COL. WESTHUSING'S DEATH A MICROCOSM OF THE IRAQ WAR
Finally, a voice of the MSM has addressed the death of Col. Ted Westhusing. This honorable career military officer died in mysterious circumstances and his tragic end has never been satisfactorily explained by the military or acknowledged by the press, even though at the time he was the highest-ranking officer to have died in Iraq.
I have agonized over this story. I have posted about it repeatedly, here, here, here, and here. As a member of a military family with more than a century of service, I expect our country to honor our fallen dead not with meaningless rhetoric but with a dedication to truth, honor and a resolution that our forces shall not be squandered on political misadventures but deployed to serve the nation's security.
A professor of military ethics at the USMA, Col. Westhusing gallantly volunteered for service in Iraq in order to better serve his students. That he found himself in the midst of an ethical struggle for which he was unprepared, after years of examining and resolving the ethical issues involved with military service, speaks volumes about the questionable conduct of this war.
His friends and family struggle with the idea that Westhusing could have killed himself. He was a loving father and husband and a devout Catholic. He was an extraordinary intellect and had mastered ancient Greek and Italian. He had less than a month before his return home. It seemed impossible that anything could crush the spirit of a man with such a powerful sense of right and wrong.
On the Internet and in conversations with one another, Westhusing's family and friends have questioned the military investigation.
A note found in his trailer seemed to offer clues. Written in what the Army determined was his handwriting, the colonel appeared to be struggling with a final question.
How is honor possible in a war like the one in Iraq?
UPDATE: John Reed did a great deal of research about Col. Westhusing's death many months ago, long before the L.A. Times became the first big paper to feature a major article on the subject. John also provided a greater amount of detail than did the paper.
The remarks of Ted Westhusing's father in the comments section give insight into the character and personality of this fine man.
Tags: Col. Westhusing, Iraq War
posted by Motherlode at 9:26 AM
2 Comments:
I was very disturbed to hear of Mr. Westhusing's death having been ruled as suicide. My heart goes out to his family and friends who, I'm sure, know the painful truth.
I never had the privilege of having met Mr. Westhusing, but what I've read of him suggests to me that he was a man with great integrity--something that is sadly missing in our current government. Although I do not know them, my heart goes out to his friends and family. I am sure that a man with such honor and integrity will be sorely missed by many and for a long, long time.
People do not commit suicide unless severe conditions are present. Suicide is an act of murder, a violent act committed against one's self. It is an act that ordinary people do not commit under ordinary circumstances. It is not even an act that ALL people who are suffering from depression commit. Though depression is usually present, there are other factors which push a person toward suicide. We all have a natural instinct toward self-preservation. Suicide is truly an unnatural act that does not occur because someone is simply disappointed or unhappy or frustrated by something they don't like.
In order for someone to commit suicide, he must be either suffering from a severe mental illness or enduring a severely painful and hopeless situation and lacking the emotional/spiritual resources for dealing with that.
Mr. Westhusing does not fit the criteria of a suicide victim. Successful, happy people who are healthy mentally, physically and spiritually, who've developed the self-discipline resulting from years of military service, have the religious conviction of Christianity, which, by the way, teaches that suicide is wrong, who have supportive, loving families to come home to, AND who are well educated do not typically commit suicide. There is no reason to believe that Mr. Westhusing committed suicide. The fact that he was unhappy with unethical conditions occuring in Iraq would have been more reason for such an honorable man to want to live and to fight for what he believed in. I'm really shocked that intelligent people are believing this propaganda suggesting that Westhusing committed suicide.
Listen, organized criminals often cover up their murders by
making them appear to be suicides. During the Reagan administration, for example, a writer planned to expose involvement on the part of the CIA, some major corporations and government officials in the Iran-Contra affair. He had evidence that would have led to an indictment of many but was found dead shortly before he was able to get his book published. Before he died, he had warned his friends and family that he had been receiving death threats and that if something happened to him, he asked that they know that his life was being threatened so that they would not believe any ruling to the contrary. Shortly after a newspaper published an article about this, they published another statement apologizing for the article, stating that the writer's cause of death was suicide and that they were sorry about having published an article suggesting the contrary. Apparently the newspaper had received some sort of threat which prevented them from publishing any more articles about this poor man. In fact, the man had, as I recall, died from several stab wounds so it was unlikely that he could have killed himself that way. You don't need to be a detective or a psychologist to see that the writer's death as well as Mr. Westhusing's were not caused by suicide.
Something very frightening is happening in this country right now. We need to be concerned, we need to stop watching TV and start thinking, and we need to stop believing propaganda.
Others have suggested the possibility that this was a murder disguised as suicide. I am not swallowing whole the government's story, but no matter how the Colonel died, it is clear that he was indeed in despair at the conflicts between ethics and expedience confronting him in Iraq.
And to me, that's a major story in and of itself, that Colonel Westhusing's struggle epitomizes the incompetence and corruption with which this war has been waged.
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