This is a sobering account of a soldier who watched another platoon gun down a bunch of folks they'd been working alongside for weeks, so that they could up their "insurgent kill count" . . .
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000172.html
It's great to think we learned so much from Vietnam. Let's go back to 1970 and find those guys who were always accusing Kerry of making up that his unit had committed crimes, that everybody had. (Oh wait, those guys are busy making documentaries for Sinclair.)
A battle between fury and sorrow, just reading the news. Who will restore these guys' faith in their country? Who? And if not now, then when?
(thanks to Tom Tomorrow for the link)
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All people seem to have some threshold for naivete. As much as we may know of a topic, we like to maintain some thought or feeling that "it is not as bad as..."
There have been long comparisons between this Iraq war and Vietnam. The comparisons came in as predictions even before the Iraq invasion. I have often made the comparison myself.
Somehow, though, I emotionally have had the sensation the Vietnam was more of a historical metaphor for what Iraq could become, but not a true comparison for what Iraq is. Even after the horror of Abu Ghraib.
That threshold is finally broken for me by this story.
We are in a Vietnam. It is no longer a historical metaphor. The complete degradation of many (not all) soldiers' morality seen in Vietnam is in Iraq. In fact it is systematized by the idea of "insurgent kill count."
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