Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for June 28, 2015

You gotta love BD.

On the ground level, you fight for the men in your unit. On a larger level, you gotta regret someone was sending you into such a useless fight and the loss of so many men in your unit.

But like ’Nam, what they think of the politicians who put them there, is something else.

Well, they did overthrow a brutal dictatorship which probably most people in Iraq wanted to see overthrown, even if they did it for the wrong reasons and botched the aftermath.

Iraq and ’Nam are TOTALLY DIFFERENT! One start with an I, the other starts with a V. The rest is pretty much the same.

See Tim Weiner’s new book, “One Man Against The World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon”

As an ex soldier (volunteer) I understand BJ completely. Being in the army is a different world and non-military cannot understand.

The way you can destroy a country without firing a shot is to have the country go broke due to a self-inflected national debt. Today, Greece is committing suicide by national debt and, someday all too soon, the United States will follow Greece. The massive debt caused by the Vietnam War and President Bush’s trillion dollar blunder will be a significant factor in the coming financial crash of the United States. Thus, the true heroes are those who opposed these tragedies.

Ah, yes – BD speaks with the intelligence of a true soldier…….at least one smart enough to rationalize.

The question is was it a good idea to go over there to begin with, not whether or not you did what was to be done well as a soldier once the war started. That was the question a reporter asked Bush. No one asked him if the soldiers did a good job, that simply was not the question. It is the commander in chief’s job to decide when and where the U.S. goes to war. It was a terrible and tragic decision for us to go there. They did not have WMDs. Hussein was not a good guy, but he was a dime a dozen.

What BD says is true only as far as it goes- but he’s choosing not to look at the rest of the picture: Why were any of them over there, being put in the position of having to look after their brother soldiers? Not one of them should have been doing so in that place, and for the cause that placed them there.-——————He’s isolating his immediate experience to simplify and focus his take-away of the situation.

We should never confuse our military’s service and performance of their duty with the politics of our leaders.

King Bush II and his Archbishop Cheney lied about the threat and made decisions about a war based not on America’s interests but for strictly personal ones. What amazes me is that after two experiences with Bush regimes complete with two Wars of Choice, two Economic Downturns, one Great Recession, one horrendous Terrorist Attack on American soil, several cases of ignoring American citizens suffering through natural disasters, a lot of pandering to our Religious Fundamentalists and a thousand points of stupid that America seems ready to try them again!

You always fought for the guy to the left and right of you. And yes, we fought for the flag and it’s ideals. Politics had nothing to do with it.

Politics was the reason you were there fighting.

Thank you, Gary Trudeau for finding a way to say this that will touch a lot of people. I have so many friends who are still wounded from Viet Nam, who are trying to fight their way out of not just what happened in the war, but what was done to them by the press, the popular media, and some of the more idiotic war protesters.

Looking for each other, fine! But the larger question is why were you there in the first place?

Just as in Nam our precious military was misused for persaonal gain and we are left with dead to bury and injured to heal. The argument that the troops sacrifice was justified to protect their own, an argument heard on the Right all the time, is stupid. if our troops hadn’t been sent there in the first place there would have been no “band of brothers” to protect. The Bush family legacy is one of death, greed, deceit and violence and even history will not dull that sharp edged truth.Jeb is no different, just more clueless.

My thoughts have always been that if you must fight an expensive war, then ALL taxes must go up to fight it. When it is over and the debts paid off, then and only then is it time to reduce the taxes. What is wrong with that picture?

Soldiers pledge their loyalty in service to the country. It is not their job to question anything but a clearly immoral order.

It is a citizens duty to be sure that our soldiers are not put to immoral use by our politicians. Many of us failed in that task.

How true, what many of you have said. But my main thought upon reading this strip was that Garry still has it – I got all teared up and lump-throaty at the last couple of panels.

The invasion of Iraq — the gift that keeps on giving.

Thank you, Bush.

Perfectly stated for my war, Vietnam. I don’t know how no draft might have changed that perception, but I would guess not much.

VERY well said.

“Nothing to do with politics”? Would have been interesting to see Bush sell the war without beating the jingoistic “Get them furriers” drum.

No, their sacrifices were in vain. And I still lose sleep over it.

@montessoriteacher

“It is the commander in chief’s job to decide when and where the U.S. goes to war.”.I kept waiting for someone else to deal with that statement, but nobody did, so, here it is:It is NOT the commander in chief’s job to decide to go to war..He can lay out to Congress why he thinks it is a good idea but that is THEIR decision..(I wish the schools taught separation of powers and the purpose to avoid any one single branch getting too powerful and doing something stupid, tyrannical or simply not favored by the citizenry. It seems they don’t somehow. So many persist in thinking the term “President” is synonymous with the word “King” and that we are just his subjects to be ordered around.).Previous records showed Saddam Hussein had come quite close to having enough material and expertise to create destructive nuclear devices capable of destroying the city you live in, the city 42 miles from where I live and killing me in the process..Inspectors tried to verify he was not renewing his program under the agreed terms of his defeat but he had refused them access. When the cost of trust may be counted in the numbers of millions of lives, President Bush did not consider it wise to risk it..Either Senator Clinton agreed the risk was too great to ignore or else she just voted to support the war out of politics. Not knowing for certain, would you have risked the lives of millions?.Further, we still don’t really know where he stood on weapons of mass destruction. We didn’t find nuclear devices, so maybe they didn’t exist or maybe they were hidden. We definitely didn’t find all the conventional explosives they used to kill us with during the occupation. Why should we assume they would have been less vigilant about hiding fissile material?.We discovered some poison gas and nerve gas, which is classified as a weapon of mass destruction even though President Obama doesn’t consider it very important if used on Syrian women and children..The easiest to hide and potentially most deadly would be biological weapons. Enough to kill billions could be developed in a small lab in a small cave in a big desert or even in the middle of Baghdad. We know he had been working on such things but haven’t found them. .Maybe he abandoned the program out of the goodness of his heart?.“Hussein was not a good guy, but he was a dime a dozen.”.Actually, he was smarter, more ruthless and dangerous than most of the many bad guys..Just something to think about.

By the way, we won the war with Iraq very quickly and with few deaths.We lost the occupation and with many deaths..We were not prepared to win.We were not prepared to provide basic services..We were not prepared to take over the Iraqi Army. It would have been relatively easy to tell them they were under us and their pay had just doubled and they would be trusted to enforce peace under our guidance. After that was well established, we could have removed the worst and disarmed the unhappy..Instead Rumsfeld told them they were disbanded while they still had thousands of tons of weaponry in their hands. They used that to kill us with during the occupation..We were not prepared to set up a secular government. We let them play around with it until they produced an extremely divisive form of government guaranteed to pit the Sunnis and the Shiia and the Kurds against each other. they killed each other to reduce the number of voters of other branches of Islam from their districts. Pizz poor “planning”The State Department and Department of Defense were being run by idiots..The Kurds cooperated in every way and we still refuse to help them. It is possible when the rest of the Middle East slips back into the Dark Ages that the Kurds wont follow them — unless they are wiped out by the radioactive fallout or Doomsday Virus.

Not Rumsfeld but Garner who disbanded the Iraqi Army and put thousands of men out of a job.

If one wants to talk about the mess that Iraq is, let’s start with the most overrated drunk of the 20th century — Winston Churchill. He created a nation without paying any attention to the demographics or the historical rivalries that existed. To top it off, he appointed a foreigner — the son of the Sharif of Mecca — as king to thank the Sharif for his support of the British in WW I. Sometimes, a government has no legitimacy in the eyes of the people. In this case, the NATION did not have any legitimacy in the eyes of the people.

NO American war has been waged without consent and funding of congress

Not in vain: now there is ISIS, thank to them. If you like it…

I find it so amazing that GT can, inside of a few squares, illustrate how military men/women can survive emotionally/psychically/spiritually, by reducing it, or in their view, elevating it, to their commitment to their fellow soldiers. They were “doing their jobs”, and their deployment did indeed lead to the collapse of order and widespread chaos/death/refugees and appalling and dehumanizing warfare. GT absolutely loves and respects the troops, as much or more than he loathes the politicians who sent them into what turned into an ongoing long-after-the-war-was-over physical/emotional/spiritual hell for many of them… and they are the lucky ones who could come home to a mostly peaceful place; they now have 1st world problems, while a 3rd world hell, largely of the United States’ making, continues to explode.

@jjmarold“Not Rumsfeld but Garner who disbanded the Iraqi Army and put thousands of men out of a job.”.Rumsfeld had no real plan for what to do after victory and handed it over to civilian control before the country was ready. Garner was first and did not have a nonsectarian plan ready either but was smart enough to intend to hand it over to them and get out while the getting was good and was ousted probably for other reasons..Then came Bremer..“L. Paul Bremer III, then the top civilian administrator in Iraq, toured the ancient city of Babylon, 50 miles south of Baghdad, on May 22, 2003, the day before he dissolved the Iraqi Army.”.By the way, my brother and nephew took time out to visit Ur around then, before the incompetence brought back the destruction and violence. Howard was trying to rebuild the damage. Sean was with West Virginia National Guard, trucking in supplies to help rebuild.GoneAll gone

Dont get me started on the Vietnam war. I am still pissed about what happened, how it happened and who it happened to. I STILL want the US to issue a formal PUBLIC apology to all the guys who fought that b…st war.

When you use a military solution you’re always taking a gamble. Our problem in Iraq was the INSTANT Saddam’s body was cooling (which would have been 3 seconds after I dropped the grenade down the hole anyway) I’d have been OUT of Iraq. Given the Arab character and inclinations the sectarian violence was entirely predictable.

It all worked out in the end, sorry GBT…