Oct 10, 2012
Matt Sitton knew the war in Afghanistan was going badly. He knew it because he was fighting it. He could see for himself. Twenty-six years old, with a wife and child back home, Staff Sergeant Sitton was on his third combat tour there.
Time and again, he and his men were sent through what he called "a minefield on a daily basis." His comrades were being blown apart -- at least one amputee a day, he said, "Because we are walking around aimlessly through grape rows and compounds that are littered with explosives."
Morale was low; the men struggled to remain alert. Sitton said he asked his officers to give them a break but was told to stop complaining.
"I am all for getting on the ground and fighting for my country when there is a desired endstate and we have clear guidance of what needs to be done," he wrote. "But when we are told basically to just walk around for a certain amount of time is not sitting well with me."
At home in Florida, Matt Sitton had attended a Christian school run by the Baptist church attended by Congressman Bill Young. He wrote Congressman Young and told him what was happening. "I'm concerned about the well-being of my soldiers," he said. "... I just want to return my guys home to their families healthy." He ended: "If anything, please pray for us over here. God bless."
On August 2, while on patrol, Matt Sitton and a buddy were killed, blown apart by an IED, a hidden bomb. They flew Sitton's body home and held his funeral at that same Baptist church.
For a long time before Matt Sitton died, Congressman Young, the longest serving Republican in the House, called for sticking it out in Afghanistan. The powerful chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, he had helped continue the war by voting against an amendment requiring the President to set a timetable for withdrawal.
He's changed his mind. Touched by what Matt Sitton wrote him, Young asked that the letter be read into the Congressional Record, and has been talking to other veterans, hearing from them what "a real mess" the war is. Now he tells the Tampa Bay Times: "I think we should remove ourselves from Afghanistan as quickly as we can. I just think we're killing the kids that don't need to die."
"I think we should remove ourselves from Afghanistan as quickly as we can. I just think we're killing the kids that don't need to die."
- Congressman Bill Young
- Congressman Bill Young
Killing the kids that don't need to die. Let those words sink in. And this, too: Congressman Young says many of his colleagues in Congress feel the same way he does, but "they tend not to want to go public."
A few days ago, just shy of the 11th anniversary of our invasion of Afghanistan, we marked a sad and tragic milestone: the 2000th member of the American armed forces to die in combat there. There are now 68,000 American men and women in Afghanistan, down from 100,000 as President Obama has ended the surge he first ordered in late 2009. Seventeen thousand Americans have been wounded, and in the last five years alone, according to the UN, more than 13,000 Afghan civilians have died. That's a very conservative estimate.
How can we continue to justify this war begun to avenge the 9/11 attacks and punish those responsible, but now too long, too deadly, too mired in waste and corruption in a land that has resisted the ambitions of empire since the ancient Persians and Macedonians?
"Look at it this way," journalist Dexter Filkins recently wrote in The New Yorker. "After eleven years, more than four hundred billion dollars spent and two thousand Americans dead, this is what we've built: a deeply dysfunctional, predatory Afghan state that seems incapable of standing on its own -- even when we're there."
There are two more presidential debates. They will be yet another hoax unless someone puts to Barack Obama and Mitt Romney the same question asked by Congressman Young: "Why are we killing the kids that don't need to die?" And then asks it again and again to each of them until we get an honest answer.
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Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers is a veteran journalist, broadcaster, and author. Former managing editor of Moyers & Company and BillMoyers.com, his previous shows on PBS included NOW with Bill Moyers and Bill Moyers Journal. Over the past three and a half decades he has become an icon of American journalism and is the author of many books, including "Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues," "Moyers on Democracy," and "Healing and the Mind." He was one of the organizers of the Peace Corps, a special assistant for Lyndon B. Johnson, a publisher of Newsday, senior correspondent for CBS News, and a producer of many groundbreaking series on public television. He is the winner of more than 30 Emmys, nine Peabodys, three George Polk awards.
Michael Winship
Michael Winship is the Schumann Senior Writing Fellow at the progressive news outlet Common Dreams, where he writes and edits political analysis and commentary. He is a Writers Guild East council member and its immediate past president and a veteran television writer and producer who has created programming for America's major PBS stations, CBS, the Discovery and Learning Channels, A&E, Turner Broadcasting, the Disney Channel, Lifetime, Sesame Workshop (formerly the Children's Television Workshop) and National Geographic, among others. In 2008, he joined his longtime friend and colleague Bill Moyers at Bill Moyers Journal on PBS and their writing collaboration has been close ever since. They share an Emmy and three Writers Guild Awards for writing excellence. Winship's television work also has been honored by the Christopher, Western Heritage, Genesis and CableACE Awards.
Matt Sitton knew the war in Afghanistan was going badly. He knew it because he was fighting it. He could see for himself. Twenty-six years old, with a wife and child back home, Staff Sergeant Sitton was on his third combat tour there.
Time and again, he and his men were sent through what he called "a minefield on a daily basis." His comrades were being blown apart -- at least one amputee a day, he said, "Because we are walking around aimlessly through grape rows and compounds that are littered with explosives."
Morale was low; the men struggled to remain alert. Sitton said he asked his officers to give them a break but was told to stop complaining.
"I am all for getting on the ground and fighting for my country when there is a desired endstate and we have clear guidance of what needs to be done," he wrote. "But when we are told basically to just walk around for a certain amount of time is not sitting well with me."
At home in Florida, Matt Sitton had attended a Christian school run by the Baptist church attended by Congressman Bill Young. He wrote Congressman Young and told him what was happening. "I'm concerned about the well-being of my soldiers," he said. "... I just want to return my guys home to their families healthy." He ended: "If anything, please pray for us over here. God bless."
On August 2, while on patrol, Matt Sitton and a buddy were killed, blown apart by an IED, a hidden bomb. They flew Sitton's body home and held his funeral at that same Baptist church.
For a long time before Matt Sitton died, Congressman Young, the longest serving Republican in the House, called for sticking it out in Afghanistan. The powerful chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, he had helped continue the war by voting against an amendment requiring the President to set a timetable for withdrawal.
He's changed his mind. Touched by what Matt Sitton wrote him, Young asked that the letter be read into the Congressional Record, and has been talking to other veterans, hearing from them what "a real mess" the war is. Now he tells the Tampa Bay Times: "I think we should remove ourselves from Afghanistan as quickly as we can. I just think we're killing the kids that don't need to die."
"I think we should remove ourselves from Afghanistan as quickly as we can. I just think we're killing the kids that don't need to die."
- Congressman Bill Young
- Congressman Bill Young
Killing the kids that don't need to die. Let those words sink in. And this, too: Congressman Young says many of his colleagues in Congress feel the same way he does, but "they tend not to want to go public."
A few days ago, just shy of the 11th anniversary of our invasion of Afghanistan, we marked a sad and tragic milestone: the 2000th member of the American armed forces to die in combat there. There are now 68,000 American men and women in Afghanistan, down from 100,000 as President Obama has ended the surge he first ordered in late 2009. Seventeen thousand Americans have been wounded, and in the last five years alone, according to the UN, more than 13,000 Afghan civilians have died. That's a very conservative estimate.
How can we continue to justify this war begun to avenge the 9/11 attacks and punish those responsible, but now too long, too deadly, too mired in waste and corruption in a land that has resisted the ambitions of empire since the ancient Persians and Macedonians?
"Look at it this way," journalist Dexter Filkins recently wrote in The New Yorker. "After eleven years, more than four hundred billion dollars spent and two thousand Americans dead, this is what we've built: a deeply dysfunctional, predatory Afghan state that seems incapable of standing on its own -- even when we're there."
There are two more presidential debates. They will be yet another hoax unless someone puts to Barack Obama and Mitt Romney the same question asked by Congressman Young: "Why are we killing the kids that don't need to die?" And then asks it again and again to each of them until we get an honest answer.
Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers is a veteran journalist, broadcaster, and author. Former managing editor of Moyers & Company and BillMoyers.com, his previous shows on PBS included NOW with Bill Moyers and Bill Moyers Journal. Over the past three and a half decades he has become an icon of American journalism and is the author of many books, including "Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues," "Moyers on Democracy," and "Healing and the Mind." He was one of the organizers of the Peace Corps, a special assistant for Lyndon B. Johnson, a publisher of Newsday, senior correspondent for CBS News, and a producer of many groundbreaking series on public television. He is the winner of more than 30 Emmys, nine Peabodys, three George Polk awards.
Michael Winship
Michael Winship is the Schumann Senior Writing Fellow at the progressive news outlet Common Dreams, where he writes and edits political analysis and commentary. He is a Writers Guild East council member and its immediate past president and a veteran television writer and producer who has created programming for America's major PBS stations, CBS, the Discovery and Learning Channels, A&E, Turner Broadcasting, the Disney Channel, Lifetime, Sesame Workshop (formerly the Children's Television Workshop) and National Geographic, among others. In 2008, he joined his longtime friend and colleague Bill Moyers at Bill Moyers Journal on PBS and their writing collaboration has been close ever since. They share an Emmy and three Writers Guild Awards for writing excellence. Winship's television work also has been honored by the Christopher, Western Heritage, Genesis and CableACE Awards.
Matt Sitton knew the war in Afghanistan was going badly. He knew it because he was fighting it. He could see for himself. Twenty-six years old, with a wife and child back home, Staff Sergeant Sitton was on his third combat tour there.
Time and again, he and his men were sent through what he called "a minefield on a daily basis." His comrades were being blown apart -- at least one amputee a day, he said, "Because we are walking around aimlessly through grape rows and compounds that are littered with explosives."
Morale was low; the men struggled to remain alert. Sitton said he asked his officers to give them a break but was told to stop complaining.
"I am all for getting on the ground and fighting for my country when there is a desired endstate and we have clear guidance of what needs to be done," he wrote. "But when we are told basically to just walk around for a certain amount of time is not sitting well with me."
At home in Florida, Matt Sitton had attended a Christian school run by the Baptist church attended by Congressman Bill Young. He wrote Congressman Young and told him what was happening. "I'm concerned about the well-being of my soldiers," he said. "... I just want to return my guys home to their families healthy." He ended: "If anything, please pray for us over here. God bless."
On August 2, while on patrol, Matt Sitton and a buddy were killed, blown apart by an IED, a hidden bomb. They flew Sitton's body home and held his funeral at that same Baptist church.
For a long time before Matt Sitton died, Congressman Young, the longest serving Republican in the House, called for sticking it out in Afghanistan. The powerful chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, he had helped continue the war by voting against an amendment requiring the President to set a timetable for withdrawal.
He's changed his mind. Touched by what Matt Sitton wrote him, Young asked that the letter be read into the Congressional Record, and has been talking to other veterans, hearing from them what "a real mess" the war is. Now he tells the Tampa Bay Times: "I think we should remove ourselves from Afghanistan as quickly as we can. I just think we're killing the kids that don't need to die."
"I think we should remove ourselves from Afghanistan as quickly as we can. I just think we're killing the kids that don't need to die."
- Congressman Bill Young
- Congressman Bill Young
Killing the kids that don't need to die. Let those words sink in. And this, too: Congressman Young says many of his colleagues in Congress feel the same way he does, but "they tend not to want to go public."
A few days ago, just shy of the 11th anniversary of our invasion of Afghanistan, we marked a sad and tragic milestone: the 2000th member of the American armed forces to die in combat there. There are now 68,000 American men and women in Afghanistan, down from 100,000 as President Obama has ended the surge he first ordered in late 2009. Seventeen thousand Americans have been wounded, and in the last five years alone, according to the UN, more than 13,000 Afghan civilians have died. That's a very conservative estimate.
How can we continue to justify this war begun to avenge the 9/11 attacks and punish those responsible, but now too long, too deadly, too mired in waste and corruption in a land that has resisted the ambitions of empire since the ancient Persians and Macedonians?
"Look at it this way," journalist Dexter Filkins recently wrote in The New Yorker. "After eleven years, more than four hundred billion dollars spent and two thousand Americans dead, this is what we've built: a deeply dysfunctional, predatory Afghan state that seems incapable of standing on its own -- even when we're there."
There are two more presidential debates. They will be yet another hoax unless someone puts to Barack Obama and Mitt Romney the same question asked by Congressman Young: "Why are we killing the kids that don't need to die?" And then asks it again and again to each of them until we get an honest answer.
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