Warning: The effect of this article is subtle and hard to explain, but I don’t recommend reading this if you’re at work or something and about to go into a meeting where it might be uncomfortable to be a tad emotional. Email yourself the link and read it at home later when you can get teary and it won’t interfere with the productive flow of your day. (Or just take a deep breath before you read it so you can have your guard up…or, of course, you can decide to just go ahead and get emotional. It is healthy and good for the soul and all. I just wanted to warn you and give you the option — Articles like this can really mess me up sometimes and screw up a group dynamic if they catch me off guard. — ed.)
Kudos to the team of writers at USA Today that worked on this one.
Nice job guys.
Troops, families await war’s real end
By Jack Kelley, Gary Strauss, Martin Kasindorf and Valerie Alvord for USA Today
(Kelley and Strauss reported from Fallujah and Baghdad; Kasindorf from Los Angeles; Valerie Alvord from San Diego).
For the 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, the war doesn’t seem to end. Some feel angry that they’re still here, guilty that they’re not with their families and perplexed that their reward for capturing Baghdad has been extra duty in a country they have grown to dislike.
Their families, who watched the liberation of Iraq on TV, expected a clean end to the a hard-fought war. Instead, they worry their loved ones could die keeping peace in a country where U.S. forces are widely regarded as occupiers, not liberators.
Iraq is still a dangerous place. During the 43-day war, 139 U.S. servicemembers died
It is much too easy for us to forget the incredible courage, selflessness and sacrifice of our service members and their families. They put their lives on the line to keep us safe and free — and in this case to free another people and rid the world of a genocidal lunatic. They are absolutely the best we have to offer. We owe them immeasurably.
We certainly do bern, and the media has to get off the kick that the war is over. Major hostilities have ceased or had, and it’s never been said that the war is over. Sad thing is, to win the war the US has to win the peace. Terrorists and loyalists will continue to do what they are doing to destabilize the country and at the moment it is the US military that has to deal with them and with the civilians. As rumblings of a counter offensive by terrorist groups alongside Saddam loyalists brew… it’s a good thing. That means the end could be close.