BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BE, BUT DON'T BE A FOOL

The Bush administration is in desperate need of warm bodies these days. Young people are dying, enlistment is down, and many of the troops in Iraq are either on their third tour of duty, or on involuntary extension—in spite of the fact that, in the case of many reservist, the military has stopped paying the families they left at home. As a result, the administration is putting out commercials portraying the glamorous and exciting life to be had in the military.

But unfortunately, they’re subjecting our young people to the old bait and switch. They’re showing soldiers in nice, crisp, uniforms, sitting in what looks like computer rooms with everyone playing video games, instead of the very probable truth--lying out in the desert in 125 degree heat, thousands of miles from home, blind, and with a leg or arm blown off. That is the reality of military life under the Bush administration.

This administration proclaims to anyone who will listen that they honor and respect our troops, but as the old folks use to say, “that dog don’t hunt”, and there is ample evidence of that fact on the public record. At this point, for example, the administration finds it expedient to deny that during the run up to war in Iraq they told the American people that Saddam Hussein represented an imminent threat to the United States. Now that weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq, they want us to forget the urgency in which they rushed us into this war. But if what they now say is indeed the case, and Saddam didn’t represent an imminent threat, why did the administration needlessly sacrifice the lives of our troops by sending them to war without the necessary protective gear?

If Saddam wasn’t an imminent threat, it would have been in the best interest of our troops to wait until we had all our ducks in a row before we went to war—or at least until we had the necessary equipment. But the Bush administration had other priorities. They had priorities that superceded the welfare of our troops—the need to go to war before the American people had the time to think about what we were getting in to.

Our young people were sent to war with vehicles they had to armor plate themselves, with scrap metal they’d found along the road. In addition, the families of many soldiers had to scrape up the money themselves to buy protective gear for their love ones--and if that wasn’t bad enough, it took an act of congress to get the administration to reimburse these families for their expenses. So just think about it-- here we are, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, and the parents of the troops have to send their children the protective gear from home, to help them stay alive. Then, administration has the nerve to say they honor our troops. I don’t think so. Even the Crips have flack jackets—and their parents don’t have to send them from home.

But nothing demonstrates the arrogance and the cavalier attitude of this administration towards our troops more clearly than remarks made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfelt. While meeting with the troops at Camp Buehring, Kuwait, in response to one of the soldiers’ questions regarding inferior equipment, Rumsfelt responded, “As you know, you go to war with the Army you have.” And then, he went on to say, “And if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up.” So in essence, Rumsfelt told the soldier, don’t worry about it, they can blow you up anyway—armor or no armor.

That’s only a couple of many glaring contradictions in the behavior of an administration that claims to love, honor, and support our troops. While they’ve made a mantra of the claim that they honor our troops, their actions grossly belie their assertions—in fact, most of their policies with regard to our military seem to suggest that their only concern for our troops is in using them as human shields against the criticism of a very unpopular and pernicious agenda.

Therefore, this administration would be content to "stay the course" in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries in perpetuity. And why not--they don’t have anything to loose and everything to gain. It’s not their children dying for this dubious campaign, yet the trough of their selected, and bid-protected corporations are overflowing from the swill of war. While our love ones are being blown apart, Haliburton—the company in which Vice President Cheney headed before coming into office—is enjoying unprecedented profits; and as our families are being scarred for life, the children of these chicken hawks are following in their parent’s footsteps--lying back in the lap of privilege and luxury, content to cheer the heroic "little people" from the lobby of exclusive tennis clubs. Then, they tell us that our attempts to end this war, and to get our children out of harms way, is un-American. Well, it seems to me that anyone who buys into that nonsense is not only a non-thinking person, but in point of fact, an absolute idiot.

If these chicken hawks truly had the courage of their convictions (and I emphasize the word "courage"), they’d be encouraging their children to flood the enlistment depots to join in this "noble American endeavor", as just a simple matter of patriotism. But on the contrary, instead, their children are being allowed to follow in the tradition of that great and resolute American, Dick Cheney, and his five deferments.

Yes, it is indeed easy to say "we must stand firm" when your love ones are safe at home, but I’d be willing to bet the few dollars Haliburton has yet to take from America’s treasury that if Bush, or any one of the other chicken hawks, knew for a fact that their child was going to be the very next casualty, their attitude towards this war would undergo an immediate, and drastic change.

This is a war of political and economic expediency–it promotes an agenda that represents everything that conservative ideologues have passionately pursued since the New Deal. First, it was used to shore up Bush’s numbers, which gave him the clout to get the rest of their agenda past the American people. Then the war was used to redistribute the wealth. It not only allowed Bush, Cheney, their cronies, and selected corporations to raid the United States treasury, but along with the huge tax cut for the rich, create a debt that made it next to impossible to maintain social and entitlement programs. The only reason Social Security was spared is because Bush’s numbers began to fall.

The following excerpts from the Downing Street Memo says it all:

The Secret Downing Street Memo
_____
SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL _ UK EYES ONLY
DAVID MANNING
From: Matthew Rycroft
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 /02
cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney_General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell
IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER’S MEETING, 23 JULY
C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action . . .

It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force . . .

The Attorney_General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self_defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult . . .
(Rycroft was a Downing Street foreign policy aide)

Thus, when the facts regarding this war is looked at objectively, it becomes clear that these neo-cons were willing to kill and maim thousands of our trusting and brave youth for no other reason than to promote an agenda that they’ve been salivating over since the advent of the New Deal. It’s unconscionable.

So the next time you see Bush or Cheney praising our “brave American troops”, or hear them saying “All we need is a few good men” or “Be all that you can be”, just remember, the first step towards being all that you can be is to avoid being a fool. So ask yourself, where are their kids? Then consider the fact that the United States Senate had to step in and demand that the White House stop charging wounded soldiers $8.10 per day for their hospital meals.


Eric L. Wattree, Sr.
Wattree.com

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