A Vested Interest

There is one thing all Americans should agree upon, regardless of our differences in opinions in how our military power should be allotted, and that is we need to support our troops. These are our sons, our daughters, our nephews, our nieces, and our neighbors who are spending important years of their youth risking their lives for this country. As I salute the sacrifices from our many veterans, I salute our current soldiers as they face death and injury on our behalf.

No one should want to send our troops into harm’s way without proper protections. Ironically, this is precisely what the Bush Administration did. What is outrageous is they are knowingly endangered our soldiers and ignored obvious solutions that would minimize these risks.

“Bullet proof” (technically, bullet resistant, yet still life saving) vests are available for our soldiers. Technological advances have made them lightweight and effective. It would be wise for soldiers at risk of being fired upon to wear them. The Defense Department has been appropriated the funds by Congress to buy these vests. The Bush Administration is obviously well aware there are soldiers who should be wearing them. Yet, somehow, the Bush Administration delayed getting around to ordering these vests and shipping these vests to soldiers, particularly those in combat zones in Iraq. What really irks me is now they are running ads claiming that it was Congressional Democrats who caused the delay, when the delay was totally the fault of the Administration.

This is inexcusable. David Hackworth alerted us to this unusual situation. Once again, we learn that Bush, Rumsfeld, and those who have been planning this war for so long have continued to ignore intelligence reports and now even common sense. We have sent young people to die in a war that we were woefully unprepared to fight. In fighting back, we have excellent equipment yet the military forget to train sufficient soldiers in how to use them. We have not coordinated different areas of the military to conduct minimal communications with each other, thus minimizing their overall impact as well as endangering troops to friendly fire.
The war in Iraq is quickly becoming another lesson in how not to fight a war.

An important lesson from Viet Nam is to know how to protect yourself and learn how to fight your enemy. We entered Viet Nam skilled in conventional combat yet unprepared to fight an opponent that used guerilla warfare. Once again, we quickly won the conventional war in Iraq, yet were unprepared for the long guerilla-like combat that has resulted since. Unfortunately, we not only are uncertain how to fight the enemy this time, we aren’t even prepared to defend ourselves.