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Our View
Fateful times
We are very proud in Rappahannock County
of the men and women who are serving or
have served in Iraq. Young men like Marine Cpl. Frank Paratore or Air Force Major Jonathan Watson are two examples of the devotion and courage of our armed forces.
But those among us who have been to war know it is a two-edge sword. You must have courage to withstand the dangers you face and you must have courage and discipline to control your actions as well.
There is now nothing more powerful in the world than the United States forces on the attack. The technology has made our armed forces able to destroy a conventional enemy with as few casualties as possible; able to move as we did across hundreds of miles of desert, finding and crushing any enemy resistance.
But “winning the peace” as the politicians like to call it is a different matter for the army of a democracy. It is a war where our technological prowess helps hardly at all, where our soldiers stand little different than Roman legionnaire in Jerusalem, trying to control people who they do not understand nor know.
It is a war of suppression, whether fought in Danang or Vietnam’s Delta, Algiers or Beirut, Mogadishu or Baghdad.
The enemy in the war of suppression wears no uniform. It can be a man at a checkpoint or a 13year-old on a bicycle. Most of the time, you cannot tell who is friend or foe. They have a different religion, a different language and often a different skin coloring. More important, they are willing to die for their freedom. In the Vietnam War, the U.S. lost some 50,000 men and women while 600,000 to a million Vietnamese lost their lives.
Each day, U.S. forces are confronted with death and danger. To manage this, the servicemen needed the most extensive training and the most rigid discipline, something not possible in most reserve or National Guard units without extensive preparation.
The Bush Administration failed the American servicemen by not understanding this. They had not prepared for the post war. Now the valiant efforts of thousands is overshadowed by a few at Abu Ghraib prison.
We don’t know what to do in Iraq, but we do know that the United States is failing our men and women there and emergency steps must be taken. The administration now appears to be faced with only two choices: Get our forces out as quickly as possible, leaving the Iraqis to fend for themselves even though civil war could erupt. Or send perhaps another 100,000 men and women, drawing down on our regular forces world wide.
If there was a time to pray for the wisdom of our leaders and the safety of our soldiers this is the moment.
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