SUPPORT OUR TROOPS:
A COMBAT VETERAN’S VIEW

by Lt. Col. Robert M. Bowman, Ph.D., USAF, ret.
 September24, 2005

 

            Everywhere you look, you see little ribbon stickers that say, Support Our Troops.”  When we get to Front Street Park, there will be a “Support Our Troops” rally.  It is starting right now.  I agree.  We must support our troops.  But what does it really mean to “support our troops?”  Most of the people who sport those stickers and most of the people in that rally designed to detract from us don’t have the foggiest idea what it really means to “Support Our Troops.”  I’d like to give you the perspective of a career military officer and combat veteran.

             First, our support of the troops does not mean blind support of the president and the policies which sent them into harm’s way in the first place.  Rather it means speaking out to demand that our government support the troops as well.  That’s the support they really need.

             For all his grandstanding before military audiences and his carrier photo ops, President Bush has turned out to be a disaster for the people in the military and for our veterans.

             The president threatened to veto legislation guaranteeing disabled veterans their compensation.  He proposed a reduction in combat pay and allowances for our troops in Iraq while the invasion was still going on.  He privatized the logistics system, giving the contract to Halliburton and denying our troops the supplies and support they need.  He ordered a continuation of the use of depleted uranium munitions even though it has been shown that DU has disabled over 130,000 veterans of the first Gulf War and caused birth defects in their offspring on the order of 70%.  As a consequence, thousands of our young people now serving in Iraq will have debilitating and often fatal conditions.  Tens of thousands of their offspring will have severe birth defects.  In effect, the Pentagon is waging radiological warfare against the unborn generation.

             Our wounded troops, especially Reserve and Naional Guard soldiers, are being denied prompt medical care.  Hundreds have spent months in “medical hold” status in non-air conditioned barracks without ever seeing a doctor.

             Of course, possibly the worst thing being done to our troops is to send them into the Iraqi quagmire in the first place.  They were trained to fight an opposing army.  They were not trained to be an occupying army in a hostile land.  For the most part, they are up against the same thing we were up against in Vietnam – fighting the people who live there.  Abu Graib is but the tip of a very ugly iceberg.  Soldiers who commit such atrocities and survive the war usually return home psychologically damaged, often irretrievably.

             Our young men and women in the military deserve a well-defined mission based on the truth and in support of objectives essential to our national security and the safety of the American people.  They deserve to be well trained for the mission they are to perform.  They deserve to be supported with the best equipment and supplies available.  They deserve to be paid appropriately for their service.  They deserve to have their families taken care of while they are overseas.  They deserve prompt and effective medical care when they need it.  And they deserve to be returned  home as soon as possible.  They are getting none of these from the Bush Administration.

             Those who give their lives deserve to be acknowledged and indeed honored, not swept under the rug.  The White House and the Rumsfeld Pentagon have banned cameras from every site involved with bringing home our dead soldiers.  No government official has attended the funeral of any of our 1,900 troops killed in combat.  Not one!  You don’t see pictures of the wounded at Walter Reed Army Medical Center or the 14,000 wounded in combat in Iraq treated at a single hospital in Germany.  Cameras are forbidden.  The Bush Administration has decreed that our fallen heroes remain faceless, so that a squeamish public will not start questioning the human cost of this imperial war.

             Let those of us not called upon to fight in this war give our troops what they deserve from us — the thanks of a grateful people and the promise that we will never again allow our representatives in Congress to issue a president a blank check to conduct an unnecessary, illegal, and unconstitutional war.  Let us promise not to forget those casualties being hidden from our view.  And finally, let us promise that this will be the last administration responsible for American troops fighting and dying on foreign soil to secure profits for big oil companies.  That would be supporting our troops.

             I'm a member of Veterans For Peace, an organization of thousands of combat veterans.  All of us have put our life on the line for this country.  Most of us opposed the invasion of Iraq.  We also opposed the first Gulf War, and the sanctions which followed.  We opposed the slaughter of fleeing Iraqis on the Road to Basra.  We opposed the use of Depleted Uranium munitions.  And we opposed the lies upon which the first Gulf War was based.   But there was one good thing about that first Gulf War – it ended, and without a wholesale invasion of Iraq.  Why?  I’d like to read you what the first President Bush wrote about that in his memoirs:

             “Trying to eliminate Saddam .. would have incurred incalculable human and political costs.  Apprehending him was probably impossible. … We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. … there was no viable ‘exit strategy’ we could see, violating another of our principles.

             “Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world.  Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish.  Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”

             My brothers and sisters, it’s just too darn bad his son can’t read!  He doesn’t have a clue what his father was trying to say.  Now here is a real scary thought.  Can you imagine what would have happened if George W. Bush had been president during the Cuban missile crisis???  Supporting our troops means demanding that any future combat be solely to protect the American people and the international community, that it be authorized by the United Nations, and that it be based on TRUTH for a change.  That would be supporting our troops.

             I feel an affinity for the troops over there in Iraq.  They are my comrades in arms.  They have neither the experience nor the wisdom to see past the lies they have been told.  The truth is, they are not over there protecting our freedoms.  Our freedoms are not under attack from the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist party.  Our freedoms are under attack by the likes of John Ashcroft.  They are threatened by Condoleezza Rice.  They are trampled by Donald Rumsfeld.  They are disdained by Dick Cheney.  And they are not even understood by George W. Bush.  The battle to preserve our freedoms is not taking place in Baghdad and Tikrit and Fallujah.  It is taking place in peace marches and demonstrations in Lafayette Park in Washington DC, in Ghirardelli Park in San Francisco, and from City Hall to Front Street Park in Melbourne, Florida.  The front lines are right here!

              We are the shock troops battling to preserve our cherished freedoms … by exercising them … in spite of opposition and ridicule.  You are the foot soldiers protecting our civil rights.  You are the Minutemen sounding the alarm against tyranny.  You are upholding the spirit of the American revolution.  You are preserving the freedoms that the troops in the desert have a right to come back to.  The troops getting shot at in Iraq are not protecting us.  We are protecting them … and their honor … and their freedoms.  We are protecting this nation and supporting our troops by speaking truth to power.

             Here is the truth that we proclaim.  This war was not caused by faulty intelligence.  It was caused by manipulated intelligence and deliberate deception  This war has nothing to do with national security or freedom or democracy or human rights or protecting our allies or weapons of mass destruction or defeating terrorism or disarming Iraq.  It has to do with money.  It has to do with oil.  And it has to do with raw imperial power.  It is based on a pack of lies.  And it is wrong.  Those who forced this war on an unwilling world are guilty of violating the U.S. Constitution, the UN Charter, the Nuremberg principles, and international law.  What they have done is illegal, immoral, unconstitutional, and TREASON.

             Before this war started, we knew it would incense the Arab world, provide thousands of new Osama bin Ladens, and enormously increase the terrorist threat.  And it has.  We knew it would further endanger the American people and destroy our national security.  And it has.

             As a combat veteran, I will not stand idly by and watch our security destroyed by a president who went AWOL rather than fight in Vietnam.  As one who has devoted his life to the security of this country, I will not stand by and watch an appointed president send our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs for the oil companies.  Patriotism demands that I speak out and call this by its right name.  It is TREASON.

             I joined the Air Force to protect our borders and our people, not the financial interests of Folgers, Chiquita Banana, Exxon, and Halliburton.  We've had enough corporate wars.  No more Iraqs.  No more El Salvadors.  No more Kosovos.  No more Colombias.  These are not isolated incidents of stupidity.  They are part of a long, bloody history of foreign policy being conducted for the financial benefit of the wealthy few.  It is a new form of colonialism.  It violates our Constitution.  It endangers our people.  It mortgages our future.  It wastes our youth.  And it is TREASON.

             As a pilot who flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam, I swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies -- foreign and domestic.  That includes a renegade president.  It is time for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and the whole oil mafia to be removed from office and indicted for TREASON.

             We owe it to the men and women serving in Iraq to end the occupation, restore our credibility and honor, and bring them home.  To do that we must give up control of the Iraqi oil, give up control of the rebuilding contracts, and give up the 14 permanent military bases we are building in Iraq.

             Our sons and daughters are being killed.  They are being maimed by the thousands.  They are being poisoned by Depleted Uranium by the tens of thousands.  They are being dehumanized and psychologically destroyed.    Those who return are prone to domestic violence, divorce, and suicide. This must not continue!

             When we get to Front Street Park, remember, we are the ones truly supporting our troops.  There is a difference between supporting our troops and supporting the traitors whose greed and thirst for power sent them off to kill or be killed in a foreign land.

             Support our troops?  You bet!  We must support what’s left of our troops by bringing them home … NOW.  God bless America, and God grant us regime change in Washington, DC.  Thank you!

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