published August 17 2006, Lakeland Ledger

Iraq -- Stay the Course http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060817/NEWS/608170382/1037/EDIT

Reference Ralph Henry's "Bring Them Home" letter [Aug. 3], anyone just back from South Korea and refusing to go to Iraq should be put in a military prison. I served in Vietnam. I didn't really want to go, but my commander in chief makes those decisions.

Our troops in Iraq are not "kids." If you'd have been there, done that, you'd know the difference. Once you look down the barrel and take a human life, you are no longer a kid.

I sincerely hope we never cut and run again as in Vietnam. I think I speak for most Vietnam veterans and others.

We have the most powerful and dedicated armed forces in the world. If we were to walk away now, thousands of our young men and women would have died in vain.

Stay the course. Increase our troop levels if necessary. We owe it to those who have paid the ultimate price.

MARC ROSATO
Sergeant, 3rd 21st Americal Division
Vietnam, 1969-1970

Winter Haven

 

Forum post entry by Dawnlightsmile , 19 August 2006 09:28 PM

I cannot endorse Mr.Rosato's appraisal of the circumstance of this campaign in Iraq and appropriate attitude for soldiers. He has a lot of faith in the chain of command to put so much apparent trust in his government. I appreciate an organization must function with a reliable executive of responsibility but some things should remain for individuals to decide in as far as whether they are right or wrong. To kill must always remain a personal choice, however it might circumstantially be necessary to consider. Clearly, I would not make a good soldier in any militarist general's army. I can live with that, and that is my choice.

Mr. Rosato feels we should have stuck it out longer in Vietnam. I doubt he really knows who the Vietnamese are, or what life was like there before the French colonized those people so long ago. I doubt he has followed through with a clear vision of what that history may have been for the United States to have remained in the position of surrogate power over the people of what was South Vietnam. I doubt he can truly step into the shoes of such a tyranny in the example of Iraq today. We are the villain there, and our motive is self serving world wide economic dominion. That is the motive the chain of command in Washington serves, and what they will never admit to the idealist soldier who would die for them believing the purpose of our politics is the pursuit of a quality of life on behalf of the whole of humanity.
Some in that chain of command have come to appreciate the fallibility of the office of our institutions:


"Until we get away from the idea that we can solve these problems through the use of military force and begin to change the political problems causing discontent by providing security and services, we're not going to win this war.. "

-General Joseph Hoar, Commander in Chief of U.S. Military Central Command under presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush

http://hqinet001.hqmc.usmc.mil/hd/historical/Whos_Who/Hoar_JP.htm

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