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Will We See the Return of Ted Westhusing?
By
Wilton D. Alston
“I cannot support a mission that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars. I am sullied. I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored. Death before being dishonored any more.”
Col. Ted Westhusing, West Point graduate, Special Forces veteran, philosophy professor, devoted husband and father, devout Catholic, shortly before his apparent suicide in Iraq.
No, Colonel Westhusing won’t actually be coming back. Not in the flesh anyway. When I mention him “returning” in this context, it’s because I figure – with apologies to the makers of those potato chips (the people who cheerfully tell us, “Eat all you want – we'll make more”)– that the State ought to have a slogan that more accurately describes its feelings about the people in its standing armies. Something like: “Kill all you want, we’ll send more.” No other conclusion can be drawn when one examines only a few of the more recent goings-on through the prism of universal morality and libertarian philosophy.
I examined elsewhere the complete waste of Westhusing’s life, as well as the similarly suspect scenario surrounding Pat Tilman’s death, both in some detail. Much more information is available to anyone with time to burn and an Internet connection. To realize, at this late date, that the likelihood that other brave, if misguided, young men will likely see the same or similar fate if the Bu’Shite chickenhawks get their way, is absolutely disgusting.
That is really the point of my examination of those two deaths. We do not lament Colonel Westhusing or Corporal Tillman because they are “special” per se, i.e., different in any morally substantive way from the many other young men and women who have died similarly needless deaths. We lament them because they are, quite unfortunately, not unique. They are, in fact, harbingers of just how far that waste can extend. There are signs indicating that despite the facts, little has changed in the wake of these and many other wasted lives. Here are just a few.
The Invasion of Iraq, including the much-vaunted “surge,” has been a failure and a blind man could see it.
In fact, if aliens came to Earth on a Wednesday and stopped by D.C. on their way to see the “Seven Wonders” they would, by the following Friday, likely be asking, “Say, how come y’all are still in this Iraq place?” (Aliens always have a Southern accent.)
The number and variety of people calling for a withdrawal is almost comical. If President Bush and I were in a bar, sipping Chivas or whatever, I’d probably break it down to him with something like this. “Dude, when William F. Buckley says the war is a failure, as he was saying nearly two years ago, it’s past time to pack our bags, ummkay?” (I mean, really!) Yet, the White House seems uninterested in these truths.
The continued insurgency in Iraq is composed, in large part, of people from one of our “allies” in the region. Even before Washington started cultivating Iraqi Sunnis as part of the “surge,” U.S. Officials admitted that Saudis make up about half of the Sunni extremists who comprise the foreign fighters in Iraq. Even better, many of them are suicide bombers! The irony here is again, almost comical. Given that most of the "terrorists" from 9/11,and very likely some of the money that funded the 9/11 attacks – the justification used by the Bu’Shites for the invasion of Iraq – was also Saudi in origin, we probably had more reason to attack Saudi Arabia than Afghanistan, let alone Iraq.
Yet here we are, mired in “never-ending war” against one of Saudi Arabia’s chief rivals in the region, and preparing to nuke a second, Iran. We supply the bodies and the money, and they get to oversee the spoils, in exchange for letting us leave even more people there to duck bullets if needed. (These bullet-duckers inhabit areas called “military bases.”) Such a deal!
Those close to President Bush continue to push for more invasions and military action in the Persian Gulf. In fact, the US Army’s Central Command is building a staging area in Kuwait for the purpose of conducting “full spectrum” operations in 22 of the 27 nations in the region.
It would seem, to the novice, the outsider, that innocent person with a pulse and an IQ just above a kumquat, that invading another country in the Persian Gulf would be a little, well, stupid. This is particularly clear when one examines a few relevant facts, such as: a) we have failed to achieve, by even the most modest measure, the bulk of the (public) pre-war goals for the Iraq invasion; b) we are pretty much out of bodies with which to supply that war; and c) the U.S. citizenry is overwhelmingly against continuing in Iraq. Unless there were some other, higher goals, some secret goals that were not publicly noted, I’d say we’re batting close to zero with this particularly invasion.
Given this data, what does one of President Bush’s chief advisers suggest? Let’s invade Iran too. (You cannot make this stuff up!) What is going on here? Was there a two-for-one sale on war plans at the offices of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) or something? For those who missed it, this is the think tank (I use that term loosely) that dreamed up the plan for regime change in Iraq back in 2000 or so. The document that contained that plan, entitled “Rebuilding American’s Defenses” is a tour de force in hegemonic lunacy. The actual plan the Administration followed and in fact, many of the justifications, were taken largely from this document and others like it.
Despite the facts listed above, even some libertarians, supposedly conversant in a philosophy that is categorically opposed to the initiation of violence, cannot seem to understand that invasions are not generally classifiable as “self defense.” Yes, it seems that the stars are aligning. Kill all you want, we’ll send more.
The voices of reason, in direct opposition to those apparently stricken with 9/11 Derangement Syndrome, have been swift in their reasoned responses. These warriors encourage me, and certainly, their numbers continue to swell, but I suspect the Bu’Shites won’t care. It is clear to me that those who have the power of the U.S. Armed Forces at their disposal care little about logic and reason. They’re just glad it’s not them ducking the bullets or coming back from some hellhole missing an arm or a leg. Kill all you want, we’ll send more.
The Enablers of Lunacy
Despite my disgust for the ringleaders of this invade-a-county-every-week lunacy, there are others who are far from blame-free in this escapade. Even the mainstream media (MSM) has bought into the pageantry. The first problem, but nowhere near the last, is referring to what will happen if we leave Iraq as a “civil war.” A civil war is an armed conflict in which parties within the same culture, society or nationality fight against each other for the control of political power. This is not the case in Iraq.
The nationality, Iraqi, is artificial, created by interlopers, of which the U.S. is but one. The cultures involved are different enough that living together is absolutely destined to cause conflict, unless martial law and/or a despotic ruler are in place. (Saddam Hussein was such a ruler. Remember him?) The major groups who would undoubtedly battle for control of Iraq – the Shiites and the Sunnis, and to some extent the Kurds – would, without external busybodies, very likely decide to live in separate countries. They don’t want political control. They want to be left alone. Yet, the cries from the Bu’Shites remain fixed and stoic, like an old picture of John Wayne’s jaw. Kill all you want, we’ll send more.
None of the groups in the region would be concerned, necessarily, with trying to control land of the other. As such, the term civil war is misplaced. However, such a term does create the impression that we must not leave, lest all hell break loose. Lost in that simplistic logic is the fact that the creation of the Iraq of today, for the benefit of external interests – chief among them: a single state with which to negotiate for oil – has led directly to this situation. The solution is for those external interests to get the hell out and leave these people alone. But no, that’s too easy. Kill all you want, we’ll send more.
History versus Fantasy
It is also relatively apparent that the propaganda of the Bu’Shites is built around a fantasy view of American history, and how likely we are to be able to set up a “stable, American-style democracy” in the region. It is clear that this outcome would benefit the U.S., particularly given the huge oil reserves – second largest in the world – in Iraq, but such a choice as the kind of government under which they live is a decision for the residents of the region, not those who invade from afar. Have we forgotten our own history?
The dissimilarities between the war in Iraq and the American Revolutionary War are so large as to hopefully not require analysis, but given the type of “history” and context available on places like Faux News, maybe a little review is warranted. The people who fought the British during the American Revolution were trying to prevent or preclude further rule by the British. The people fighting against the U.S. soldiers in Iraq – known as “insurgents” – are not trying to help Saddam Hussein, or anyone like him, re-ascend to the throne. They simply want those who have invaded their land to leave. Sound familiar?
All of the people who fought during the American Revolution – on both sides – came, in large part from the same place, Great Britain specifically, and Europe more generally. No one fighting the U.S. troops came from Amerika! We are, plainly, invaders, fighting and killing people who we traveled a great distance to shoot, for no other purpose than because we thought the guy in charge of their country was a threat to us. The fact that he was not, while hardly debatable, is no longer even that important, since he is, as best I can tell, dead. How much less of a threat can he become? Yet the battle cries from “The Decider” remain unchanged. Kill all you want, we’ll send more.
So we continue to wage war in the region. We continue to stay and kill more of the inhabitants, ostensibly until they adopt a manner of government that suits us. (The fact that we, and our allies, specifically caused the death of up to 100,000 thousand people in the region with our sanctions was apparently unsatisfying!) Let me ask a relatively simple question. If the roles were reversed, would we call those who took up arms against our invaders “insurgents” or freedom fighters? The irony is palpable, and yet many might be surprised to hear that so many people in the world take exception to our leaders’ behavior.
Is it not codified, in the very Constitution (and related documents) that every fighting man claims to defend, that the right of self-determination is sacred above all others? Why the hell are we in Iraq then? It certainly isn’t because we give a crap about the Iraqis, a civil war we might leave in our wake, or any of that kind of rancid hog manure. It’s quite simply because we figure we’ll be better off if they adopt our state-sponsored religion: the “religion” of democracy.
Don’t we have an amendment to the very same constitution mentioned above stating plainly that the State cannot do that in our very own country? And yet we do it abroad.
Does anyone remember that saying about the pot calling the kettle black? When one examines what we’d like to think the U.S. stands for and what our actions abroad seem to indicate, one gets the impression that the pot and kettle are a little closer than name-calling would indicate. In fact, if our leaders’ rhetoric about freedom is the pot and those same people’s actions in the region we supposedly invaded to bring freedom is the kettle, I’d say the pot and the kettle are pretty close friends now. In fact, I’d say the pot and kettle just had triplets.
Conclusion
At the end of my first essay about Col. Westhusing, I asked:
So who killed Ted Westhusing? … We did. Every person who displays a “support the troops” magnet on their car killed him. Every person who stands around the water cooler (or posts on “the internets”) about the desperate need for Amerikan intervention to stop the spread of heinous “Islamo-Fascists” killed him. Every school official who allows the U.S. military to recruit new killers-for-hire on school grounds killed him. Every person who is not absolutely certain that a standing army has no purpose but aggression and imperialism killed him.
It seems pretty clear to me that every conceivable action in the Persian Gulf, except leaving, will lead to one inevitable result: more Ted Westhusings, more Pat Tillmans, and more people not so well-known who end up just as dead. How proud can we be of a country ostensibly founded upon freedom and self-determination, but whose leaders seem to have adopted the new mantra: “Kill all you want, we’ll send more”?
Not very much. Not very much at all.
Wilt Alston [send him mail] lives in Rochester, NY, with his wife and three children. When he’s not training for a marathon or furthering his part-time study of philosophy, he works as a principal research scientist in transportation safety, focusing primarily on the safety of subway and freight train control systems.
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