www.counterpunch.com/goff09152003.html
(Stan Goff is a member of the BRING THEM HOME NOW! coordinating committee, a retired Special Forces master sergeant, and the father of an active duty soldier.)
"It was the oil and it is like Vietnam"
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In Vietnam, there was a huge effort, once the US military was entrenched, to convince the American public that foreigners were the aggressors, and that the resistance to military occupation was not indigenous. But it was. The resistance in Iraqi is indigenous, too. Operations like the ones being conducted by Iraqi guerrillas can not happen without roots in the local populations.
In Vietnam, troop morale plummeted as the lies about the reasons for war became ever more apparent. The morale of the troops in Iraq began to fall as soon as the reality that they weren't liberating anything sank in. Most troops are prepared to face danger and hardship. They just don't like facing them for lies.
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http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/what/latest.html#openletter031115An Open Letter to GIs in Iraq, by Stan Goff
Dear American serviceperson in Iraq,
I am a retired veteran of the army, and my own son is among you, a paratrooper like I was. The changes that are happening to every one of you—some more extreme than others—are changes I know very well. So I'm going to say some things to you straight up in the language to which you are accustomed.
In 1970, I was assigned to the 173rd Airborne Brigade, then based in northern Binh Dinh Province in what was then the Republic of Vietnam. When I went there, I had my head full of s**t: s**t from the news media, s**t from movies, s**t about what it supposedly mean to be a man, and s**t from a lot of my know-nothing neighbors who would tell you plenty about Vietnam even though they'd never been there, or to war at all.
The essence of all this s**t was that we had to "stay the course in Vietnam," and that we were on some mission to save good Vietnamese from bad Vietnamese, and to keep the bad Vietnamese from hitting beachheads outside of Oakland. We stayed the course until 58,000 Americans were dead and lots more maimed for life, and 3,000,000 Southeast Asians were dead. Ex-military people and even many on active duty played a big part in finally bringing that crime to a halt.
When I started hearing about weapons of mass destruction that threatened the United States from Iraq, a shattered country that had endured almost a decade of trench war followed by an invasion and twelve years of sanctions, my first question was how in the hell can anyone believe that this suffering country presents a threat to the United States? But then I remembered how many people had believed Vietnam threatened the United States. Including me.
...more..
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