I Cogitate

: "...And they have worked to help transform a very dangerous region in the world that has been a breeding ground for terrorism, a breeding ground from where people hijack planes and flew them into buildings..."

"...Tommy Franks was kind of a pivotal figure in this, because he was seen as a classic muddy-boots army general who somehow began agreeing with Rumsfeld during the course of this argument. As one officer put it to me one day, "Tommy Franks has drunk the Kool-Aid." They did wind up with a much smaller force..."

"...Franks is a puzzlement to me. The only thing I can tell is he's kind of like a hole in the donut. At the center of a good general there needs to be strategic thinking, and I've never seen any of it in Franks. I think basically he became a taxi driver, and he said: "OK, they've given me the address -- Baghdad. I'll get there as fast as I can." And when you get there, you say, "Well, it's kind of the wrong address," and he says, "I don't care; I got you here fast."

It's striking to me also that he retires very quickly after the fall of Baghdad. There's a lot of resentment about that inside the military, that "Franks put down his rucksack," as one guy said to me; that Franks couldn't be found. There's a kind of suspicion inside the military: Did Franks know this thing was going to head south, and he wanted out of here..."

"...Well, Bremer comes in, and de-Baathification is going to be his first move. He's really going to send a signal that this is going to be a different country; the Baathists are not going to be in charge. ...

I think this was a message that Bremer really wanted to emphasize. He comes in, and Jay Garner hasn't left Iraq at this point, and he shows the order to Jay Garner. Garner reads it, and he thinks: "This is not what I briefed to Condi Rice or Rumsfeld. This is not the plan. This is not what we told Iraqis." He says, "Let me go show this to the CIA station chief." ... The CIA station chief reads it, and ... they both go to Bremer and say, "Give us an hour so that we can rewrite this thing and just change some of the tone and some of the language," and so on.

Bremer says: "Look, you don't understand. I'm not asking you; I'm telling you. This is what I'm going to do. I'm not asking for your advice." They argue a bit more, and finally Bremer says, "Look, I have my orders; this is what I'm doing."

The CIA station chief looks him in the eye and says: "Fine, go ahead and issue this order. But know that by tonight you will have driven 50,000 Baathists underground. Six months from now, you're going to regret it." I think it was a major step in creating the insurgency..."

Abu Ghraib whistleblower's ordeal
Dawn Bryan
Producer, BBC Radio 4's The Choice
5 August 2007

...But he does not see himself as a hero, or a traitor. Just "a soldier who did his job - no more, no less".

"I've never regretted for one second what I did when I was in Iraq, to turn those pictures in," he says...

Heroism and the language of fascism
Rosa Brooks
Los Angeles Times
August 3, 2007

Civil service is commendable, but worshiping soldiers and police for doing their duty has gotten out of control.

'Everyone's a hero, everyone's a star," sings Jon Bon Jovi on his 2005 album, "Have a Nice Day." It's an insipid song, but a fitting anthem for what has become a thoroughly insipid age.

Once upon a time, you had to do something truly exceptional to qualify as a full-fledged hero: single-handedly hold off a battalion of enemy soldiers to allow your platoon to escape, or rescue 100 children from a Nazi concentration camp. But today, just showing up at your Army recruiting station makes you an instant hero -- and getting yourself hurt or killed doubles your heroism, even if you were sound asleep when your supply convoy went over an IED.

The empty rhetoric of heroism is everywhere these days. You know what I mean. Pat Tillman -- the former NFL star -- is "an American hero," apparently because he volunteered for duty along with several hundred thousand other people, then had the misfortune to be accidentally shot by his own side. Every wounded service member is a "hero" too: Sen. Hillary Clinton proudly sponsored the "Heroes at Home Act of 2007," intended to improve medical care for wounded military personnel, and the Defense Department recently sponsored the "Hiring Heroes Career Fair" to encourage companies to hire wounded veterans. No soldier left behind!

Bah, humbug.

Before you run me out of town on a rail, let me be clear: I respect the service and sacrifice of the troops. It takes guts to volunteer for the military. Injured service members deserve top-quality care, and the families of those killed deserve our deepest compassion. Soldiers, firefighters, police and many others accept risk and privation to serve the public, and we should be grateful.

But it's a big mistake to mix up the idea of service -- or the idea of sacrifice and suffering -- with the idea of heroism.

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