Letter From an Angry Soldier
I don’t know if the following letter’s anonymous composer was writing about her own reality or a fictional reality. But either way, the message of the letter speaks truth.
The original letter was posted at craigslist. I’m including the entire text because there was talk of it being removed due to strong language.
But, if soldiers can sacrifice their time, families (don’t kid yourself–you can never get missed years back), limbs, and lives for us, the least we can do is sacrifice our profanity discomfort to hear the words some are having to scream because we aren’t acting like we can hear them.
So, here’s one Letter From an Angry Soldier:
Date: 2007-04-10, 1:00PM PDT
I’m having the worst damn week of my whole damn life so I’m going to write this while I’m pissed off enough to do it right.
I am SICK of all this bullshit people are writing about the Iraq war. I am abso-fucking-lutely sick to death of it. What the fuck do most of you know about it? You watch it on TV and read the commentaries in the newspaper or Newsweek or whatever god damn yuppie news rag you subscribe to and think you’re all such fucking experts that you can scream at each other like five year old about whether you’re right or not. Let me tell you something: unless you’ve been there, you don’t know a god damn thing about it. It you haven’t been shot at in that fucking hell hole, SHUT THE FUCK UP!
How do I dare say this to you moronic war supporters who are “Supporting our Troops” and waving the flag and all that happy horse shit? I’ll tell you why. I’m a Marine and I served my tour in Iraq. My husband, also a Marine, served several. I left the service six months ago because I got pregnant while he was home on leave and three days ago I get a visit from two men in uniform who hand me a letter and tell me my husband died in that fucking festering sand-pit. He should have been home a month ago but they extended his tour and now he’s coming home in a box.
You fuckers and that god-damn lying sack of shit they call a president are the reason my husband will never see his baby and my kid will never meet his dad.
And you know what the most fucked up thing about this Iraq shit is? They don’t want us there. They’re not happy we came and they want us out NOW. We fucked up their lives even worse than they already were and they’re pissed off. We didn’t help them and we’re not helping them now. That’s what our soldiers are dying for.
Oh while I’m good and worked up, the government doesn’t even have the decency to help out the soldiers whos lives they ruined. If you really believe the military and the government had no idea the veterans’ hospitals were so fucked up, you are a god-damn retard. They don’t care about us. We’re disposable. We’re numbers on a page and they’d rather forget we exist so they don’t have to be reminded about the families and lives they ruined while they’re sipping their cocktails at another fund raiser dinner. If they were really concerned about supporting the troops, they’d bring them home so their families wouldn’t have to cry at a graveside and explain to their children why mommy or daddy isn’t coming home. Because you can’t explain it. We’re not fighting for our country, we’re not fighting for the good of Iraq’s people, we’re fighting for Bush’s personal agenda. Patriotism my ass. You know what? My dad served in Vietnam and NOTHING HAS CHANGED.
So I’m pissed. I’m beyond pissed. And I’m going to go to my husband funeral and recieve that flag and hang it up on the wall for my baby to see when he’s older. But I’m not going to tell him that his father died for the stupidty of the American government. I’m going to tell him that his father was a hero and the best man I ever met and that he loved his country enough to die for it, because that’s all true and nothing will be solved by telling my son that his father was sent to die by people who didn’t care about him at all.
Fuck you, war supporters, George W. Bush, and all the god damn mother fuckers who made the war possible. I hope you burn in hell.
Speech from an Angry Senator
And in another forum on Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid discovered Congress’s missing backbone in a scathing speech delivered at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars:
No more will Congress turn a blind eye to the Bush Administration’s incompetence and dishonesty.
We have already held more than 50 hearings on Iraq, we have already exposed the false and misleading evidence the administration sold the world and the American people as it swaggered toward war.
We may not be able to prevent President Bush from vetoing our supplemental bill, but we can and will keep trying to change his mind.
What a shame that after five and a half years, so many lost lives and so much treasure depleted, President Bush hasn’t budged from the shoot-first, talk-never style that one national magazine described as “cowboy diplomacy” — that got us into this mess in the first place..
Winning this war is no longer the job of the American military. Our courageous troops have done everything asked of them and more. They routed the Iraqi military, captured Baghdad in days, deposed and then captured the dictator.
The failure has been political. It has been policy. It has been presidential.
The president has dug in his heels in this fight, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Only through accommodation, on both sides, and some degree of compromise, can we make progress.
We are anxious to have that conversation, but so far the President is not. Democrats are reaching out to Republicans in Congress in hopes of bipartisan cooperation.
Only the President is the odd man out, and he is making the task even harder by demanding absolute fidelity from his party.
We don’t have meetings with the President - not real, substantive meetings. He holds carefully scripted sessions where he repeats his talking points.
Yes, he is our President, but we are the people’s representatives. We will meet with him any time he calls upon us to discuss war policy.
But he owes it to us to listen as we represent the American people.
Our timetable is fair and reasonable. We have put our plan on the table. If the president disagrees, let him come to us with an alternative.
If he believes more time is needed, let him tell us why. If he has new benchmarks to finally hold Iraqis accountable, let him propose them. He says repeatedly that we cannot leave until we have achieved victory. Let him define victory.
Yeah, Dubya. Define victory. What give-em-hell Harry said!
Read More: iraq, iraq war, bush, bush administration
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Very good. I hope it is real. If it is, then we are just about there. When that soldier and others get just a tiny bit more mad, then maybe they will accept just a bit more responsibility and refuse to go. No soldiers, no wars.
I hope Harry keeps it up too.
You can talk to a real person or leave a recording for Harry and Nancy:
Harry: 202-224-3542
Nancy: 202-225-4965
It took me 1 minute for each and 2 minutes on my calling card for a total cost of 6 cents.
I do it all the time. They keep a talley.
They need our support like any other human being needs support.
I saw that letter when it was tagged on del.icio.us. Like you said, it really does speak the truth, whether it’s real or not. The Bush Administration, the mainstream media, and most citizens turn a cheek to the troops in Iraq. If they don’t have to see them, hear them, or learn of them, they’re happy.
p.s. Thanks for adding me to your blogroll. I did the same for you.
Xman: Thats a great idea to give Pelosi and Reid a supportive call.
Ashley: Thanks for the link. Yeah, I felt a little weird about posting that whole letter, but I get SOOOO much repeat pro-war head-in-the-sand blindly-support-your-country-right-or-wrong email, that I thought I should return the favor and help everybody spread this letter around. Otherwise, as you said, the troops are out of sight, out of mind to most of the country everyday…
Maybe if you posted faces of all that were killed. Maybe even tell a little about their life and their familes.
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2007.03.html
Pelosi grandstanded with her trip to the Middle East, with nothing accomplished. The same with Reid and all his speeches as troops die and are maimed and things remain the same.
If they took a stand and cut off all the funding for the war, may be then, things might change.
It’s more important to keep the war going, since it might help them in the next election, just as it had in this past one.
> Pelosi grandstanded with her trip to the Middle East, with nothing accomplished.
I wouldn’t say that…Pelosi, along with Laura Bush that week, almost single-handedly brought headscarves back into Western fashion. ;-)
Pelmo,
I think we are just victims of the good cop, bad cop deception. The goal for both parties in Iraq is the same. Secure the oil (bases) and rebuild contracts.
All the so called “spats” between Cheney, Bush, Pelosi, Reid, etc. is just a little dance meant to divert our attention away from what is really goiing on…under the table. If you look at the Bill, we are not getting “out”.
The new pressure on Maliki just insures a greater violent suppression of the Iraqi people…with the details hidden from our view (torture, etc.).
Does this sound remotely like the genocide in the New World?
I can’t find a single MSM, cable or PBS reporter telling us what is really going on. What it is really about. They are just busy telling us what they have been told to tell us…or just repeating what they have been told. I don’t see any real investigative reporting going on.
I have an angry ramble going this morning!
So…did that chick want to party? Did she leave a number?
Reid’s speech was an appetizer that left me full…though now it is a new day and I’m starving for more.
Joe, if that’s a real letter, I’ll post it also. She should cut an audio and/or video and post it here:
http://pol.moveon.org/videovets/
deadissue: I’m not sure if it’s a real letter or not. Since posting it, somebody added this comment claiming that there weren’t any marines killed in during the time period that would fit the author’s supposed situation: comment at Digg. However, fiction or not, I still think it’s a great letter.
Thanks for the link to the videovets…it’s enlightening to hear real vets, real vet families talking honestly about how they feel, and it’s good to hear that I’m not a traitor for being anti-war, too…
Thanks for posting that letter. It made me tear up with stinging furor.
Seen this?
—
Only One In Ten US Dead
In Iraq Are Reported
The Green Zone Follies
4-25-7
BAGHDAD — “Six days ago, I was in an armed convoy driving through the McCain-safe streets of Baghdad when a non-existent rocket, made right here and not in Tehran, blasted into a truck carrying fifteen GIs. We had to stop, could not turn around because there were vehicles behind us, frantically trying to flee in all directions, and so I saw what were the shredded remains of all fifteen soldiers littering the street and smoldering. Not the sort of thing to look at, or smell, after breakfast or before lunch. There was not a word of this in our media at home and the official casualty lists, posted on the net didn’t mention any of them. There are fifteen that never got reported. Fellow in the next building from me does the casualty reports for transmitting back to the States and he says they publish the names of one in ten. This has been a very bad month with over 300 known dead! That doesn’t cover those with faces missing or legs up on a local roof, feeding the birds. This place has become a living hell, what with occasional snipers shooting our men inside the “really safe” Green Zone, setting off bombs in the “heavily guarded” Iraqi government compound and blowing up the hand puppet legislators at lunch, mortar rounds from the “defeated insurgents’” slamming down at all times of the day and night, and so on.
This crazy Bush ’surge ‘is not working because we have had to withdraw all our troops from outlying provinces and they have been replaced with local religious crazies who shoot anything that moves. The insurgents have virtually destroyed the power grids so Baghdad gets electric power a few hours a day (at the very best); the water supply has been “interfered with” so the locals get shit-infested water from the river but we, who are Bringing Bush Democracy to the benighted heathens have our own generators and our own water, carefully filtered of shit and body parts, so we can cheerfully, and proudly, show the world how better the locals are off with our brand of vicious tyranny as opposed to Saddam’s. They ought to bring Bush and Cheney over here, strip them buck naked and use them as decoys and then we’d see a rapid withdrawal for certaion! And hear loud cheers as the GIs would be struggling with the locals to pick up presidential and vice presidential body parts as souvenirs.”
http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a2672.htm#004
Pelosi began a formal dialog with countries Bushco had frozen out.
I’d say that alone was accomplishment enough.
I hadn’t seen that letter, Indigobusiness. That’s worse than quagmire, that’s turning into a slaughter. It’s more than radical insurgents, it’s like if another country invaded the US, and every man, woman, and child were fighting against them…wouldn’t be much way for them to win (short of giving everybody a big-screen TV and free Xboxs…), certainly not after 4 years with no clean drinking water, hot water, electricity…it’s time to come home and let them rebuild the country we destroyed.
I have to admit, I liked Pelosi talking to Syria…one thing I’ve learned in the workplace…just the act of bosses/employees not speaking to each other for an extended period of time causes false rumors and paranoid ideas to emerge that grow into full-blown conflicts over nothing. Talking is good. People like to be talked to, and just listening in person can dispel a lot of unwarranted hostilities.