Over the last 12 months, 1,042 soldiers, Marines, sailors and Air Force personnel have given their lives in the terrible duty that is war. Thousands more have come home on stretchers, horribly wounded and facing months or years in military hospitals.
This week, I’m turning my space over to a good friend and former roommate, Army LTC Robert Bateman, who recently completed a yearlong tour of duty in Iraq and is now back at the Pentagon.
Here’s LTC Bateman’s account of a little-known ceremony that fills the halls of the Army corridor of the Pentagon with cheers, applause and many tears every Friday morning. It first appeared on May 17 on the Weblog of media critic and pundit Eric Alterman at the Media Matters for America Website….
Wow. Thanks Kendall. Wow.
My brother is just back from Iraq (Airborne). He broke his wrist and severly tore tendons jumping a drainage ditch. For over a year, he lived under the stink and noise of Iraq’s largest power plant. His best memories are taking out truly bad guys, and his worst are from patrolling ied filled streets. His unit lost many to the road side bombs. He is the same in so many ways, but he is also changed, for the better and for the worse. He carries real scares on the outside and the inside. Anyway, I am profoundly greatfull for his service. I pray that our presence there can transform the region as it has in Korea. I worry that 1,000 years of conflict between Islam and Christianity will doom the bold venture of not only ridding the world of a tyrant, but of establishing a just society.
If war is almost always God’s judgment on a people, what word is God speaking to us today? I believe the U.S. has been God’s agent of judgment on a truly corrupt land, but is there more to it?
I am so very happy that this is happening!
Tears shed by combat veterans for combat veterans are honest tears. This display of fellowship by those serving in the Pentagon with their wounded comrades-in-arms only serves to strengthen the commitment of those serving in our country’s defense.
I have a question. Why hasn’t this weekly ceremony been more widely reported by our country’s media? Just a thought, but one worthy of reflection.
War changes those who have to fight it. No one can imagine what it does to you, since the injuries are not always tangible. I’ve been there and seen what it does. Visit a V.A. hospital for a real education. No one hates war more than the serviceman or woman who has to fight and maybe die for his or her country. They make me proud to have been one of them.
Cennydd, Thank you so much for yoru service!! You are a true Hero as is Theron’s Brother. Thank you all!!
Chip Byers, Proud Son of a WWII veteran, Commander 17th District Sons of the American Legion, Detachment of Virginia
Kendall – thanks for posting. Those supportive of the war & those in opposition ought all to be moved by this story and supportive of this iconicly American (new) tradition.
A heart warming story no doubt, but 24 minutes on Friday morning does not close the deal on our obligation to these solders. The Pentagon is a world unto itself but it is not very far from Walter Reed and broken trust demonstated there. Time will tell which response of leadership is real but for now I remain a skeptic
As a retired Army officer, I view the Iraq War as an enormous tragedy. My heart goes out to those wounded and maimed in the performance of their duty as soldiers of our great nation. I am a great admirer of Joe Galloway who is one of the most articulate opponents of this ill begotten war. You can read his column at http://www.mcclatchydc.com/galloway/
I’m not sure Joe Galloway has this one right. I encourage all of you to read this article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
It’s true: Iraq is a quagmire
But the real story is not something you have heard
Sunday, November 18, 2007
By Jack Kelly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
We’re floundering in a quagmire in Iraq. Our strategy is flawed, and it’s too late to change it. Our resources have been squandered, our best people killed, we’re hated by the natives and our reputation around the world is circling the drain. We must withdraw.
Jack Kelly is a columnist for the Post-Gazette and The Toledo Blade (jkelly@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1476).
No, I’m not channeling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. I’m channeling Osama bin Laden, for whom the war in Iraq has been a catastrophe. Al-Qaida had little presence in Iraq during the regime of Saddam Hussein. But once he was toppled, al-Qaida’s chieftains decided to make Iraq the central front in the global jihad against the Great Satan.
“The most important and serious issue today for the whole world is this third world war, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation,” Osama bin Laden said in an audiotape posted on Islamic Web sites in December 2004. “It is raging in the land of the Two Rivers. The world’s millstone and pillar is Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate.”
Jihadis, money and weapons were poured into Iraq. All for naught. Al-Qaida has been driven from every neighborhood in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, the U.S. commander there, said Nov. 7. This follows the expulsion of al-Qaida from two previous “capitals” of its Islamic Republic of Iraq, Ramadi and Baquba.
Al-Qaida is evacuating populated areas and is trying to establish hideouts in the Hamrin mountains in northern Iraq, with U.S. and Iraqi security forces, and former insurgent allies who have turned on them, in hot pursuit. Forty-five al-Qaida leaders were killed or captured in October alone.
Al-Qaida’s support in the Muslim world has plummeted, partly because of the terror group’s lack of success in Iraq, more because al-Qaida’s attacks have mostly killed Muslim civilians.
“Iraq has proved to be the graveyard, not just of many al-Qaida operatives, but of the organization’s reputation as a defender of Islam,” said StrategyPage.
Canadian columnist David Warren speculated some years ago that enticing al-Qaida to fight there was one of the reasons why President Bush decided to invade Iraq. The administration has made so many egregious mistakes that I doubt the “flypaper” strategy was deliberate. But it has worked out that way. It may have been a mistake for the United States to go to war in Iraq. But it’s pretty clear now it was a blunder for al-Qaida to have done so.
You may not be aware of the calamities that have befallen al-Qaida, because our news media have paid scant attention to them.
“The situation has changed so unmistakably and so swiftly that we should be reading proud headlines daily,” said Ralph Peters, a retired Army lieutenant colonel. “Where are they?”
Richard Benedetto was for many years the White House correspondent for USA Today. Now retired, he teaches journalism at American University in Washington, D.C.
When U.S. troop deaths hit a monthly high in April, that was front-page news in most major newspapers, Mr. Benedetto noted. But when U.S. troop deaths fell in October to their lowest levels in 17 months, that news was buried on page A-14 of The Washington Post and mentioned on Page A-12 in The New York Times. (The Post-Gazette put the story on the front page.)
“I asked the class if burying or ignoring the story indicated an anti-war bias on the part of the editors or their papers,” Mr. Benedetto said. “While some students said yes … most attributed the decision to poor news judgment. They were being generous.”
Mr. Peters suspects the paucity of news coverage from Iraq these days is because “things are going annoyingly well.”
Rich Lowry agrees. “The United States may be the only country in world history that reverse-propagandizes itself, magnifying its setbacks and ignoring its successes so that nothing can disturb what Sen. Joe Lieberman calls the ‘narrative of defeat,’ ” he wrote in National Review.
If what Mr. Peters, Mr. Benedetto and Mr. Lowry suspect is true, it must have pained The Associated Press to see a correspondent write Wednesday: “The trend toward better security is indisputable.” It’ll be interesting to see which newspapers run the AP story, and where in the paper they place it.
“We’ve won the war in the real Iraq, but few people in America are familiar with anything other than its make-believe version,” said the Mudville Gazette’s “Greyhawk,” a soldier currently serving his second tour in Iraq.
First published on November 18, 2007 at 12:00 am
God bless the men and women who serve our great country. Without their sacrifice and courage we would not enjoy the freedoms we have today. My son is a former Marine First Sergeant who served aboard the USS Nassau during Iraqi Freedom. He now works at the Pentagon as a civilian contractor. I’ll ask him about this story. Please pray for our troops. They deserve both our respect and prayers.
USMA74, thak you for providing the ‘truth’ that the American press refuses to acknowledge and actively tries to ‘bury.’
From Year Group 62
This Sunday we celebrate Christ the King. What does it mean for us to honor and serve Jesus Christ as King in the midst of war? How is the Holy Spirit speaking to the Body of Christ today? What is the guidance of scripture, especially as seen in the words of Christ the King?
This Sunday, as I baptize my two grandsons, my prayer is that they will know Jesus as Savior and Lord. I pray that they will give their lives for Him. I pray that they will be saved from confusing the word of culture from the Word of God.
Jesus, we lift up your name and we honor you. Have mercy on your people. Save us. You are the way, the truth and the life.