Powerful stuff this week from Army Times.
This unit's been under fire from unpredictable I.E.D. attacks for months and have seen their friends burned alive in a flaming Humvee. They are in the position of being the hated occupying forces, the devils, the white infidel capitalist pigs - while they're just out doing the best they can, sometimes even heroically as needed.
These men are disciplined and they know their enemy. And after enough blood is spilled, they know when they've reached their limit:
He didn’t know 2nd Platoon had gathered for a meeting and determined they could no longer function professionally in Adhamiya — that several platoon members were afraid their anger could set loose a massacre.
“We said, ‘No.’ If you make us go there, we’re going to light up everything,” DeNardi said. “There’s a thousand platoons. Not us. We’re not going.”
They decided as a platoon that they were done, DeNardi and Cardenas said, as did several other members of 2nd Platoon. At mental health, guys had told the therapist, “I’m going to murder someone.” And the therapist said, “There comes a time when you have to stand up,” 2nd Platoon members remembered. For the sake of not going to jail, the platoon decided they had to be “unplugged.”
Courage. Presence of mind. Realization of one's limits. These are good qualities in a soldier, qualities that come from experience and loyalty and love for one's platoon. The unbreakable bond that was lost when the Army disbanded this platoon and blocked possible promotion of many skilled veterans.
The scary part is this: while it's refreshing to hear stories of US troops doing the right thing, disobeying orders, questioning and resisting the insane mission they've been tasked with, what about the stories we don't hear? For every unit like the 2nd Platoon, Charlie 1-26, how many others have taken brutal casualties from random explosions and gone back out on patrol with vengeful hearts, and "lit up everything"? Well, Wikipedia lists at least five, the most widely reported of which was Haditha in 2005.
The American public is as blind to the heroism of the troops who stand up and say "Enough's enough" as they are to the war crimes committed by US troops over the past four years. People still aren't allowed to see our troops as anything less than liberators, builders of democracy and saviors of Iraqi babies, under attack from evil terrrrrist insurgents who want to jeopardize their mission. The despite the fact that the troops themselves are speaking out against further occupation. The MSM is pulling all the strings in the public debate about this war and the nature of the army itself.
