Listening to the Military
Michael Yon posted a new dispatch on his blog. In it, he talks about the "forgotten war" in Afghanistan, the recent attacks on Secretary Rumsfield, and the importance of listening to the soldiers who are fighting the war.
On Rumsfield:
And when these old veterans talk, we should all listen. They know war. We should listen more to our veterans than to politicians. We are more likely to get straight answers about war from warriors than we are from politicians and most of the media.
Like it or not, "Rummy" is a politician. He's a good one. He's an effective administrator. But he's just an administrator, when all is said and done. If he hasn't been personally involved in a battle, he can't have the same perspectives and understandings that the people in the field do.
Joe Galloway (the reporter from "We Were Soldiers") had this to say about Secretary Rumsfield:
I can wish that your boss [Donald Rumsfeld] had surrounded himself with close advisers who had, once at least, held a dying boy in their arms and watched the life run out of his eyes while they lied to him and told him, over and over, "You are going to be all right. Hang on! Help is coming. Don't quit now".
Such men in place of those who had never known service or combat or the true cost of war, and who pays that price, and had never sent their children off to do that hard and unending duty. I could wish for so much. I could wish that in January of this year I had not stood in a garbage-strewn pit, in deep mud, and watched soldiers tear apart the wreckage of a Kiowa Warrior [helicopter] shot down just minutes before and tenderly remove the barely alive body of WO Kyle Jackson and the lifeless body of his fellow pilot. They died flying overhead cover for a little three-vehicle Stryker patrol with which I was riding at the time. I could wish that Jackson's widow Betsy had not found, among the possessions of her late husband, a copy of my book, carefully earmarked at a chapter titled Brave Aviators, which Kyle was reading at the time of his death. That she had not enclosed a photo of her husband, herself and a 3 year old baby girl.
On the character of those attacking Secretary Rumsfield:
And some highly respected officers such as recently retired Major General John Batiste have been calling for Donald Rumsfeld to resign. When John Batiste was leading the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, he was not a stay-in-the-palace general. Like many of our top military leaders, Batiste was frequently on the battlefield. He lost more than 100 soldiers in Iraq. I would see the General personally attending the memorials for his soldiers.
General Batiste knows the face of war, and his voice should be heard by Americans. Some people have called Generals like John Batiste "traitors" because they speak out in retirement against civilian leadership. Batiste and Galloway might be a lot of things, but they are both patriots to freedom and brave men. They are also both very smart about war.
On Afghanistan:
The Canadians are fighting more and more although few people seem to notice. Hopefully, Bill can help change that. No matter what anyone says, the Afghanistan I just left is easily as dangerous as the Iraq I spent almost a year in. But whereas we are beating back the enemies and winning in Iraq, the enemies in Afghanistan are getting stronger as the seconds tick. We need to listen to our military experts and to our young soldiers, too. Like Ernie Pyle once noted, nobody is more plainspoken than combat soldiers. The ones I met in Afghanistan call that the "forgotten war" but unless things change dramatically, 2007 will be a year everyone remembers in Afghanistan.
On listening to the military:
Soldiers, you are fighting a war that is becoming the Great Undocumented War. We at home need to know what is happening, what you are doing right, wrong. Good or bad, tell us what you need. We are listening. Send us your stories.
Read the dispatch. Then go read the stories.
This entry was tagged. Foreign Policy Troop Support