[Vision2020] A soldier speaks out:

[Paul Duffau]

http://knoxnews.com/kns/perspectives/article/0,1406,KNS_2797_3946335,00.html

By DAVID M. LUCAS
July 24, 2005


As I read the letters in a recent Sunday Perspective section which were, for 
the most part, very anti-war, I could not help but feel a great deal of 
frustration and sadness for the people who wrote them and those who share 
their views. The letter writers said things such as, "This war is almost a 
carbon copy of the Vietnam War," "Bush lied to America," and my favorite, 
"Let's support our troops. Bring them home."
These are some of the most ridiculous statements I have read in over a year. 
Why in over a year? Because I just returned home after spending 367 days 
patrolling the streets in downtown Baghdad with the Army's 10th Mountain 
Division.

To address the first point of this being a carbon copy of the Vietnam War, I 
will only ask if the letter writer served in either Vietnam or Iraq. If not, 
then he has no basis for his opinion except what he has read in the press or 
seen on TV as to what either is really like.

I know that the war my men and I fought is a totally different war than the 
one I see being reported by almost the entire media. There are a few 
exceptions to this, but they are generally overwhelmed by the massive 
anti-war/anti-Bush crowd.

"Bush lied to America" is not only false, but it is laughable. Every single 
major intelligence agency in the world agreed that Saddam Hussein possessed 
weapons of mass destruction. Virtually every politician, regardless of party 
affiliation, agreed that he had them and went on record as saying such.

Did he have them or not is a question that will take a long time to answer, 
due to the many possibilities such as destroying the WMD, moving them to 
Syria or that they never existed in the first place. I don't pretend to know 
the answer, but I do know that Saddam needed to go, and the world — 
especially the United States — is a better and safer place without him in 
power.

"Let's support our troops. Bring them home." Please don't ever say those 
words again. Nothing is so disheartening to our troops who are in harm's way 
than to hear our own citizens say things like that.

On June 16, 2004, I willingly said goodbye to my wife and parents in a 
parking lot at Fort Drum, N.Y., not knowing if I would ever see them again. 
I don't expect any kinds of praise for this or special thanks because that 
is my job, and I knowingly volunteered for it. I never would have done that 
if I did not believe that I was defending this great country of ours and all 
those in it.

Many people will think this is just defending the president, but I will tell 
you that I would never risk my life for somebody else's ideas if I did not 
hold them myself. That being said, I am a soldier, and I will do my duty to 
my country every time, no matter what the personal cost.

As I said before, there are two different wars being fought: the war in Iraq 
and the war being reported in the media. Very few times are the great things 
that are being done in Iraq reported on because they do not grab the 
headlines or the ratings that casualties do.

One of the biggest exceptions I have seen is the News Sentinel. I know 
because the paper plastered my face across the front page of the paper 
several months ago when my men rescued two kidnappers and freed two Egyptian 
nationals who had been abducted the day prior and were on their way to being 
beheaded. While this was a great day for us, it was certainly not the first 
time we had helped Iraqis or other innocent people.

After one particular suicide car bomb went off, killing nearly two dozen 
people and destroying several civilian homes, my platoon helped a family out 
by bringing wood to board the windows that had been blown out and 
brandishing brooms to clean up the rubble caused by the blast. I can assure 
you that those people were glad we were there, and we were more than happy 
to help, even though our efforts were not known to anyone outside that 
family and my platoon.

On another occasion, we were able to put two generators into a town that had 
never had steady power before, and we gave a reliable source of energy to 
over 300 homes. That story was never reported in the United States.

What was reported was another suicide bomber who blew about 150 meters from 
a site that my battery was tasked with protecting. This particular bombing 
was aimed at the Jordanian Embassy, which was located a couple hundred 
meters down the road. The bomber was successful in killing himself, one 
embassy guard and a family of seven who lived across the street from the 
embassy.

So I spent Christmas morning helping to recover the bodies of the mother and 
her six small children. In fact, this story was so spectacular that my 
picture was taken by an Associated Press photographer at the site, and it 
was on the cover of newspapers all over the world. Why this story and not a 
story of one of the hundreds of good deeds that took place all over Iraq at 
the same time? Because "Nine Dead in Bombing" will sell more papers than 
"Platoon Helps Innocent Bombing Victims."

I will wrap this up by saying that you are entitled to your beliefs, and you 
should believe in whatever you want, but don't pretend to know what you are 
talking about just because you have watched 30 minutes of CNN the night 
before. Go and talk to the people who have been there — not the people who 
make assumptions from a TV studio — and then form your opinion based on 
facts.

Don't pretend to support troops by trying to undercut their efforts at the 
same time. Just go to bed at night and pray for their safety and thank God 
that they are there to protect you and your family, no matter your beliefs.

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