As it is !

COMMENTARY
Hundley: U.S. sends soldiers into a meat grinder
By Steve Hundley
LOCAL CONTRIBUTOR
Sunday, June 11, 2006

With new investigations of our troops' actions in Iraq, I see that war developing along the same path as the one in Vietnam. When I started my first tour in Vietnam in 1962, we were bringing in the first helicopter gunships. Morale was high, everybody optimistic, it was the only war we had, and we were going to get it done.
We would laugh when a helicopter came back from a mission with an arrow sticking in it. We stopped laughing when we started getting stitched by AK-47s.
When I left in November 1963, morale was still high. Two months after I left, my helicopter was shot down, my replacement killed.
When I returned in 1966, the American buildup was in full swing; we were taking over the war from what we perceived as a weak and ineffective South Vietnamese army. We had little respect for them. The North Vietnamese army seemed to me to be much more dedicated.
I was in C Troop, 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry, 1st Air Cav Division. We were scouts. Our job was to find and engage the enemy — every day. We were good at it, good enough to be nicknamed "Headhunters." But each time the division cleared an area, we would leave, and the enemy would come back.
When I left in 1967, I had spent two years of kill or be killed, and I had done my share. I knew what it was like to look into the eyes of one of my troops five seconds after he had been shot through the lungs and couldn't talk, when only his eyes could ask me not to let him die. For all this, we had no visible gains, no territory we owned, just body counts on both sides.
Civilian authority over military commanders prevented us from chasing the enemy across the Cambodia border. Civilians selected bombing targets in North Vietnam. Civilians in the States were telling us that women and kids who shot at us were innocent civilians, and we must respect that. I hated the war, the country and the people. I had volunteered for both tours, but when I was told to expect a third tour in six months, I left the Army. The civilian restrictions put on us ensured plenty of dying, but victory was impossible.
My son, Curtis, was a warrior all his life. He was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne, a scuba diver, Harley rider, competition shooter, white water kayaker and an outdoorsman. When the war in Iraq started, he wanted to fight for our country. Too old to re-join the Army, he joined Blackwater Security. That put him on the roads in Iraq almost daily, the most dangerous place to be. I've never seen him more proud.
He enjoyed throwing candy to kids along the road. Like me in Vietnam, at first, he thought progress was pretty good.
But civilian miscalculations — such as not sending over enough troops to secure ammo dumps and borders, and then deactivating the entire Iraq army, which instantly created thousands of potential terrorists — began to take effect.
I saw my happy-go-lucky son start to harden. His eyes, which always had had a twinkle, were different in the pictures he sent. When I could get him to talk about his job, he began to sound disgusted at the worsening situation. The last several weeks of his life, disgust had turned to anger.
He was killed by an improvised explosive device on April 21, 2005, near Ramadi. I heard a report that a woman had set off the bomb. In his coffin, the flag was pulled up to his chin. I don't know how much of my boy was left.
I understand the seething anger building in our troops as they are sent, time and again, into that meat-grinder war. They struggle each day just to survive the day. It's one thing to go down shooting, it's another to be shredded by an unseen bomb. When a young American sees his best friend blown to pieces, and sees the locals laughing about it, ask yourself, how would you feel? Do you think the "core values" training being forced on all of our troops is going to make them feel all warm and fuzzy the next time a bomb goes off?
So, now, we see President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on TV, deploring the suspected acts of some young troops. What we won't see are those three incompetents — pretending to be war leaders, who have never been in a war and who sure aren't going to send their kids to war — taking any blame for the horrible mess they have made of the whole thing. They don't have the honor. One of President Theodore Roosevelt's sons landed on Normandy on D-Day. That's honor.

source: http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/06/11Hundley_edit.html