"Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is," former Army Ranger Kevin Tillman, brother of fallen Army Ranger Pat Tillman, writes in a hard-hitting, silence-breaking article. Sometimes who said it, rather than what was said, matters most.

So true.

That's why its a shame the anti-war "movement" is lead by people who are so easily ridiculed by the media. (Think Cindy Sheehan)

Lukily men like Jim Webb are headed to Congress, and men like John Murtha will lead this nation out of this GOP mess.

Kevin Tillman is a true hero, of that I can be sure. My thoughts and prayers are with him and his family always. The men and women serving in the armed forces deserve far better than the leadership that they and us have gotten. The war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan have been botched from the beginning. This all started with massive intellegence failures. This is a true shame. Due to such horrible execution it will likely never be known if we could have helped Iraq become a western style democracy. Iraq may one day become a western style democracy. If they do, America will have had nothing to do with it. They will have to do it without us.

In order to "win" in Iraq, if "winning" means creating a stable democratic country that is allied with the US and the west, a massive commitment of significantly more troops to Iraq would likely be required. For better or worse, the Aemrican people and the government are not prepared to make this commitment. Even if we could make this commitment and we were willing, I don't think this is any longer in US national security interests. As such, we will be withdrawing soon. This will happen, even in the unlikely event that the Republicans hold either the House of the Senate. In other words, we wlll be withdrawing from Iraq very soon no matter who controls the House and the Senate after the upcoming elections.

By July 2007, if any troops remain in Iraq, they will be based in Kurdish areas, and they will number only 10,000 or fewer. Hopefully once these troops are withdrawn, as they will be, this will help to prepare our image around the world. Even if it does not help our global image, we will be withdrawing in masse from Iraq very soon, of that I'm certain.

"prepare" should have been "repair."

Sorry for the multiple posts. The incompetence or naivete of the Bush adminstation is legendary. Our attempts to bring "democracy" to the middle east have led to civil wars in Iraq and "Palestine." If the democracy project is to be saved, it will require a massive commitment of troops. This isn't going to happen.

The Democracy project is over. The government was never willing to commit the resources to this project that would have been necessary to give it any hope of succeeding. Even if we had commited 10,000,000 troops to Iraq, assuming we could do that, I think it is unlikely that democracy in Iraq or anywhere in the middle east could have succeeded. As such, the Democracy projects for Iraq and "Palestine" never should have been started. Fortunately these projects will be ending soon.

The democracy project should never have been started. It is not a material objectives. We had completed our material objectives in Iraq and won the war with the transfer of sovereignty in 2004.

Since that victory, we have experianced a text book example of mission creep. Its time to go. We won. All we can do now, if we don't leave, is keep expanding the definition of "victory" each time we achieve it.

Who put these people into office?

Thanks for the link, that is a great essay by Tillman.

"Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started."

This is very eloquently written and dead-on. The Baby Boom generation has to be the worst ever. When the historians (probably monks in caves) write the history of this nation they will point to that generation as the barbarians within that destroyed the country.

There are a number of objections I'd like to raise to Tillman's article, but I'll focus on one: Tillman refers to the invasion of Iraq as an "illegal invasion." I'm going to guess that natural law is not an arrow in Tillman's quiver. So what law is the invasion supposed to have broken? U.S.? Iraqi? "International"?

Ralph,

As far as the War in Iraq being "illegal," since it is undeclared, it's an unconstitutional and therefore illegal war.

Congress approved the use of military force in Iraq.

Another young John Kerry in the works.