Futility, Broken Bodies and Body Bags

I graduated from college in 1968, a few short days before the Tet offensive started in Vietnam and at about the time that Johnson and McNamara were admitting in private that the war could not be won. With my 2S deferments at an end I became a part of the US Army in November of that year. After a few months of training I was assigned to the DIA in Munich, Germany where I spent over 2 years. I was lucky but many of my friends and relatives were not. They suffered and died for nothing but the vanity of politicians. We are there again. The suggestion that there are parallels between Vietnam and Iraq is enough to send right wingers into a rabid frenzy of denial. I'm sorry, the parallels are there for all to see. The Tet offensive was possible at least in part because military operations were infiltrated my Vietcong sympathizers. The recent carnage in Mosul is an example of the same problem. The enemy of the US in Falluja was not a few thousand "insurgents" but the entire city of 300,000. As the residents begin to move back into Fulluja the violence is escalating once again. Once again it would be political suicide for the leaders of this country to admit they made a mistake, admit defeat. So America's best and finest continue to pay with their lives and their limbs.

Bob Herbert discusses the price they are paying in his excellent column today.

This week's hideous attack in Mosul reminded me of those long ago days. Once again American troops sent on a fool's errand are coming home in coffins, or without their right arms or left legs, or paralyzed, or so messed up mentally they'll never be the same. Troops are being shoved two or three times into the furnace of Iraq by astonishingly incompetent leaders who have been unable or unwilling to provide them with the proper training, adequate equipment or even a clearly defined mission.

It is a mind-boggling tragedy. And the suffering goes far beyond the men and women targeted by the insurgents. Each death in Iraq blows a hole in a family and sets off concentric circles of grief that touch everyone else who knew and cared for the fallen soldier. If the human stakes were understood well enough by the political leaders of this country, it might make them a little more reluctant to launch foolish, unnecessary and ultimately unwinnable wars.

"If the human stakes were understood....", but not just by the politicians but by the American people. Every effort is made to hide the "human stakes" and only those directly effected understand the true stakes. Once again another Vietnam parallel. How long will it go on? How may more will die? How many will see through Rumsfled's empty Christmas PR gesture?