Botched Casualties.....

You've been in the sun for 11 months now.
It’s hot here. Always hot. The spiders are huge.
Call them camel spiders. You don't take your boots off because you’re afraid of one crawling it, or a scorpion. You've been trading fire with a large structure across the road from you for days. Sometimes its small arms, .50 caliber and below. Sometimes it’s an RPG screaming overhead, or a mortar landing a few feet from you. You know there are civilians in that building. You've demanded that they let them go. You know you’re taking heavy fire from that building.
Your buddies have died or have been hurt because of that building.
You’re positive the civilians are either insurgents, or victims, those inside say that the occupants will die before surrendering. You’re exposed, and more people are dying in the crossfire than would if you could put a stop to those inside that building. You have a chance of creating peace, in the long run, if you secure that building.

What do you do?
Our soldiers are faced with this question everyday. And when they make a choice they are blasted for it across our nation’s media like a hornet across a windshield at the Indy 500.

They sweat, they bleed, they take fire, and they take shrapnel. For those of you who haven't been in combat it is not a pleasant place.

They watch people who they ate chow with turned in to vapor. They could send their best friend home in a zip lock bag and no one would no the difference.

And everyone becomes the enemy. Because one day a 14 yr old kid comes out of an alleyway with an AK-47. The next day a 7yr old boy walks in to camp with a bomb vest wired to him. A Young girl runs a heard of animals across the road, you smile thinning that maybe there’s peace here after all, until the convoy your in that stopped to let her go across suddenly has armed fighters around them at all sides from nowhere opening fire.

I'm sick and tired of hearing how American soldiers are purposefully picking off citizens because they have nothing better to do. I'm sick of hearing accusations that Snipers are killing civilian children for kicks.

The people in the military have a harder than job than anyone else you can name. And infinitely more dangerous. Think not? Go enlist, volunteer for Iraq, spend 10 months, and THEN come back to me with your arguments.
I refuse to listen to you until then, as I give you no credit.

You place a high powered weapon made by the lowest bidder in his or her hand. Tell them, while they are being attacked , to protect them selves, protect their buddies, protect their unit, protect the civilians, protect the people that they see, terminate action incoming against them and at the same time prevent an international incident.

This at age 19.

I'll make a brave statement. Civilian casualties happen. I'll admit it openly. It’s an ugly fact because war is an ugly business.

But I'll bet my paycheck that fewer than 50 of those casualties are purposeful violence by incited military members.

It’s a shitstorm over there people. And we are not helping the situation here.
Think not? What does John Q Soldier think, when you take the above scenarios, and then place a letter in his pocket from mom saying that NBC, CBS or CNN is saying that he is wrong to be there?

Or he gets an E-mail from his bud at home showing Brian Becker smiling smugly while a bystander gets knocked about by one of his thugs while she tries to take his picture?

The truth boils down to a simple fact. The only people who can limit the amount of Iraqi civilian casualties: Are the Iraqi's themselves.

If they want to stop civilian casualties, stop using women and children as shields. Stop using them as distractions. If you don't want holy areas destroyed then don't hide in them to take pot shots at troops and civilians.

The Coalition can fix many things. They can do many things. But only the Iraqi people can change a mindset of themselves.

If they want to stop having innocents shot, then they should help put an end to the people who use them as sheilds, who they are forced to harbor in their homes, they should report, or rise and and stop the ones who are disrupting the peace that , even for a brief time, was settling.

In Special Forces I was taught to examine the credence of what the other side had to say, and maybe even respect their position. To analyze the data and come up with a SitRep that everyone could agree on and a plan of action based on everyone’s input.

The bottom line is that no one tells the truth but in every lie a little truth must be in order for it to be credible.
We had to distinguish the lie.

People criticize Salaam Pax, but in yesterdays post he went so far as to ask for help from the current Administration.

Recently I debated an individual who said he "cited not just American sources but Iraqi and Arab as well.
His examples of his sources?
Sistani, the BBC, and British Financial Times.

We gave Saddam 10 years of chances. We gave him 8 UN Resolutions and what? 23 Inspectors? The Resolutions clearly stated that it was up to Saddam to prove his innocence; it was not up to the UN to prove his guilt. A very different conception compared with most of America, where you are resumed innocent until proven guilty. We, the UN, NATO and European countries presumed Saddam Guilty, not innocent.

He abstained and preferred killing his countrymen and showing utter disdain for anything brought to his attention.

There are people out there who would have you think that our military is there to simply slaughter civilians wholesale. There are people out there who would have you think that we turn loose our solders with nothing but a case of ammunition and instructions to shoot to kill. There are people who would paint them as bloodthirsty psychopaths, and killers.

There are also those who think that a soldier should just refuse to go. They should go to prison, risk dishonorable discharge, no future jobs, a felony on their record, loss of all veteran benefits for the armchair speakers cause.

Mainly because the ones who think they should do that, are not in that position themselves and are in no danger of going to prison.

I served for not quite almost 7 years. I started as a Reservists and I volunteered, I volunteered mind you, for active duty.
At no time did I want to bath in the blood of my enemies. At no time did I think of the person at the other end of my rifle as anything but another soldier, but he was trying to kill me.

It’s easy to wax poetic when you look at something from the outside. It’s easy to paint a picture that makes the soldier look like he could have prevented it.

It’s easy to say "I would not have shot him!", but then you fail to acknowledge the fact that he, most certainly, would have shot you.

During the Civil War, Thomas J Jackson, (also known as Stonewall Jackson) once wrote:

"I myself see in this war, if the North triumph, a dissolution of the bonds of all society. It is not alone the destruction of our property (which both the nation and the States are bound to protect), but it is the prelude to anarchy, infidelity, and the ultimate loss of free responsible government on this continent. With these convictions, I always thought we ought to meet the Federal invaders on the outer verge of just and right defence, and raise at once the black flag, viz, 'No quarter to the violators of our homes and firesides!"

Both the rebels, and the Coalition see such policy as this as a means.
To utterly demolish, demoralize, and wage a war of propaganda with inhumane bloodshed thus to spark the drive of our rage against us like dogs on a bone is the easiest way to decentralize, and destabilize support for any cause.

Think about that when you turn on your evening news.

The Rebels have decided how they want to play the game. They have decided the rules, and the playing field. We as an American Military have decided that we'll play ball.

But we bring the ball.