Monday, May 28, 2007

"Most of us don’t know what we’re fighting for anymore"


The troops of Delta Company, First Batallion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division are turning against the war in Iraq.


Their story is here.

UPDATE: Here's a commentary from Donald C. Hudson Jr., a private serving in another 82nd Airborne outfit.

UPDATE II: On this Memorial Day, Paul Krugman of The New York Times offers a few worthy observations:
“In this place where valor sleeps, we are reminded why America has always gone to war reluctantly, because we know the costs of war.”
That’s what President Bush said last year, in a Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. Those were fine words, spoken by a man with less right to say them than any president in our nation’s history. For Mr. Bush took us to war not with reluctance, but with unseemly eagerness...
When Rudy Giuliani says that Iran, which had nothing to do with 9/11, is part of a “movement” that “has already displayed more aggressive tendencies by coming here and killing us,” he should be treated as a lunatic.

When Mitt Romney says that a coalition of “Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda” wants to “bring down the West,” he should be ridiculed for his ignorance.

And when John McCain says that Osama, who isn’t in Iraq, will “follow us home” if we leave, he should be laughed at.

But they aren’t, at least not yet. And until belligerent, uninformed posturing starts being treated with the contempt it deserves, men who know nothing of the cost of war will keep sending other people’s children to graves at Arlington.

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