April 10, 2013

• Report # 990

  Hey everyone, I hope that you’ve all been having a great week so far. I’ve continued running with Parker and Molly each day, and they’ve both run 10 days in a row, so we’ve done great. There are just 11 days left to the Vancouver Sun Run, so I’ll be more than ready this year. I’ve applied for some more jobs though I haven’t heard anything yet. Apparently the economy here is not doing as well as I thought, and I just read the other day that we have a 15 % unemployment rate here…. I was really thinking we were only around 7 % !

  I sent an email to the lady from Teleperformance the other day explaining to her that I can’t get anyone from the foreign affairs department in Mexico to tell me any information about my visa case, so maybe someone from the company will be able to find something out. Otherwise I will just have to be patient and continue checking the page every single day to see if there has been any news. On Monday I went to my grandmother’s house and had sweet and sour chicken for dinner.

  My grandmother was going to make it last week, but my mom told her that she didn’t like it much. I knew before that my dad wasn’t a huge fan, but I didn’t know about my mom. My brother also isn’t a big fan of that dish either ! It’s just funny that my grandmother was making it for like 15 years and no one really said anything. I enjoy it, but it’s not my favourite dish in the world, but it certainly has a good flavour to it. I suppose it’s not the healthiest meal in the world, but who cares !

  For the most part it’s been a soaking wet week, though there was some sun on Monday afternoon, and today after it was pouring in the morning, the sun has been trying to come out. My parents will come back from Calgary tomorrow evening I believe, so I’ll do a little cleaning up over the next day. So really my life has been pretty boring in the month since I’ve returned home from Mexico. I really thought I’d be doing more by now, so it’s been a bit disappointing. All I can do is really stay positive and be patient and wait and see what will happen.

  A few weeks ago I was reading some stories in the newspaper talking about the 10th anniversary of the War in Iraq. As I’ve commented in the past, I’ve always been an opponent of that war, and I think now that we all know the results and what has happened in the last 10 years, that the US decision to invade Iraq along with the UK, Australia, Spain and some other countries, was a major mistake.

  I’ve always felt that Saddam Hussein was a horrible tyrant, and while no one can argue that it’s good he has been taken out, the question a person really has to ask…. was it really worth it ? Seeing as the whole argument of the invasion in the first place was that he had weapons of mass destruction, which was proved to be not the case, the most compelling reason people had to launch that war has shown itself to be deeply flawed.

  And of course there have been many costs of the War in Iraq, costs much more heart breaking than the potential $ 3 trillion price tag that the US is still stuck paying for. Almost 4,500 American soldiers died in Iraq, and almost 117,000 Iraqis who were not even involved in fighting died in an eight year period. Reading an article from the Vancouver Sun a few weeks ago really doesn’t paint a good picture of post war Iraq:
  
  A decade after the U.S. invasion, many Iraqis are emotionally and physically scarred, buildings and infrastructure bear the marks of war, and the country is the scene of often-bitter sectarian strife.

  Ten years after the start of the war, bullet holes still mark buildings, and towers wrecked by U.S. missiles and shells have not fully been rebuilt.

  (Sources: Grappling with the legacy of War. By Adam Schreck, Associated Press. March 23, 2013. The Vancouver Sun, Weekend Review)

  The article goes on to talk about how when the war started the Bush administrated hoped they could quickly locate the supposed weapons of mass destruction, dispose of Saddam Hussein, and start a democracy that would be friendly with the west. The article talks about how now Iraq seems to be closer aligned with Tehran rather than Washington and there are now terrorists operating in the country, though the attacks aren’t as often as they were in the past.

  A few people were interviewed in the article and they talk about the rate of change in Iraq. It’s certainly not come at a very fast rate, and after so many years of violence, the people see positive change, but no where near at the rate they had hoped and thought would be possible. Now obviously some things have improved, and Iraqi’s no longer have to live under a ruthless dictator, but I just can’t fathom the fact that over 100,000 innocent people have lost their lives, from the US, and Iraq, and other countries, and all this just to take out one man on an argument that proved to be completely flawed.

  (Sources: Grappling with the legacy of war. By Adam Schreck, Associated Press, March 23, 2013)

  As I’ve argued before, Saddam Hussein, while obvious a horrible dictator, was just one of a number in the world, and unfortunately countries can’t just be going and invading other countries, unless there is a true level of international cooperation and approval from the United Nations. Even a number of US soldiers became disillusioned with the government’s decision and came to realize that they were not in the right place and fighting the right war.

  I totally respect anyone in the military who puts their lives on the line to bring peace to people in this world, but it’s such a shame that politicians had led so many innocent people into an unnecessary war, and for their stupid decision they lost their lives. Of course former US president George W. Bush was not the sole person responsible for his deeply flawed and wrong decision, as he got support from the US senate.

  I still think a very good reason that Barack Obama was able to win the 2008 US presidential election was because his opponents, John McCain in the presidential election that year, and Hilary Clinton in the democratic primary, both had voted to give authorization to invade Iraq, while Obama was one of the smarter politicians to know that the war was a mistake. Both John McCain and Hilary Clinton though only paid the price of losing their races to become president, however that is nothing in comparison to the price paid by so many of the soldiers and innocent people who paid the ultimate price….. death.

  Recently I read a letter written by Tomas Young, who was a U.S. soldier who was fighting in Iraq. Mr. Young was paralyzed during the Iraq War and he doesn’t seem to be going to live for much longer as his situation has worsened over the years. He has written a very passionate letter that I think everyone needs to read.

  I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

  I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries.
  

  I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

  I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans — my fellow veterans — whose future you stole.

  Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

  I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East.
  

  I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history.
  

  It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

  I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love.
  

  I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

  I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

  My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

  (From: nydailynews.com. ‘I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney’: Dying veteran Tomas Young to end his life after Iraq. March 28, 2013. By Charles Grodin, New York Daily News)

  I think a letter like this, while incredibly heart breaking, is very powerful, and something that not only Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney should read, but any of the politicians who voted to go to war in Iraq. Honestly I don’t even know how some of those people can sleep at night knowing that their votes have led to the destruction of the lives of so many people.

  Most importantly though, I really hope that people around the world have learned something from the war in Iraq, and that such a stupid decision that would be full of life changing consequences will never be repeated again. It’s horrible enough seeing the results of this war in the first place, but if no one has learned anything from this debacle and the same mistakes are committed again in the future, all of the blood-shed, tragedy, loss of life, and extreme waste of money, which could do so much more good in the world, would be even more devastating in the future.

  I want everyone to know I’m not some anti war protestor, but I’ve always believe that war needs to be a last resort decision, something that is carefully planned, and only acted upon if all other means of possible solutions have been exhausted. And then if all that has been met, the United Nations needs to give their approval. So I really hope so many people have learned some valuable lessons from the Iraq War, and while it’s too late to save the lives of over 100,000 innocent people, maybe some lives in the future can be saved if only some better decisions are made and the UN’s resolution is accepted.

  For the next question:

  Looking back on the Iraq war, what are your thoughts ? Was the invasion worth it ? Did you support the decision made back in 2003 ? Did your position change at all after seeing what has transpired in the last decade ?

  I hope that everyone has a wonderful weekend. Take care and I’ll talk to you all on Saturday, bye for now.

  • 4:18 pm
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