To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young
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.
Courtesy:https://www.truthdig.com
