capital city of Kabul, the only part of Afghanistan over which he holds any degree of control, thanks to American delivered protection.  He is unsafe in his own country and shuns travel to his subjects outside of Kabul for that reason.

In gratitude, Karzai hampers U.S. military operations by demanding rules of engagement for our troops which endanger their lives.

 Meanwhile, his counterpart over the border in Pakistan refuses to grant American requests to extend the strike zone of U.S. drones in that country.  This further endangers American lives and reduces the chances of neutering key Jihadist killers who may gravitate to undeclared safe havens in Pakistan.

While speaking of his Afghanistan timeline extension, Mr. Obama did not specify the billions more which will be wasted on nation building projects in both of those countries, as the U.S. tries to drain its own economic swamp where those dollars could be put to better use.  This country can’t do it all for everybody else, especially for the ungrateful.

OK!  I know.  This is not the cheeriest of messages just a few days before Thanksgiving.  I promise the next post will be lighter, but some things need saying.

Thanks for reading.  Have a good week and remember, stay engaged.

IN REMEMBRANCE:  Forty-seven years ago today in 1963, our young President John F. Kennedy was gunned down while on a campaign tour in Dallas, Texas.  Also on this day, C.S. Lewis, the famed author of The Chronicles of Narnia, passed away of natural causes.

Naïve Bravado, Major Embarrassment

Today, President Barack Obama meets with General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan over an international controversy generated by an article appearing in Rolling Stone magazine.

Written by Michael Hastings, the article is full of quotes depicting a general and his staff disdainful of Beltway politics and politicians – including those in the White House – vis-à-vis this nation’s military commitments in Afghanistan. That is why the general will have his resignation in hand when he meets President Obama this morning.

However, although the President most assuredly will take the general to the woodshed privately, I am doubtful about what many pundits say will also happen – that McChrystal will be fired. The mission in Afghanistan, despite its dubious and non-credible objectives, needs to be concluded.

That war, like the one in Iraq, is not being fought to achieve a decisive victory. It is, for many reasons, a war that we are losing because there is no will in Washington to do what it takes to succeed.

We Americans know that. It is why we don’t want any more American casualties incurred in a far-away land administered by the corrupt, contemptuous, and untrustworthy leadership of Hamid Karsai.

It was very naïve of General McChrystal to give journalist Michael Hastings unfettered access to him and his staff for what turned out to be a very damaging article. Nonetheless, President Barack Obama has bigger fish to fry, and this is no time to change war horses in mid-stream.

Prince of Peace or Prince of War?

Suddenly, after Obama’s Oslo speech, warfare seems to have become more respectable. While campaigning for the presidency, this man consistently criticized Bush’s position on the war on terror. He now appears to have had a major epiphany with his discovery of the “just war” theory.

The person who once declared himself to be a peacemaker now advises the world that, “We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes.” and, “There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”

He was supposed to be different, but no: Forget Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. because, “As a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone.”

Those quotes from Barack Obama’s Oslo address are high rhetoric from a man who was supposed to “draw down troops.” Look: Nothing has changed in the war on terror from the time that Barack Obama began campaigning for the presidency to the time that he accepted his Nobel Peace Prize. Except, that is, his reversal of campaign promises concerning the war on terror.

In the Oslo speech some of which was “fine-tuned” by Jon Favreau, a 27 year-old speechwriter who graduated from Holy Cross College, a Jesuit institution, the President was ill advised when he stated, “To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason."

Nonsense! With the use of that last phrase, the President could not be more wrong. It is not the limits of reason which necessitate the use of force. On the contrary, it is the failure to reason.

If our President is going to use “just war” theory as his basis for engaging in major military conflicts, then he needs to read Augustine and Aquinas, the men who wrote the book on it. Neither would it hurt for him to bone up on the full text of Benedict XVI’s Regensburg address on the use of reason, the one that world media completely distorted and which discombobulated such a large segment of Islamic intellectuals.

Marine recruiting ads emphasize the need for “a few good men.” Perhaps Obama could also use a few good Jesuits.

Barack Obama's Peace Prize

Why would the White House downplay the honor associated with President Obama’s acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize? Could it be the comparative achievements of previous recipients?: People like Lech Walesa, Nelson Mandela, the 14th Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma, Elie Wiesel, Martin Luther King, Jr., Anwar al-Sadat & Menachem Begin.

The list of such notables goes on and on. The names above, as well as those of other people awarded the Nobel Peace Prize mostly share a common characteristic.  With few exceptions, they have clearly demonstrated a lifetime of accomplishment in furthering peace and human rights, each person in his or her own way. Not talk. Results. Most with humility and some only after experiencing great hardship or death.

Mere days after announcing that he will increase troop levels in Afghanistan, the President of the United States will leave for Oslo, Norway where, amid great fanfare on Thursday, he will accept the Peace Prize. It should be a great honor for him and, by extension for this country.

But where’s the beef? We are still in Iraq and the recent increased violence in Baghdad since our troops have begun pulling out from major population centers only points to the ineffectiveness of the Iraqi regime to maintain order.

The strategy which Obama will use in Afghanistan is similar but confusing: deploy 30,000 more troops while simultaneously announcing their withdrawal in 18 months. The Afghan president has already announced that his country will not be prepared to take over in 18 months.

For that you get a peace prize?

A Long Grey Line Always Turns into a Long Grey Wall

At West Point, the name used for the endless stream of brave young men and women who enter the military academy is referred to as “The Long Grey Line.”

I thought deeply about the meaning of that phrase as I watched President Obama deliver his rationale for sending thousands more of our youth to Afghanistan.

Media commentators like to refer to U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as “boots on the ground.” It’s become a catch phrase for talking heads on TV and others who claim that more “boots on the ground” will fix the problem. I strongly dislike and disapprove the use of that term, because it dehumanizes and trivializes our men and women who are sent to face the terror of warfare. In reality, I despise that misnomer.

Soldiers, marines and special ops people serving in Afghanistan and Iraq (and clandestinely in Pakistan) are flesh and blood American warriors with human emotions. They have parents at home; wives, husbands and children; girlfriends and boyfriends; classmates from high school and college which they left behind. They are not inanimate “boots on the ground.” They are not faceless people.

And when they die in combat they leave behind the endless grieving of survivors at home. If you don’t believe me, please go to Don't Be Afraid to Say His Name. You’ll understand.

I hope that I haven’t dampened the joy of your Christmas shopping weekend, but there are too many Americans who are for more “boots on the ground.” Just so long as they or their loved ones don’t have to fill those boots.

Photo by Bergeron: It features a portion of the Vietnam Wall War Memorial with its names stretching in a long grey line, as it points to the Washington Monument.

A Symbol with Impact

Tonight the President will lay out his case for more U.S. troops to be deployed in Afghanistan. He will deliver his speech from the United States Military Academy at West Point, in New York State.

It’s a first, because modern presidents have delivered such addresses to the nation from the Oval Office. I don’t know why he has chosen that venue. Presumably he will explain it this evening.

But I firmly believe that if he wanted a symbol for expanding the war, then he could have chosen a location that depicts much more graphically the results of warfare – our dead and wounded – like, for example, the site of the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial.

I was there Sunday, and I assure you, my respected readers, that The Wall and the statues underscore the carnage of that conflict much more realistically than the one the President chose to rationalize what he is about to do. But if he delivered that address near The Wall, what impact would it have on his credibility?

Photo by Dick Bergeron:  Vietnam Nurses War Memorial, Washington, D.C.

An Afternoon of Reflection in Washington, D.C.

With the Thanksgiving holiday coming to an end this Sunday and the good weather making it feel more like early spring, Priscille and I, as guests of the Potomac, Maryland branch of the family, decided to drive into our nation’s Capital. Destination: the war memorials, all within easy walking distance of each other.

I wanted very much to visit those places of reverence again, because America is now at a critical juncture in its multi-front struggle against the extreme elements of worldwide, violent Jihadist terrorism.

Early in the afternoon, we paid our respects at The Vietnam War Nurses Memorial; the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall; the statues of The Three Soldiers; the Korean War Veterans Memorial and the World War II Memorial.

It was my second visit to those shrines, and the one which has always tugged at me most is The Vietnam Wall: It’s all those seemingly endless names etched on black stone remembering Americans who never returned home. And the whispered silence of visitors as they walk slowly along the rise and fall of that great stone wall, stopping randomly, touching the stone at times, staring at those names, and waiting for an explanation. “Why?”

Vietnam cost America dearly in blood, money and spirit. The war against Jihadist extremists, a very real threat to the West, will cost us just as dearly if it is as badly directed from Washington as was that long-ago conflict in the rice paddies, jungles and tunnels of Vietnam.

Let’s Say Thanks

There is a simple and easy task you can do on Thanksgiving which will go a long way to boost the spirit of our troops serving in the military outposts of the Middle East. Just go to http://www.letssaythanks.com/, a Xerox website whose sole purpose is to send a personal message from you to one of our servicemen and women.

I sent one such message yesterday, as did Priscille. You will find that it’s highly professional and quick to use – just a few clicks and your message is on its way to an American warrior far from home. There is a large selection of excellent messages from which you may choose. You won’t have to worry about what to say.

Go ahead. Do it. You will love the setup of this specialized website and feel a sense of personal and civic pride for supporting our American heroes.

Thanks for reading and have a happy Thanksgiving.  Remember that this country has given each of us much more than we can ever give back except, perhaps, for those to whom you will be sending that message.

The Little Borough that Could – and Did

In a Courier News poll not long ago, a majority of respondents said that the relatives and friends of the victims of the Trade Towers attack should “move on” with their lives. I interpreted that to mean that it’s time to forget – 9/11 is over.

I’m glad that the residents of Raritan Borough didn’t take that advice about WWII and their native son and hero, John Basilone. Each year commemorative events in his honor only seem to grow. That’s as it should be, because to forget the cost of what others did to secure our freedom as Americans is a passive act of ignorance.

There is hardly a week that goes by where I don’t have a recollection for the sacrifices that my three brothers endured when they served this nation in the same war in which John Basilone fought and died.

Pride in the American military’s accomplishments is a cheap commodity these days, especially within Washington’s beltway, where politicians inside the Capitol Building and the White House treat our servicemen and servicewomen like pawns in their game of chess which they play in comfortable rooms, thousands of miles removed from the dirty battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan and the surrounding areas of the beleaguered state of Israel.

I’m not a war hawk, and I wish to see peace reign on this planet, but I do not minimize the nature of the threats posed by dangerous men like the leaders of Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Venezuela, the last of which has entered into military provisioning agreements with Russia.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday, in this little corner of the world, Raritan Borough will pause to memorialize once again the example of a man who did what he felt he had to do for his nation.

Eight Years Already?

Friday dawned damp, dingy and cold – a holdover from the previous day that had brought even more rain and higher winds to Bridgewater. It was one of those days that I would have liked to have stayed cozily inside: But there were two things that I wanted to do: some laps at the JCC pool on Talamini Road and, after that, a noontime stop in front of the old Bridgewater Township Administration building for the 9/11 remembrance ceremony.

I wouldn’t have time to go back home and dress up after the swim, so I just showed up in jeans and a rain slicker for the ceremony, leaving my camera behind (too rainy and wet). A shuttle bus was waiting to move participants from the parking lot in front of the courthouse building, but I parked the car nearby, popped open a big black storm-ready umbrella, and walked along the edge of Commons Way towards two tents set up as a shelter on the lawn facing Garretson Road.

It was pouring, but the tents did their job well keeping dignitaries, workers and citizens dry. The ceremony was brief but more than adequate. Police and firefighters from Bridgewater were present. Bridgewater Mayor Patricia Flannery spoke a few words in honor of the victims of 9/11, as well as in remembrance of other local Americans who have since lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Two Bridgewater police officers reverently carried a folded American flag out from under the tent and raised it on the Township flagpole under a heavy, wet sky. Firefighter Howard Norgalis had already read the firemen’s pledge; Pastor Todd Buurstra of the North Branch Reformed Church had previously given the opening invocation.

The wind blew persistently as the ceremony continued under dark, angry skies but, as if providentially, the sky brightened momentarily and the rain let up slightly – perhaps a sign of hope for the future – as Mayor Flannery stepped out from under the tent’s roof and was assisted in placing a wreath upon the 9/11 memorial stone and plaque resting on the lawn.

Although 9/11 was eight years ago, its memory is still vivid in the minds of Americans, especially in this area, even more so with those loved ones who have been directly affected. As if to underscore the tragedy of that villainous day, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to produce far too many fresh memories of brave American men and women who continue to give up their youthful lives in the aftermath of that tragic day eight years ago.

Precious Blood

Sometimes you come to a point in a situation where a previously held position needs some serious rethinking. Iraq and Afghanistan now fall in that category for me. All three of my older brothers were actively engaged in World War II. In 1945, my oldest brother, whom I lost last year, was in the Philippines preparing for what was to be the imminent, massive invasion of the Japanese islands.

Then, unexpectedly, the most destructive secret weapon ever developed unleashed its overwhelming fury on Hiroshima and Nagasaki –and within days it was all over. Harvey, Roger and Roland would come home with their minds and bodies intact. Ours was one of those lucky American families. And my life would be forever enriched from the experience and brotherhood of these three street-wise kids who somehow made it through.

After Pearl Harbor, the objective was clear: Mobilize. Get the troops to Europe and to the Pacific – fast. Do whatever it takes. Gear up the entire economy for victory. Finish it. Don’t let a vanquished enemy dictate post-war terms. Above all, finish it.

It’s fundamentally different now – many of our leaders seem to have lost sight of true north, and Congress has gradually shifted its war-declaration responsibilities to the White House, hiding behind lukewarm war authorizations which have resulted in finger-wagging every which way, especially when an administration changes hands. Most wretchedly of all, our leaders don’t know when to fight and when to stay home.

But this one thing is clear: If Iraq and Afghanistan were George’s wars then, they are Barack’s wars now. So what will he do to end those with victory and honor? Truman never complained that he “inherited” WWII from FDR. He came in as a relief pitcher and ended the game decisively. The ball is now in the hands of Barack Obama. Thousands of American families with blood in the game are waiting.