Charge of the Far-Right Brigade

Forward, the Far-Right Brigade!
Was there a man dismayed?
No, though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered
Theirs not to make reply
Theirs not to reason why
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the Valley of Death
Drove the ten hundred.

U.S. Death Toll in Iraq Reaches Grim Milestone

(Reuters) - The American death toll in Iraq topped 1,000 on Tuesday nearly 18 months after President Bush launched the war that has become a central issue in the November U.S. presidential elections. U.S. casualties in Iraq have surged in recent weeks, particularly among Marines, as Washington fights a guerrilla war that has no quick end in sight. Bush's Democratic rival John Kerry -- a decorated Vietnam War veteran -- called it "a tragic milestone." More

Today is the day I dreaded, and yet expected, would come. Expected, given the lack of international support for our invasion, the loss of civil order and resulting chaos in Iraq, our lack of a transition or exit strategy, and our abuse of the Iraqi people and destruction of their daily life. These reasons are known to all, and too well. But the thousand American deaths surprised a few. It certainly would have surprised the man who in May 2003 commandeered some real military pilot's jet and landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln, where he had ordered the unfurling of a banner that said "Mission Accomplished". I'm sure that George W. Bush hoped to shower us with photos of that day during the fall of 2004. Well, here we are.

Ironically, Bush said today that "We will be there until the mission is finished." If i were prosecutor cross-examining him, I might ask, "Were you lying then, or are you lying now?" Or, there's a third possibility. Perhaps under Bush's watch, we're simply moving backwards.

Only backwards thinking can explain their continued effort to confuse the "war on terror" and the invasion of Iraq, two events connected solely in the minds and plans of the neocons:

Bush administration officials sought to put the 1,000 deaths in Iraq in the context of the war against terrorism. "When combined with U.S. losses in other theaters in the global war on terror, we have lost well more than a thousand already," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing.

Rumsfeld's smug and cavalier (is there any other kind?) words are well past the "sell by" date for the fictional al-Qaeda connection. It only makes sense if we're going backwards in time. Personally, I don't blame the Bush administration for the events of September 11. Those attacks were probably unavoidable, given our resources and knowledge. But the deaths of 1000 Americans, and over 10,000 Iraqis, was totally preventable. By going to Iraq, we've made it another Ground Zero, another place for American suffering, a tragic connection of our own creation.

At the same press conference, AP News reported that Rumsfeld said "our enemies have underestimated our country, our coalition. They have failed to understand the character of our people. And they certainly misread our commander in chief." Like Bush, he seems to suffer from rhetorical dyslexia--mixing up his subjects and objects. It'd be more accurate to say that we underestimated their country and their coalition of Sunnis and Shiites. We failed to understand the character of the Iraqi people, proud and unbowing. And our commander in chief certainly misread them. Again, these administration folks have things...backwards.

This entry would not be completely meaningful if I just left it at that: my angry thoughts and my sadness at a country gone wrong. Even though it's not 1854 Balaklava and they're not the Light Brigade, our soldiers still obey and do and die because thats what soldiers do. I only hope we can recast our mission and trim our sails so that their brave efforts were not offered in vain. I try to contribute in some miniscule way, by pointing out where and how civilian leaders and citizens can be more responsible, and more worthy, of their sacrifice.

On June 19th of this year, Marine Pfc. Sean Horn died in Iraq. Before that he was stationed at Camp Pendleton, just south of Orange County. Before that, he lived right here in Irvine. He joined the Marine a year ago, just out of high school. He died of a single shot to the head, in his bunker. The military calls it a "non-combat incident". It wouldn't be right to say any more. I won't try to reason why, and in fact I don't know anything except what was written in the newswire, and at the Fallen Heroes Memorial website, where a fellow soldier wrote these words:

"sean
im so sorry i let this happen i never should have convinced you to join . i loved you like my own brother through all of it and theres nothing i can do now. but it haunts me and ill never forget you or the last time we spoke in kuwait.i love ya"

josh of al asad iraq

There's nothing we can do now, for Sean. But maybe for Josh, for the 100,000 soldiers there, for the millions of Iraqi men, women, and children, we can do something, something different. We owe them that much.