IRAQ VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR

I'm so glad I didn't miss this.

For the past three years I've relived the Vietnam War of my pre-teens and teens through this Bush debacle we call the Iraq war. The budding of a veterans group opposing this war is so familiar. It's an important part of American history, and testimony to our national character, that men and women who faithfully served their country through wartime military service have been able to evaluate that service, their mission, and the rightness or wrongness of their actions, and publicly speak the truth of their experience.

And often, seek atonement.

I didn't blame the Vietnam vets per se. As a whole, I viewed them as the boys-just-doing-what-they-were-told that they were. I worried about them. I was an Air Force brat. Some of them were my relatives. It sorrowed me that I couldn't convince some of them that it was the politicians I faulted, not them.

So read the article. Once again, I feel mostly sympathy and concern for our troops in Iraq. The many horrors inflicted on the Iraqis by our own people, I again attribute to those who are pulling the strings, not to our frightened, trying-to-be-noble grunts.

The crimes are then the responsibility of our entire nation. We were made complicit because we elected and enabled through all our public institutions, the government that acted.

Tags: Iraq war veterans