[Vision2020] Support for Our Troops

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Dear Visionaries:

Once again some subscribers to this list have had the audacity to impute motives and opinoins to me that I do not hold.

Before I continue, I beg your indulgence in a little philosophy lesson about opinions.  Yes, they are a dime a dozen.  But Plato proposed the following formula that has served truth seekers very well for over two millennia.  The Greek is Doxa + Logos = Episteme.  Translated this means that an opinion backed up by an argument gives you knowledge.  Opinions that are not backed up with evidence formulated in a logical way do not deserve our assent.  I challenge any supporter of the war to offer evidence that the war is going well.

I supported the U. S. participation in the Gulf War and our invasion of Afghanistan.  In my criticism of the Iraq war I've always praised our armed forces as well trained and professional.  I've also said that they should be deployed only if there is a direct threat to the United States or if the UN or a wide coalition of major countries agree to military action.  Those conditions did not apply for our ill advised invasion of Iraq.

Practically every day I hear poignant feature stories of returning soldiers or families of deployed stories on NPR.  Just yesterday there were NPR interviews with three soldiers in Iraq who believe that we ought to stay until the "mission is accomplished."

I also trust the science of polling (just as Republicans secretly do) and conclude that a large majority of our troops in Iraq have different opinions, backed up their own evidence.  Blanket dissing of polls is simply another aspect of the right-wing dissing of science in general.  If Bush does not believe in polls, why did he skip campaigning in Idaho and California? 

I have appended a very moving story from The New York Times about the families of the two soldiers who were brutally killed.  I mourn the deaths of these brave men, but at the same time I condemn the civilian leaders who led them to their graves.

Nick Gier

June 21, 2006, The New York Times
Relatives Describe Young Men Determined to Serve Country
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

Correction Appended

When Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, came home from Iraq to South Texas for three weeks in May, his family was taken aback by his transformation, though they kept their thoughts quiet.

"He was very nervous," said his aunt Maria Vásquez. "He had never smoked, and he had started smoking, chain smoking. He was waking up in the night, very disturbed. He couldn't sleep well. He was very nervous, very jittery."

Private Menchaca, who was a newlywed, told his mother and his aunts that, although he was still glad he had enlisted in the Army, life in Iraq was difficult. They got the feeling that, privately, Private Menchaca, who grew up straddling the border in Brownsville and its two cultures, was dreading having to go back.

Just recently, he said, there had been an attack on members of his unit and he had lost all his clothes. They burned in a fire. He had only the uniform on his back.

"He said, 'Send me things: wipes, soap, Oreo cookies,' " she said. "He loved Oreo cookies."

In Oregon, Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, lived an altogether different life, far from the southern border, in a tiny Oregon farming town called Madras. He had an eye for a good spot to fish, a knack for hunting and a passion for fixing battered pickup trucks.

Private Tucker said in a voice mail message from Iraq, that his mother saved and released to the public, "Just going on a little vacation and I will be back before you know it."

Last Friday, Private Menchaca and Private Tucker were ambushed at a military checkpoint in Yusufiya, an area south of Baghdad riddled with insurgents. The two soldiers, who survived a shootout, were seen being taken away by insurgents. Their relatives, who were visited over the weekend by Army casualty affairs officers with word of the unconfirmed killings, are still awaiting DNA confirmation of the deaths.

If the two soldiers had one thing in common, it was their determination to join the Army and fight in Iraq, believing it to be the right thing to do. It is a message they tried to impress on their families, who worried incessantly about phantom snipers and hidden bombs. "I'm going to defend my country," Private Tucker said in the telephone message. "Be proud of me."

Just recently, Private Tucker told friends and family that he would be going to a more dangerous, remote section of Iraq, where he would be unable to call or send e-mail messages.

Rick Allen, the former mayor of Madras who hired Private Tucker, known as Tommy, as a teenager to work for him at his gas station and convenience store, said there was nothing that Private Tucker liked more than his dirt bikes and his tools. He also played the piano and loved music, his family said. "He was a determined kid," Mr. Allen said. "A tough kid."

Private Tucker's family lives on a stretch of highway just off the town center. On Tuesday, friends and family members sat in front of the house as police officials warned off reporters and onlookers.

Just before enlisting, Private Tucker, who made friends easily, worked in construction, but with his life a little out of focus, he decided to enlist in the Army, joining up last July. He was stationed at Fort Campbell and became a member of the 101st Airborne Division, where he met Private Menchaca.

During his whirlwind visit to Texas, Private Menchaca was matter-of-fact about the difficulties of his mission in Iraq. He talked about how he slept in vacant buildings, without plumbing or electricity, how he and the other soldiers shared batteries to run their electrical equipment. "He was not complaining," said Sylvia Grice, 37, a cousin. "He was not whining. He was just telling it like it is."

Private Menchaca made it a point to carve out time for his extended family on both sides of the border, spending time with his mother, his brother, his cousins, aunts and uncles in Houston, Matamoros and Brownsville. He also spent time with his wife, Christina, 18, whom he married without telling his family last September, one month before shipping out.

A high school dropout who later earned his graduate equivalency diploma, Private Menchaca had been unhappy working in Houston at a gas station. He decided to join the Army, hoping it would lead to a job as an immigration agent, and told his family Christmas Day, 2004 that he planned to enlist; they tried to talk him out of it. Private Menchaca's brother had served in the Army and had not enjoyed it, Mrs. Vásquez said.

But Private Menchaca insisted, and the family came around. He scored so high on his entrance test that he was given the option to bypass the infantry, said his cousin, Gabriela García. He chose not to do that. Instead, he signed up in March 2005 and wound up in the 101st Airborne.

Ms. García said her cousin reveled in the "challenge, the training, the camaraderie, the structure."

"We think of Kristian as a hero," said Ms. Grice. "You know, he didn't have to do this. He believed in what he was doing."

Maureen Ballaza contributed reporting from Houston for this article, and Jesse McKinley from Madras, Ore.

Correction: June 22, 2006

An article yesterday about the families of two American soldiers believed to have been killed after an ambush in Iraq misspelled the surname of the person who contributed reporting from Houston. She is Maureen Balleza, not Ballaza.