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08/10/2003 Archived Entry: "Bring us home"

The cartoon is a bit heavy handed but it has a cute premise: likening Rumsfeld and the Iraq war to the Seinfeld show. As fans will recall, Seinfeld was widely touted as "a show about nothing"; Iraq is called "a war about nothing"...and standard Seinfeld routines are adapted to slam the point home. This second cartoon, which likens Bush to Pinocchio is similar -- cute but heavy handed.

"Bring Us Home!"...these three words are replacing Bush's public taunt to Islamic militants -- "Bring 'em on" -- as the new mantra of "Iraq-Nam" -- a term that likens Iraq to a desert Vietnam. The theme "Bring Us Home" comes from the emails and Internet postings of soldiers who are in Iraq and who present a starkly different picture of conditions than is seen through the sanitized media accounts. One of the key transmission routes of the "Bring Us home" message is David Hackworth, co-author of the "Vietnam Primer" which has been called "the fighting man's bible for guerrilla warfare in Vietnam." It was published by the Pentagon and used as a training manual during that War. http://www.hackworth.com/ Hackworth's site posts messages such as the following: a recent letter written by the Command Sergeant Major of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (A{{irborne) to Senator Warner explaining why he is retiring earlier than planned. It is a sombering and articulate accounting of the state of our military. The Sergeant Major writes, in part, "We are losing many of our very best in large numbers and potential recruits are not beating the doors down. This is not good and we can't afford it. I have a daughter serving in the Army and her mother and I have advised her to get out when her enlistment is up." Hackworth currently features an email from the front in which a solider complains, "I do know there are people living in areas with running water and A.C. That, of course, is not us... although my COL lives like that. I do believe he was shielded from the reality by his staff for a while. As we crammed 50 soldiers in to two medium frame tents near a pond of dead fish which was also infested with mosquitos and there was absolutely no field sanitation support for miles, he was living in his own room inside an air conditioned building, had his own king size bed, his own bathroom, his own refrigerator, and his cappuccino machine. It was two weeks before he came down to see where the soldiers were living and that was only after the S4 and CSM kept blowing me off... so, I had to get the Corps Surgeon involved for sanitation reasons." I do not advocate making the military presence more comfortable -- I think the US should get out of Iraq immediately and completely -- but it is a morbidly fascinately process to see George W. Bush actively alienating the troops upon which his success depends.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the morale-killing picture, passions have been heating up in Iraq with native Iraqis erupting in understandable anger against what has become an occupation army -- whether Armerican or British. In Basra, British troops have come under attack by protesters in Basra rioting over fuel and electricity shortages. Several thousand people burned tires and lobbed rocks at British troops, who responded by firing rubber bullets to disperse them. The riots continued into a second day. The US response to protests and potential danger has been a bit less muted than rubber bullets. The current (UK) Independent carries the story of a harmless family killed because US troops panicked and fired randomly. The story begins, "The abd al-Kerim family didn't have a chance. American soldiers opened fire on their car with no warning and at close quarters. They killed the father and three of the children, one of them only eight years old. Now only the mother, Anwar, and a 13-year-old daughter are alive to tell how the bullets tore through the windscreen and how they screamed for the Americans to stop. 'We never did anything to the Americans and they just killed us,' the heavily pregnant Ms abd al-Kerim said. 'We were calling out to them Stop, stop, we are a family, but they kept on shooting'."

To the message "Bring Us Home," I add my own voice: "Get Them Out of There."

And now, because I just can't resist, here is a page of Arnold Schwarzenegger jokes that arose in the wake of his bid for Carlifornia governor.

Best to all,
mac