IT MUST BE HARD IN IRAQ by Bob Lonsberry

I am posting Bob Lonsberry's column in its entirety because it expresses so well what I have been thinking and feeling. -- f mcdonald

It must be hard in Iraq.

To be in uniform, or working for an agency, carrying guns in the badlands, showing the flag.

It must be hard.

While a bunch of idiots in Washington run around like chickens with their heads cut off, reading reports and making speeches and posing for the cameras. A bunch of idiots, charged by the Constitution to lead, quantifying and debating a failure.

A failure secured in the halls of the Pentagon and the offices at the White House. The spirits of Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara come back to spill more American blood in a war without a purpose and a vision, a war won by heroes on the battlefield and lost by castrati in the Capitol.

It must be hard to roll out each morning for missions that the suits say aren’t working, for missions that will take lives, for missions that the civilian command can’t quite seem to figure out a purpose for.

After this many months and this many years to have the deciders in chief throw up their hands and ask for suggestions must be a hard thing to take. To have been faithful to orders and to have done your duty and to have the people you follow ask for a map and announce that they’re lost.

It’s not supposed to work that way.

It’s supposed to be Washington at Trenton and Lincoln at Gettysburg. Teddy at San Juan Hill and Ike at Normandy Beach. When the crap hits the fan and good guys are down on points the commander is supposed to call the play and inspire the troops and lead on, lead on, lead on.

He’s supposed to have the vision and know the way and be unflinching in purpose and view.

This isn’t the Oprah show. This is war. You don’t get points for admitting your mistakes and sending your problems out to a committee. You don’t treat it like it’s an eating disorder you can cry your way through and bounce back from with therapy.

It’s a damn war and right now while the Washington gasbags are poking each other in the rear there are American GIs running convoys and bagging Osamas and risking their lives.

And official Washington isn’t exactly sure why or how. Official Washington orders men to secure a place and then debates abandoning it. Hurry up and die, so we can pull out. Those are the marching orders.

It must be hard in Iraq.

Hard when the leader of the United Nations gets up and in his imbecilic way declares that people were better off under Saddam Hussein. When Europe curses you and NATO won’t help you and Britain says it’s time to come home. When the people who won congressional elections speak of your war in spiteful and gleeful terms. When the traitors in anchor chairs puff up over a “civil war” and daily deride your sacrifices.

It must be hard in Iraq.

Hard when the civilian leadership of your country is so dense and clueless as to not even consider the damage its waffling and sniping do to your spirits and morale. While men stand in front of mess hall TVs on a break between missions the idiots they watch debate their fate in nothing more than the context of opinion polls and the ’08 elections.

It must be hard in Iraq.

Hard to have the rug pulled out from under you. To stand there in front of the boots and the rifle and a buddy’s helmet and wonder what in the hell it’s all for, to see 19-year-olds with Purple Hearts who know more about this war than generals in the Pentagon and stuffed shirts in the Congress.

It must be hard in Iraq.

Hard to know where the country stands when its leaders are so confused and contentious.

It’s hard to die for nothing. It’s hard to lose your heart to a cause the new speaker says is a crime. In Vietnam it was the hippies who spat on the troops, now it’s the Congress doing the spitting.

And the administration doing the waffling. It’s a cluster f--- and a circle jerk and anything else you can think to call a bunch of buck passing, finger pointing incompetents. It’s almost as if they forgot they’ve got an army in the field and an enemy with satellite TV. It’s almost as if every stinking one of them is incapable of realizing what it does to a man in uniform to have his legs cut out from under him, to have his own country debating his failure, to have his own government cursing his mission.

It must be hard in Iraq.

Hard to keep faith with a cause the suits want to abandon. Hard to stay the course when the suits have already cut and run.

It must be hard in Iraq, to be abandoned like this.

- by Bob Lonsberry © 2006