A visitor just posted a really nice comment I wanted to "bump" up so everyone could read it. And it raises a valid point. We bitch so much about how Bush has so totally fucked things up by going into Iraq, that we may not mention enough the bind our troops are in.
Our troops went to Iraq because they volunteered to help defend our country. They didn't "choose" to go to Iraq, they got ordered to go. They were told they were there to help the war on terror, there to find the WMD, there to help stop Osama and Saddam. They got lied to as badly - if not worse - than the rest of us. I say "worse" because it's THEIR lives that are now on the line for Bush's lie, not ours. And when it comes down to it, they're the ones who Bush sent without adequate body armor, they're the ones who had to approach Baghdad without enough food so that they actually had to beg for it from locals, and they're the ones who are being treated like crap once they're injured.
With all of that in mind, here's the post (and after eading this post, check out this amazing Washington Post article from a few months ago about the liberation of Paris in 1944, I still get chills re-reading this article):
My admiration of the American soldier is unreserved. It is the commanders with whom I have trouble. Security in Baghdad is rapidly deteriorating. To put children and troops in harms way to try to deny this reality is logically inexplicable.
When I studied in France my French mother told me about the fall of Caen. When the first American tanks came in, after days of bombardment, she ran away with her young children, and hid in the ruins of a church. (Ruins being all that was left.) She was afraid of both the American firepower and German retaliation if the American advance failed.
When it became clear that the Americans had won, she and many others went begging to American troops for food, fuel, clothing, everything, and the quartermasters did their best.
She vividly described the chocolate bars and cigarettes that the GIs would give as they marched by. Convoys of Americans going to the front were like holidays with GIs throwing rations, cigarettes, chocolate, sometimes blankets or jackets.
The generosity of the average GI was well remembered then and will be remembered in Baghdad also.
