Desertion
Look, I don't have much sympathy usually for people who desert, and I won't even get into our Deserter-in-Chief and his fellow chickenhawks in the administration. But I feel sorry for this guy, for several reasons:
--He's most likely going to end up dying in a horrific manner.
--If it's true that he did desert, being a Muslim and a deserter, he'll get no sympathy from the ignorant racists in this country (you know, the ones that refer to people of Middle Eastern descent as "towelheads" or "sand niggers").
--The poor guy, for some reason, thought that somehow he would be better off leaving the relative safety of the U.S. military and venture out into Iraq hoping to make it to Lebanon. What state of mind could you be in to think this would be a good choice?
His plight brings to mind two issues. One is, what effect is this war having on these soldiers? We know what's happening--close to one thousand soldiers are dead, thousands are wounded, and those who are there are getting their tours extended. This during a mission that was supposed to be a "cakewalk." When this war ends, we're looking at thousands of soldiers who have been physically and/or psychologically maimed by it. Will it be ten to fifteen years before we even talk about this?
The second issue is that this man's being a Muslim is not helping him in the least. This incident should show that all of us, non-Muslims and Muslims alike, are the potential victims of terror. It's not Christianity vs. Islam, as a lot of these assholes in this administration and other yahoos would have you believe. It's the regular sane world of people just trying to live their lives vs. people who want to destroy any vestige of civilization that has been touched by America. There's a lot of nuance in this struggle, and it's ridiculous to sum it up as "good vs. evil" like this administration does. But the administration will continue to take this simplistic approach, leaving the knuckleheads in this country to fill in the blanks.
--He's most likely going to end up dying in a horrific manner.
--If it's true that he did desert, being a Muslim and a deserter, he'll get no sympathy from the ignorant racists in this country (you know, the ones that refer to people of Middle Eastern descent as "towelheads" or "sand niggers").
--The poor guy, for some reason, thought that somehow he would be better off leaving the relative safety of the U.S. military and venture out into Iraq hoping to make it to Lebanon. What state of mind could you be in to think this would be a good choice?
His plight brings to mind two issues. One is, what effect is this war having on these soldiers? We know what's happening--close to one thousand soldiers are dead, thousands are wounded, and those who are there are getting their tours extended. This during a mission that was supposed to be a "cakewalk." When this war ends, we're looking at thousands of soldiers who have been physically and/or psychologically maimed by it. Will it be ten to fifteen years before we even talk about this?
The second issue is that this man's being a Muslim is not helping him in the least. This incident should show that all of us, non-Muslims and Muslims alike, are the potential victims of terror. It's not Christianity vs. Islam, as a lot of these assholes in this administration and other yahoos would have you believe. It's the regular sane world of people just trying to live their lives vs. people who want to destroy any vestige of civilization that has been touched by America. There's a lot of nuance in this struggle, and it's ridiculous to sum it up as "good vs. evil" like this administration does. But the administration will continue to take this simplistic approach, leaving the knuckleheads in this country to fill in the blanks.
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