What We've Lost
The last paragraph is what really got to me.
Its gone now, even from me. I can't get past that image of the Iraqi, in the hood with the wires and I'm not what you'd call a sensitive type. You know the picture. And now we have a total bust-out in the White House, and a bunch of rubber-stamps in the House, trying to make it so that half-drowning people isn't torture. That hypothermia isn't torture. That degradation isn't torture. We don't have that reputation for fairness anymore. Just the opposite, I think. And the next real enemy we face will fight like only the cornered and desperate fight. How many Marines' lives will be lost in the war ahead just because of this asshole who never once risked anything for this country?
I remember the dirty little war* in Vietnam. Yes, there was Mi Lai, but there was still humanity. Vietnam had it's rogues and villains but they weren't backed by a regime that talked openly about reinventing the Geneva Convention. The frustrations behind fighting a guerilla war [Remember, the Americans used gueriila warfare in 1776 to win freedom from Great Britain!] paid a great toll on not only the soldiers fighting but back in the U.S. The fairness was still behind it all.
Didn't we learn anything from Vietnam?
just asking...
*from the song Three-Five-Zero-Zero in the musical Hair
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