Whom to Trust? Who to be in Charge?

Wednesday night, March 19, 2007, on the PBS News Hour; Judy Woodruff interviewed a cross-section of 10 Americans on their views on the Iraq War. The group seemed to be about equally divided: Republicans, independents and Democrats.

One of the group was Henry Lujan, a Nevada Republican, and a disabled vet from Iraq. I have tried to capture his first participation in the discussion, as follows. My apologies to Mr Lujan in advance if I did not transcribe his remarks fully or correctly:

"It's easy for people who have never been over there to criticize what goes on over there. The people who want us there.....my unit is right there now, boots on the ground. My 72nd, the unit that opened Abu Ghraib in 2003, they're back over there again and they're saying the people are shopping, they're out in the parks, they want us there. The thing is that, like I said before, it's easy for everyone back here to criticize what goes on over there when they actually have no clue because they're getting all their feedback from the TV or papers. The feedback I am getting from my guys over there is that the infrastructure it being built, they working on getting the military situated so that we can pull out, but I think we'll pull out when the military leaders state, not because of politicians are being pressured by the citizens because of a vote or an election or something like that."

(Mr Luhan also made more extensive remarks later in the broadcast piece.)

My reactions to this:

• I sense a distrust in the media....TV and newspapers. This alone I could sympathize if not agree with, but it goes on to express trust in the very U.S. persons who are executing the issue in question...some troops, and friends of his. I have some distrust of the media, but my distrust of our administration, from the President on down to the field commanders, is much greater. As we learned in Vietnam, when we are loosing a war, the last persons to trust to give us the full story are those in the chain of command, from bottom to top.
  
• Who should make the decisions? According to Mr Luhan, it should not be political leaders, especially those influenced by votes or an election. No, it should be the military leaders...the ones whose reputation depends on the outcome. This is "democracy" turned up side down. But George Bush would probably agree...he seems to have surrendered the decisions to General Petraeus.
  
• Thus, the war becomes self-perpetuating. Once we have gone to war, regardless how foolish or duplicitous the reasons given, we must stay in until the military decides we, the nation, have either won or had enough.
  
• In the upcoming election, the Republicans will want to focus on "going forward from here". They will avoid looking back or reviewing the run-up to the war, or the poor planning and execution since before the shooting began. We must insist that we revisit the who and the what that got us here in the first place, and who wil be in power to make the decisions going forward.
  
• My final thought for now: I am afraid that Mr Luhan's thinking about this war is representative of a large portion of the American populace. These persons will probably vote overwhelmingly for John McCain.