Daily Kos: Loyal Opposition

by Armando
Sat Apr 2nd, 2005 at 14:13:55 PST

Steve Gilliard posted a great e-mail from a former military officer, who now blogs on Iraq at dailywarnews.blogspot.com. Here's a bit of it:

I don't wish for failure in Iraq. I don't want to see my country fail at any endeavor. I sincerely hope the Iraqi elections lead to an end to the insurgency, because the American soldiers fighting there are the my friends, comrades, and brother officers. I trained many of those brave men and women. In the Casualty Reports portion of my blog, I've already posted the names of two friends (one KIA, one WIA) and the KIA name of the only son of one of the finest NCOs with whom I ever served. I remember bouncing that boy on my knee when his daddy and I were junior NCOs and our wives gossiped together. (NCOs love gossip, too.) I remember how proud his daddy was when his son was selected for West Point while we were later stationed together at Fort Bragg.

I don't wish for failure but I don't expect success. I started my blog as a result of the piss-poor coverage of the Iraq war in the American media. Rumsfeld and his buddies have fucked up this war from jump street, and the US media has failed to report it. After 27 years of active duty, I know a bit about US Army operational doctrine and force structure planning. You don't make a deep attack on a strategic objective along a single axis of advance, and you always build your force structure with sufficient resources to protect your lines of communication during the campaign and to secure your objective after you've taken it. Despite the advice of the uniformed officers, Rumsfeld and his civilian political appointees (most of whom never served a day in uniform unless they were Boy Scouts or worked at Burger King) insisted on a minimal force structure and a single attack route to Baghdad.

Exactly. Because patriotism requires standing up and dissenting when you believe your government is doing the wrong thing.