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Campaign for America's Future / Op-Ed
Published: Saturday 13 October 2012
“How can we continue to justify this war begun to avenge the 9/11 attacks and punish those responsible?”
Killing the Kids That Don’t Need to Die
Matt Sitton knew the war in Afghanistan was going badly. He knew it because he was fighting it. He could see for himself. Twenty-six years old, with a wife and child back home, Staff Sergeant Sitton was on his third combat tour there.
Time and again, he and his men were sent through what he called “a minefield on a daily basis.” His comrades were being blown apart — at least one amputee a day, he said, “Because we are walking around aimlessly through grape rows and compounds that are littered with explosives.”
Morale was low; the men struggled to remain alert. Sitton said he asked his officers to give them a break but was told to stop complaining.
“I am all for getting on the ground and fighting for my country when there is a desired endstate and we have clear guidance of what needs to be done,” he wrote. “But when we are told basically to just walk around for a certain amount of time is not sitting well with me.”
At home in Florida, Matt Sitton had attended a Christian school run by the Baptist church attended by Congressman Bill Young. He wrote Congressman Young and told him what was happening. “I’m concerned about the well-being of my soldiers,” he said. “… I just want to return my guys home to their families healthy.” He ended: “If anything, please pray for us over here. God bless.”
On August 2, while on patrol, Matt Sitton and a buddy were killed, blown apart by an IED, a hidden bomb. They flew Sitton’s body home and held his funeral at that same Baptist church.
For a long time before Matt Sitton died, Congressman Young, the longest serving Republican in the House, called for sticking it out in Afghanistan. The powerful chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, he had helped continue the war by voting against an amendment requiring the President to set a timetable for withdrawal.
He’s changed his mind. Touched by what Matt Sitton wrote him, Young asked that the letter be read into the Congressional Record, and has been talking to other veterans, hearing from them what “a real mess” the war is. Now he tells the Tampa Bay Times: “I think we should remove ourselves from Afghanistan as quickly as we can. I just think we’re killing the kids that don’t need to die.”
Killing the kids that don’t need to die. Let those words sink in. And this, too: Congressman Young says many of his colleagues in Congress feel the same way he does, but “they tend not to want to go public.”
A few days ago, just shy of the 11th anniversary of our invasion of Afghanistan, we marked a sad and tragic milestone: the 2000th member of the American armed forces to die in combat there. There are now 68,000 American men and women in Afghanistan, down from 100,000 as President Obama has ended the surge he first ordered in late 2009. Seventeen thousand Americans have been wounded, and in the last five years alone, according to the UN, more than 13,000 Afghan civilians have died. That’s a very conservative estimate.
How can we continue to justify this war begun to avenge the 9/11 attacks and punish those responsible, but now too long, too deadly, too mired in waste and corruption in a land that has resisted the ambitions of empire since the ancient Persians and Macedonians?
“Look at it this way,” journalist Dexter Filkins recently wrote in The New Yorker.“After eleven years, more than four hundred billion dollars spent and two thousand Americans dead, this is what we’ve built: a deeply dysfunctional, predatory Afghan state that seems incapable of standing on its own — even when we’re there.”
There are two more presidential debates. They will be yet another hoax unless someone puts to Barack Obama and Mitt Romney the same question asked by Congressman Young: “Why are we killing the kids that don’t need to die?” And then asks it again and again to each of them until we get an honest answer.
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By Kiley Kroh
17 comments on "Killing the Kids That Don’t Need to Die "
October 14, 2012 4:52am
We cannot kill enough people to create a world where everyone respects and loves us. There aren't enough bullets and bombs to convince the survivors of our night time drone attacks that we just had to maim and kill their children for their own good and they are in a better place now. There is a technical term for people who feel no empathy for their victims, who see no reason to stop harming people and who will lie loudly to keep the killing moving along. If they haven't been elected to public office we call them sociopaths, psychotics and we try to get them into a facility before they have a chance to hurt anyone. But if they are rich and have public office we call them "Governor" or "Senator" or even "President" and they are officially "sane", even "brilliant" for coming up with a great plan to make the world a happier, safer place by dropping bombs on sleeping Muslim babies.
There is a bit of terribly twisted logic which declares that since the Muslim world has psychotics in it we must have our own psychotics in public office authorize mass murders and hope we kill the "right" psychotics. Even now we have millions of people convinced that we can kill our way into a lasting peace. They are products of our exceptional educational system, which seems to teach unflinching loyalty to our blend of psychotic and irrational behavior.
We cling to our primitive ways, to our hatred of other tribes, other devotees of other deities. We still throw rocks and spears but now they explode on contact, dispersing slightly radioactive dust guaranteed to create tumors, birth defects and untimely deaths, even among our own troops. A good example of our psychotic leadership is that both halves of the Party proclaim a love of life, a respect for humanity and then they authorize the dropping of bombs, firing of missiles and the slaughter of innocent civilians, aka "collateral damage". The Party shows a banner saying "Pro-Life" and on the other side is "Bomb, bomb, bomb, Bomb Iran..." and they have a inability to see the contrast, to recognize that two mutually opposing philosophies cannot be held at the same time by a sane mind. You cannot be "pro-life" and also be "pro-war", although usually they phrase this as "pro-defense", with the provision that a "good offense is the best defense"...or bomb first and ask questions later.
My neighbor is a violent man who collects guns and likes to hunt. He has threatened me in the past for stopping by and talking to him and I believe he is capable of shooting me in a fit of rage. According to the philosophy of our national government, our leadership on both sides of the Party, it is right and good for me to burn down this man's house and shoot the people as they emerge. This would be self defense based on my real fear for my life. However, if I did this thing I would be arrested for murder and since I don't live in Texas I would likely be convicted and sent to jail. When George Bush invaded a country to try to kill a man who had threatened his father, thus killing tens of thousands of innocent people, he was made a senior statesman, an honored ex-president, he will never be without armed guards, a huge pension and lifetime health care, the best mankind can offer at our taxpayer's expense. Our latest President is also killing innocent women and children and for the exact same reason, but he claims to be moderate and even slightly liberal...He even won the Nobel Peace Prize while sending out unmanned drones to kill entire families while they slept!
When an entire political system and civil society becomes insane, when two diametrically opposed philosophies are held up as a single statement, the people involved become angry, frustrated and violent. Furthermore, since wars are not conducive to savings, they spend far more than they make, since we have to finance our slaughter by borrowing from the communists (our recent enemies towards whom we have pointed our nuclear arsenal) there is no way to function as a society, offering health care, education and decent shelters. Extended wars invariably destroy the society engaged in them. History has shown that all fascist regimes start unwinnable wars which bankrupt them and collapse their social order. America is splintering, falling apart and breaking into polarized groups of unbending hatred and violent men and women. This is normally not a situation which wins people a Nobel Peace Prize or strengthens a society.
October 14, 2012 11:45am
Right on, William. We need at least 50 million people to vote for Jill
Stein to get rid of the Republicrats!
October 13, 2012 5:26pm
Remember Michael Morre asking congressmen and senators to get their kids to sign up for war and the disgusted looks he received in "Bowling for Columbine"? Or Chris Hedge's description of war that it's only about death, destruction, and depravity and not the honour and courage we dress it up in....My question is who wanted these wars and how did they put the case for these wars forward? These two questions if answered correctly will point a finger at a totally evil subset of the human species. Perhaps at some future date those that council for war for private gain will be held responsible and sentenced to life in prison after a walk through a minefield, should they survive. A third question to ourselves is why do we continually allow such individuals to take command? Perhaps we simply cannot set the right criteria for people seeking leadership in government,while allowing the rich to set society's agendas? When was the last "good" war? Who was the aggressor? Who is the aggressor now? Etcetera, on and on...
October 13, 2012 5:15pm
this war, like most of the wars we have fought, have been orchestrated. Who orchestrates them? Follow the money. Neither party will end the war and only for political reasons ie " I wont do anything that might in the least keep me from being elected". The sheeple of the USA really dont give a crap unless its their kids getting blown up Thats why Generation Millenial, the generation of the kids being killed, need to get into politicss and kick ass and really make necessary changes Otherwise, nothing is ever going to change
October 13, 2012 4:25pm
One of the things that bothers me most about the concept of an "all volunteer" military, is the stop loss clause in their contracts. When troops such as ldavis48413's son who've already done two tours of duty can be called back to serve again without the right of refusal, then we don't have an volunteer military, we have involuntary servitude forced on many of the troops. Though I'm a pacifist from a pacifist heritage, I'd prefer the honesty and fairness of the draft to what we've got. Nor do I think more drones are the answer, though I still want the troops brought home as much now as I did when Bush first sent them. Perhaps its a good thing when war hawk congressmen are starting to realize our mistake, but I'm horrified by how long it has taken us to call it quits on this war. I hope that if Obama does get re-elected, he'll pull the rest of the troops out promptly, for he'll have nothing to lose at that point.
October 13, 2012 4:20pm
Unfortunately, this article does not say that the real danger to our servicemen begins after they return home. Since the Vietnam War, the news and entertainment media, as well as academia, have been waging a relentless defamation campaign against Americans who serve in the armed forces. This has led to employment discrimination against one group of people at an intensity not seen since the Cultural Revolution in China. The U.S. Department of Labor decreed during the 1970s that only jobs paying less than $25,000 per year are "suitable for veterans." That means that any veteran who earns a college degree becomes overqualified for all jobs open to him according to the Department of Labor. Although all colleges and universities do not admit veterans as students, there are enough that will to create armies of unemployable veterans who are overqualified for the lowest paying jobs and discriminated against for those with better remuneration. The Department of Labor is also supposed to investigate complaints of discrimination from veterans. It finds that there are no justificable complaints made and regards every vetern as less qualified than every non-veteran who gets hired ahead of him without even a cursory examination of the facts. Veterans who are discriminatiod against by the U.S. civil service can also complain to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which claims to assist fewer than one in every thousand veterans who file complaints. I know because I was the one they claimed to assist in 1998. Their efforts have placed me on the blacklist as a whistleblower for about 14 years. A veteran can file an appeal with the Merit System Protection Board if he is discriminated against because of his service in the armed forces by a federal agency. This Board has failed to assist any veterans in a significant way since being assigned the duty of protecting veterans from discrimination in the federal civil service in 1994. Tens of thousands of complaints filed by veteran have been rejected without even a consideration of the facts. In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed this agency's methods, which are always affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and concluded in a 9-0 decision that all of the standards used in deciding its cases are fundamentaly faulty and must be changed. The result of all this has been the death of several hundred thousand veterans of the Vietnam War, who were destitute and forced to live on the streets off and on for years. This is due entirely to malice by our federal civil servants and their contractors, especially American colleges and universities. I believe that this should be regarded as an American holocaust, and those responsible as mass murderers.
October 14, 2012 12:27pm
Unfortunately, chvietvet, your complaint has nothing to do with what Moyers addresses.
The merit system only gives a low-skill veteran a boost in qualifying for a low-paying job. The applicant still has to prove competence. There is nothing to be gained by hiring someone who can't do the work required. The "all-volunteer force" is the last refuge for people who can't get a job anywhere else. During the current war, the army sometmes was desperate enough to waive felonious convictions to get enough recruits. The recruits who were thus admitted and survive to become veterans still have to prove competence to get civilian jobs, even with veteran preference.
Your interpretation of the $25,000 limit is ridiculous. Nothing prevents a veteran from applying for a job paying more than that. Like the Earned Income Tax Credit, the veterans' preference is simply not needed by job seekers who can qualify for higher-paying jobs on their own merits.
As a 20-year veteran who volunteered (unpaid) for years with the VA, I have seen many flag-waving veterans blame "the system" for their own personal shortcomings, try to milk "the system" for more benefits than it was ever intended to provide, and then blame "the system" for not providing more. Some are retired senior officers who hate paying taxes.
There is as much shame as blame to spread around. Try to avoid both.
October 13, 2012 4:46pm
chvietvet, I'm grateful for your service and sorry for your suffering since your return stateside. I've no knowledge of the proportion of "federal civil servants and their contractors, especially American colleges and universities" who are directly responsible for the suffering of vets, but I think it is worth putting the blame directly on the shoulders of those in the highest authority who bear the ultimate responsibility, and that is our elected officials: the president/commander-in-chief, and all congressmen & women, who had no troubles signing blank checks for endless war in foreign lands, but were never honest about the costs to the american people, in dollars, in troops' lives, in troops' injuries and mental health, and in world opinion of the USA. They've never done right by the troops during their service or after, and have been especially miserly to veterans who have suffered such damage that they can no longer be used in a war zone. Thank you for bringing these vets' plight to people's attention - let's throw all the backseat war hawks out of office, and only elect people who regard war as a last resort that must be fully paid for, both during and after.
October 13, 2012 1:07pm
I see all of this as the result of an incompetent president ,Bush, VP Cheney (whose daughter is on the circuit trying to make us forget the ineptness of the man, and National Securtiy Advisor Condi Rice ( which she so keenly avoids in her book) as the reason the last ten years have gone the way they have.
They changed our lives forever.
So sorry for all who had to serve in these two wars, which would not have been, had the above done their jobs. They were caught so off guard, our own soil was bombed and thousands died all because of ineptness.
Repubs love wars as a means to build an economy.
October 14, 2012 9:50am
The 1% (with their "right" and "left" fists!) love wars as a means to build on their profits, and power.
When are we going to see that the same 1% is behind both puppets, Romney and Obama? You cannot defeat the 1% by supporting the 1%!!
Please vote against both fists of the 1% this time! Vote for the one viable candidate that is not in the back pocket of the 1%. Jill Stein is on the ballot in 38 states (and allowed as a write-in in 5 more states- source- www.jillstein.org/ballot/ -not bad for not having ANY help from the "progressive" media!)
Why has the "progressive" media turned their backs on the real effort to defeat the 1%? It's bad enough when the corporate media blocks all honest communication, but why does the "progressive" media have join the effort to maintain the illusion that we need the 1%'s "left" fist to defeat the 1%'s "right" fist? How can Obama apologists not see this puppet show farce for what it really is?
What is the point of voting for Obama when he is a hair-split away from being identical to Romney? Why???? Why are you killing all chances of defeating the 1%?!?
October 14, 2012 6:37pm
Kathleen, I understand your anger and frustration, but I don't believe you're thinking clearly. Chill out, take a deep breath, and think of what you're advocating.
As I said earlier (when someone pointed it out to me), if you're in a red state that has no chance at all of giving its electoral votes to Obama, then by all means, vote for Jill Stein if you want to. But I live in a state where it's a toss-up, though Obama might have a slight edge, and in those circumstances I think it would be childish to cast a vote just to make a statement.
There are far more issues than war and peace in this election. Things like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, rebuilding our infrastructure, Unemployment Compensation. Now, the Democratic party has strayed from its early firm commitment to the lot of the working man, but the Republican party has only been firm in confronting every problem that arises with their hypnotic mantra: cut taxes, cut taxes, with the lion's share going to the 1%.
Obama wants to raise taxes on the wealthy. Romney wants to cut their share even more. Is that what you want? Who do you think will get socked to cut the deficit? The 1% or the 99%?
Obama hasn't done enough to resist our dangerous Climate Change, but he has done a few things, like trying to encourage the development of alternate energy sources; for that, he gets mocked and ridiculed by Romney/Ryan, and do you really think they'll divorce themselves from Exxon Mobil?
And the social programs I mentioned, and a whole lot more, were initiated by the Democratic party, and they are MORE LIKELY to try to preserve them than the Republican party, which has hated them since their inception, and called them "socialistic."
You sound like you've somehow gotten yourself so indoctrinated that you just say, "they're both bad, don't vote for them, vote for Jill Stein because she has no possible chance of getting elected, but what the hell, it's not my fault if the Greater Evil gets in power instead of the Lesser Evil."
You know Jill Stein has no chance of winning the electoral votes or the popular votes, but you insist that people should vote for her. I think I can conclude that most of the votes going to her would be votes that might have gone to Obama. So you will make a statement. Well, as I said before, if you live in a Red state that will certainly go to the Republican candidates, then I say, go ahead and make your statement. I have voted for Green Party candidates before, in statewide elections. I do hate it when I feel the Democratic party takes my vote for granted.
But I can't vote for Jill Stein instead of Barack Obama. This election is too critical, especially coming 2 years after the conservative Supreme Court opened the door for corporations to spend millions of dollars to sway voters.
If Romney wins, then so do Big Bucks. You can run away from that conclusion, but I think the evidence will be clear. Money talks, and that's what progressives around the nation will conclude, and be disheartened accordingly. And the Tea Party ideology will run government, in all branches of government, and who knows for how long?
If you really don't know the difference between a Greater Evil and a Lesser Evil, I suggest you hit the history books and maybe you'll understand what I'm saying. There IS a difference, no matter how you gloss over it. It will make a HUGE difference if Obamacare is repealed, Social Security is privatized, and Medicare is vouchered, while Medicaid is left to the cash-strapped states to decide. And it will make a huge difference in women's issues and rights also.
Just lumping Obama together with Romney is not very sensible. I have been ticked off at Obama more than once, but I'd much rather have him in the White House than Romney.
Jill has no chance, and you know it. If you live in a "toss-up" state, do the right thing, and stop snarling.
October 14, 2012 9:48am
But they didn't build the economy. They looted the economy and put it on the credit card. The credit card was FICA.
Now they say seniors and the disabled are "useless eaters".
Why would anyone ever vote for a Republican? I guess many of these voters are gullible enough to believe the President might take their guns away. How pathetic.
October 13, 2012 11:28am
We should get out of there right away. Unfortunately, Obama, rightly or wrongly, feels his options are limited. If he brings them home now, his Republican critics will assail him continuously as a "cut-and-run Commander-in-Chief." And that will resonate with their voter base, especially in the South. And, as was demonstrated in this essay of Moyers, even Republicans are afraid of the political repercussions if they say we should stop letting our soldiers die in this hopeless cause.
It's frustrating to think that our wisest solution can't be considered because of politics. Afghanistan helped bring down the Soviet Union, and it has resisted other attempts of foreigners to dominate the people. The Karzai government is corrupt and doesn't control the whole country. The military we're arming and training is being penetrated by Islamist vengeance-seekers who are shooting their trainers.
Obama ended the war in Iraq, but the Afghan War is our longest, and we're just allowing more good Americans - and Allied soldiers - to die in a worthless cause.
We should get out, and not wait till 2014, but alas, can the CiC make these decisions without considering politics? (One recalls LBJ's deepening our commitment in Vietnam because he didn't want to be "the first American president to lose a war.")
Every time I see these veterans coming home in coffins, or hobbling around minus a leg or an arm, I always feel compelled to ask myself, "did this really have to happen?"
Now we have no draft, and the great bulk of us can ignore the war (unlike during the Vietnam era) and act the bully hero in saying we should stay here or there "as long as necessary." But do we have to limit our options because of misplaced concerns about machismo?
October 14, 2012 9:42am
Brilliant, Ron.
If there is true justification for a war, the nation should be willing to have a military draft. Otherwise we should not get involved in a shooting war.
Obviously the military industrial complex that Eisenhower so wisely warned us about has come to fruition. We need to tear it down for the sake our nation, and the world.
October 13, 2012 11:09am
My son did two tours some time ago and felt the war was not worth the cost.
October 13, 2012 10:46am
Why?
For short-term corporate profits...
To perpetuate the "Permanent War Economy(tm)" that's the only thing that's propping up capitalism...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/20/the-waning-of-the-modern-ages/print
October 13, 2012 10:27am
In addition to the "kids who don't need to die" are the kids who are abandoned on the battlefield. In 1986, a Pentagon panel concluded that American prisoners of war were still alive in Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia. That panel could not convince Congress, however. Neither could the family members of the missing men, so almost as many POWs and MIAs were abandoned in Southeast Asia after the Vietnam war ended as have been killed in Afghanistan.
Our "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" obviously has other priorities. What are "the people" who are obsessed with gay rights, women's rights, gun ownership, racial equality, gender equality, jobs, taxes, immigration, professional sports, tweeting, Facebook, and other "domestic" issues going to do about it?
We haven't been "our brother's keeper" for a long time. It would be nice if "we, the people" would care enough to rally around a leader who had that as a priority, but Moyers is not even a candidate for President.