A Soldier’s View of the Iraq War

I am a manipulated stooge who sold his soul to exploit the
ignorant with the proud lies our own leaders.

I am told on a regular basis "The Army is not like it
used to be." Most of the lifers think that the military lacks discipline
and blame the new "Nintendo generation" soldiers for the weakness.

However, I think a hard look should be given at
the uses of America’s advanced military in the modern era. Due to the
operations the military has been
tasked in the last forty years, the nobility of the professional
soldier has
been destroyed.

From Vietnam to Iraq the Armed Forces has been a chess
piece in a game for money and power by elite Americans. Back in the world
wars the military represented every citizen’s will. Today the people are duped
with lies and phony values to support imperial progress.

Weapons of mass destruction, links to the two towers
tragedy, and the ousting of an oppressive dictatorship are all bait for a
revenge hungry over-patriotic American.

I doubt that the men in power are as incompetent
as the
world imagines. For that reason I dismiss the apparent failures in Iraq
as not the true goals of this war. After these errors are eliminated
you are left with the
truth behind the media smoke screens.

Even the soldiers are brain washed into hating the "rag
heads".

I have overheard soldiers telling racist jokes like
"Why do Iraqis smell so bad? So blind people can hate them too." It
becomes easy to hate the Arab people. We don’t understand their culture, their
religion and their language. They are a poor people with a lesser quality of
lifestyle and standard of living. The average soldier can not relate to living
without electricity, plumbing, and toilet paper.

If we see them as inferior it makes it easier to kill them.
Just as one might kill a dog that digs through his trash. As a soldier gets
into combat situations the prejudice grows as they blame every Middle-Easterner
for the conflict.

The Joes hate Iraqis because the command hypes about being
in Iraqi to stabilize a democracy and fight terrorists on their own ground. The
leadership never explains the fact that a majority of Iraqis don’t want a
republic that is just a branch of the Western materialistic culture and that
they see America as a tyrant equal to the fallen Saddam’s Baath Party.

Most soldiers mistake the word insurgent to mean a person
that is inserted. As if we are fighting men from other countries than Iraq. When, insurgent means rebel.

The common GI won’t investigate why the insurgent will sacrifice
himself, because most soldiers would never do the same.

The lifers hold on to the lies of the system because the
truth would destroy the core of their beliefs. The fact that the stars and
bars is only an illusion for the real power behind the throne could ruin their
psyche and crash their egos. They will never let go of their pride and use it
as an excuse to cover their fear.

A war backed by our nations cowards. What else would a
preemptive strike be good for. Americans get so afraid they will kill in cold
blood and thump their chests to claim it for a good cause.

History is written by the victors and might makes right.
After all is said and done it will go down that way in the books. We will kill
communists, drug dealers and terrorists. Next will be homosexuals and
atheists. Then full circle back to Jews and Blacks. Fear and prejudice is
destructive and we dominate using it. Every country folds to American
policies afraid their homes will become the next Baghdad.

And, our leaders use media to force the United
States people into anxiety using colored threat levels, video of
violence, and worse case
scenarios presented as emergency updates. We even had Colin Powell lie
to the
worlds most powerful council, the U.N., about Iraq’s malicious intent
with
nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. America intimidates the world
while calling the insurgent freedom fighters terrorists.

So Americans can’t let go of their fear. Like it is a
security blanket from a childhood memory. Just as most people can’t relax
their guard, in Nam lifers couldn’t relate to the men that was turned on to
marijuana.

To let your mind and body go and become open to
the chaos of
the world is impossible for a person who lives in constant fear of the
unknown
truth. Drug usage isn’t as much of a problem here in Iraq amongst the
soldiers, yet. However with a draft, the inactive reserve and more
stop-loss it
won’t be long before more soldiers discover the potency of Arab hashish
and
opium based narcotics.

Most the soldiers I have talked to have joined for selfish
reasons. They wanted money for collage, travel the world, get out of a dead
end, avoid going to prison, or had no direction in life.

The boys who joined up to defend the red white and blue are
few and far between. I met some soldiers that were motivated by September
11th, but not many. It is a need in today’s society to find alternate
advantages to enlist, and when kids learn what they really signed themselves up
for it is a rude awakening. Many soldiers are counting down to their last day
in the military from the first few hours at basic training.

For all these reasons, whether the G.I.s are conscious of
it or not, the military personal have a decreased motivation and intensity.

We fight for lies, are alienated by our chain of command
and are only trying to ride out the clock until we can finish our contracts
without losing what we have worked for or seeing the inside of a prison cell.

I serve in shame,
The Heretic, Iraq

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http://www.militaryproject.org/article.asp?id=419