One view of the war in Iraq

Baytown Bert is a blogger I read. A couple Sundays ago, he posted this piece entitled "What Exactly Is A Veteran."

He wrote:

Both of my Grandfathers served in the U. S. Army, one helped chase Pancho Villa across the Rio Grande River and the other as a soldier fighting in France, where he was wounded and walked with a cane the rest of his days. My sister is a U. S. Air Force Veteran and was a Communication Specialist at NORAD during the Vietnam War. Too many uncles and cousins to mention wore the uniforms of the Navy, Coast Guard and Army to list here. My father-in-law served in the U. S. Army on the island of Biak in the South Pacific during World War 2 and three of my wife’s distant aunt’s captured Yankee soldiers and turned them over to Rebel soldiers during the Civil War.

On the wall in my room is a signed commendation from Donald Rumsfeld for doing my part to stem the tide of Communism during the Cold War. It hangs alongside my Honorable Discharge and my son’s Army Commendations.

That very day, he learned his son had been wounded in Iraq, and he wrote
this piece.

The whole effort is increasingly beginning to smell like Vietnam to me and our support for a corrupt and inept South Vietnamese government, which fell exactly 44 days after we pulled out.

The Iraqi government needs to get off their duff and take control of their insurgent factions and get weaned of the United States military. Religion-based wars are the worst kind of fire to put out and we are finding ourselves in the same mess Winston Churchill and Lord Kitchener faced after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The English had no answer for it, just like the French had no answer for Ho Chi Minh and what makes us think we can do any better? We should fight the battles we can win, for whatever reason Governments fight wars, but this one needs some changes.

If we ARE going to stay on in Iraq, then we need to do something that truly makes a difference and do it fast.

Note to President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, et al.: When you lose the confidence of veterans/citizens like Baytown Bert, you're in trouble.