DUmmies still hating the troops.

[thundley4]

unhappycamper   (1000+ posts)             Thu Nov-05-09 08:29 AM
Original message
Admit It: We Don't Really Think About the Troops   
   

 
Admit It: We Don't Really Think About the Troops
Douglas MacKinnon
Former press secretary to Sen. Bob Dole
Posted: November 4, 2009 01:52 PM

Admit it. You go through your entire day without once thinking about our young men and women fighting and often dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. As they are not part of the fabric of our everyday lives, they are invisible. They don't exist. They don't count.

As we wake in the mornings, roll out of our warm beds, get kids ready for school, head to the office, plan our weekends and fall asleep in front of our televisions, countless American troops are exposed to the elements, barely sleeping in half-hour spurts lying on the cold dirt while wedged behind irregular rock walls, on the lookout for IEDs, land mines, snipers and guerrillas, and more and more wondering, "What's the point?"

A friend of mine who just back from a second tour in Iraq recently told me, "I honestly don't think anyone cares about us. The media has now decided that Iraq doesn't even exist. Politicians from both sides of the aisle use us as cheap expendable pawns. What am I supposed to tell my children I'm fighting for?"

For the folks I speak with from the military, it really has come down to, "Let us go big or let us come home." They are horrified with the thought that they are fighting and dying for nothing. Absolutely nothing.

They want a president and Congress who can clearly define a mission -- any mission -- and then give them the troops, tools and moral certitude needed to complete that mission. What they don't want, and fear is happening across the board, is to have politicians back home make battlefield decisions based on the 2010 and 2012 elections. They look upon such selfish partisan interests as a betrayal of their sacrifice. They are heroically putting their lives on the line and need it to mean more than a passing political advantage for one party over the other.


Rest of article at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/douglas-mackinnon/admit-i...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6932344

lunatica   (1000+ posts)             Thu Nov-05-09 08:36 AM
Response to Original message
1. And even less thought is given to the Iraqi civilian "collateral" war victims
   
We don't need a mission statement which would be another lie. We need to stop the wars. What the **** 'mission' do we have in Iraq or Afghanistan? The way I see it the only 'mission' left is to pretend there is one.

Wrong DUmmie. It is caring about civilian casualties that prevent a quick and easy defeat of the insurgents/terrorists.

KharmaTrain   (1000+ posts)             Thu Nov-05-09 08:46 AM
Response to Original message
2. Can't See What's Not Shown...
   
As a kid of the 60's the memories are still strong of seeing nightly reports from the battlefronts in Vietnam...along with the weekly death toll scoreboard (somehow we always seemed to kill 10 times as many VC and NVA yet they kept fighting).

Today's corporate media has dumbed and cheapend journalism and have lost interest in these forgotten wars. Albeit going out into the field is dangerous or those that do embed seem to demonstrate Stockholm syndrome...thus outta sight, outta mind as far as the corporate media. My bets are they've devoted more time to Balloon Boy in the past couple weeks than they have to either war all year.

And "we" have forgotten? Wrongo. There's not a day that there isn't a post here on DU about the casulties or whatever sparse stories are available. Maybe Mr. Dole's former PR person doesn't see any of this on faux noise, but that doesn't mean those of us who want all our troops home have.

The MSM was happy to play up military and civilian casualties under President Bush, with Lord Zero, not so much.

A small typical bonfire of hating the troops.

[TheSarge]

lunatica   (1000+ posts)             Thu Nov-05-09 08:36 AM
Response to Original message
1. And even less thought is given to the Iraqi civilian "collateral" war victims

OFFS!!!    If we didn't care so much about "collateral damage" to civilians and their property...IMHO our KIA/WIA from both wars would be half of wht it is now.

We're fighting under an ROE plan on both fronts that ties one hand behind our back and puts a patch over one eye.

[DumbAss Tanker]

KharmaTrain   (1000+ posts)             Thu Nov-05-09 08:46 AM
Response to Original message
2. Can't See What's Not Shown...
   
As a kid of the 60's the memories are still strong of seeing nightly reports from the battlefronts in Vietnam...along with the weekly death toll scoreboard (somehow we always seemed to kill 10 times as many VC and NVA yet they kept fighting).

We did, and they did.

And as far as the civilian casualties go, it's not nearly as simple as you guys seem to think.  Taking pains to avoid them saves lives in the long run, it is just a lot more difficult to execute in the short run.  A lack of concern for collateral damage and civilian casualties drives the civil populace into the arms of the opposition, the reason we got to where we are in Iraq was not by killing enough insurgents to render them ineffective, but gaining the civil support necessary to nearly wipe out their logistic and recruiting base in the populace.

Successful counterinsurgent war stategy involves a whole different approach than just killing everyone in the AO including any bystanders because our sole focus is simply our own casualties in each action.  That approach will work after a fashion, but only as long as you can keep overwhelming force immediately at hand and ready to react, there is no way to ever safely disengage once you go down that path.  As a strategy it works only if you want to stay there in force forever or jsut depopulate the place for your own Lebensraum anyway, otherwise it is a totally dysfunctional approach.   

[Rebel]

KharmaTrain   (1000+ posts)             Thu Nov-05-09 08:46 AM
Response to Original message
   
As a kid of the 60's the memories are still strong of seeing nightly reports from the battlefronts in Vietnam...along with the weekly death toll scoreboard (somehow we always seemed to kill 10 times as many VC and NVA yet they kept fighting).

Other than them continuing to fight, that's the point of war, you f'n retard. Eventually, had you idiots not thrown your support to the North Vietnamese, we'd have won that war.