An American Troop Pact

The big question: What will the US do when the UN mandate expires on 31 December, 2008? The Iraqi President's Council has signed a Troop Pact, calling for US forces to withdraw from all Iraqi cities by 30 June, and for all forces to have withdrawn by 1 January, 2012. This new decision, signed by the Kurdish President and two Councilors (one Shiite, one Sunni) will go before the voters in referendum this coming year.

Long time anti-occupation leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, refutes the agreement. After years of degradation in this savage war, al-Sadr is calling for peaceful protests and the immediate withdrawal of US military forces.

This agreement commits the next three years to big military spending, contractors receiving billions to strap on ammo and kill; this is three more years of soldiers coming home broken-and pitifully inadequate care or concern for them when they return. The human cost of this stupid endeavor is never mentioned, and to allow pictures of the carnage-or simply a flag draped coffin-is too divisive for the American People to witness. Do the American People share Barbara Bush's sentiments: "Why would waste my beautiful mind thinking about that?"

The number of suicides, attempted and successful, by our returning vets has barely been hinted at. The death toll we hear, when we hear it, is a safe "over 4,000". There is no addition of the soldiers we solicit from Latin America. When they are killed in the field, their tags are removed-and they left there. The promise of becoming US citizens dies unrealized. Let's also add the number of soldiers who die not in Iraq of their injuries, but in hospitals in Germany or the US. Because they have died (by wounds received in Iraq) in Germany or the US, they are not counted as casualties of this occupation. And the number of veteran suicides is certainly not counted.

These young Americans are coming home plagued by nightmares. They see the dead, in the most gruesome reality, every night. The crimes that they have committed or witnessed, the accidents and moments of panic do not stay in Iraq. The ghosts and demons of this holocaust travel with these soldiers; and all access to laying these demons to rest is kept out of reach. Plagued by nightmares, by panic and fits of rage and grief, these young vets do not receive care-they are ridiculed, they are asked about their love lives and money worries. They are steered away from veterans benefits and counseling-they turned away, by our government, military and Veteran's Associations, to put a gun to their head, a pill to their lips or a rope around their necks.

I agree with those calling for immediate withdrawal. We can ill afford these ventures. The fiscal cost of the War on "Terror", the human cost, the cost to our dignity as a nation and a species is already too great to continue. No security has been wrought out of the War on "Terror". No great freedom has come-only the loss of millions of lives to violence-and millions of souls to its bitter grasp.