A Letter From A Soldier

This letter originally appeared in my school newspaper on Sept 12th, 2005. All credit remains with the original author. I thought it was worth sharing. (Minor changes made in editing and grammar.)

I've noticed you guys need some Right-Wing input to help balance everything out. Here is an extensive essay on the right-wing.

Walking down the Airport terminal in Chicago, heading to my connection to Denver, with a cast on my right leg, and a crutch on the corresponding shoulder, I hear things like "baby killer!" and "murderer!" shouted at me. Why? Because I am wearing Army Dress Greens. I just wanted to head home in peace, see my friends and family, and have a couple of weeks off. But some people just don't understand what is going on entirely. I'm here to give everytone a fresh view of current (and past) affairs.

"Except for ending slavery, Nazism, Facism and Communism, War has NEVER solved anything!" -Protestwarrior.com. Yeah, I suppose that's true. War is useless. Unless of course you're putting things to rest that should have never come to be. It's ok that Hitler killed six-million Jews, and caused pain and suffering to countless others. We don't need silly little WAR to fix that! it's absolutely fine that Communism has killed over one-hundred-million people over the course of its life. Let's give it another chance!

Seriously, listen to yourselves for one second! The war in Iraq is bad? Maybe I'm misinformed, but last I checked Saddam Hussein killed three-hundred-thousand of his own peole, using the same, and more brutal techniques as Hitler himself, such as gassing (oh that reminds me of um... what whas it called? Ooh yeah, THE HOLOCAUST!) and torturing children in front of their own parents. I don't know about the rest of you, but I would not be able to stand seeing my children getting tortured. That would be pure torture.

So we shouldn't have gone to Iraw for what reason again? Oh yeah, everyone complains about the whole WMD thing. Well, we DID find countless other things against U.N. sanctions: a machine that takes uranium and plutonium and turns it into weapons grade material. NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) suits. This would be understandable if there were a hospital that offered chemotherapy; however these suits were found in a hospital, amongst a stockpile of weapons, and no radiation ward to be found.

Don't kid yourselves, Saddam had WMD, we just made the mistake of giving him fair warning of our invasion, so he deported them to other terrorist sympathetic countries. how many of you knew that the authorities were coming so you ditched your weed? I think it's kind of the same thing here, he knew he was guilty of posession, so he ditched his illegal weapons.

Eighteen-hundred soldiers have died in Iraq. Considering we've been there for nearly three years now, that is phenomenally low. Consider this: in the first day of the battle of Io Jima in WWII, we lost fourteen-thousand soldiers, sailors , marines and airmen. By the end of that battle alone, we lost twenty-five thousand men. Over the course of three years, less than two-thousand dead. That is exceptionally good. Having done the math, our casualty rate over three-years is .0017%, that of one day of battle of WWII.

Don't get me wrong here, a life is a life. It is a valued thing. Every time I hear word of one more of my friends dying over there it hurts me. It hurts me because it's my friend, and I can't be there fighting with them. I'll never forgive myself for taking time off to go to school, and letting then tough it out on their own, but this is something I have to do.

Tell me again, why we shouldn't be in Iraq. "We're killing innocent people!" Well, Saddam killed three-hundred thousand of his own people (and we're still counting graves!), I think that takes a bit more precedent. This is war. War has an ugly face. But this is war; innocent people die. it's unfortunate, but it happens. But in return we've build thirty-eight new schools, we've renovated thirty-one hundred schools, and two-hundred sixty-three more schools are under construction. there are seventy higher education centers (colleges, institutes, and research centers) all currently operating. the reformed Iraqi Government employs of 1.2 million people. There are fifteen hospitals under construction, sixty-three public clinics, ninety-three water facilities and sixty-nine electrical facilities. 4.3 million Iraqi children were enrolled into primary school. Phone use has gone up one-hundred fifty-eight percent. Baghdad Stock Exchange opened last year.

You know why you didn't know all of that? Because our biased media doens't want you to know. All they do is show the negative, never the positive. there are some facts, all of which are verifiable on the Department of Defense website.

The left just needs to shut-up. In all honesty, who of you have talked to an ACTUAL Iraqi? I'm talking in-person, face-to-face. Not someone you met on myspace.com or MSN Messenger or some chat-room. A REAL Iraqi. Until you all see Iraq for yourselves--until you've been there and seen first hand that the Iraqis DO want us there--shut up. You are way out of line saying the things you're saying. Look it up. Do the math. figure it out. If youdon't like the way things are run, leave. We don't want you here.

--SPC. Tom Leishman, U.S. Army