This New York Times article inspires and scares me in equal measure. In a nutshell, seven U.S. soldiers all at the end of their 15-month deployments in Iraq write about what they know. It doesn’t sound good.
I applaud these men for their courage in speaking truth to power, but the sentence that haunts me is this: “While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse — namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.”
It’s the word “always” that stands out. For the past six years we have been holding on to the scraps of our national decency with a looser and looser grip.
I’ve come to believe there is no such thing as “always.”
UPDATE APRIL 2008: Not long after this was printed a bunch of these soldiers were killed in action. Draw your own conclusions.
