To: "homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org" <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [Homestead] Have the vote, declare victory, begin the pullout
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 06:54:56 -0700
Vet Reporter: Leave Iraq
By Greg Mitchell, Editor & Publisher. Posted January 26, 2005.
Despite kneejerk accusations of his lack of patriotism, decorated war
reporter Joe Galloway says 'declare victory and pull out.'
No one can accuse Joe Galloway of being anti-military, "French," or
unpatriotic (although some may try). Few reporters speak more convincingly
of loving the men and women in uniform. Now a special correspondent and
columnist for Knight Ridder, he served four journalistic tours in Vietnam
and was the only civilian awarded the Bronze Star during that war, for
rescuing wounded American soldiers. He's covered numerous conflicts since,
including the Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He also co-authored
the acclaimed book "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young." So when he says
the United States should declare victory in Iraq and start to withdraw, it
has a certain credibility.
When I talked to Galloway by telephone recently, he was in Colorado about
to head home to Virginia after several days of maneuvers with the 3rd
Armored Calvary Regiment from Fort Carson, which is shipping out to Iraq in
a few weeks. It was shortly after his column advocating a pullout moved on
the KR wire.
"When I go to Walter Reed Hospital," he explains, "where some of the 10,000
wounded from Iraq end up, I go ward to ward and bed to bed, and reach out
to shake a hand, and someone puts a stump in it. These are the best kids
we've ever had in the military and this is the best Army and Marine Corps
I've seen in my 40 years of marching with them. And I tell you, this war is
not worth one of their lives, let alone 1,400 of them."
A Gallup Poll in mid-January showed that 46 percent of all Americans now
want to start removing some or all troops from Iraq. More than 50 percent
now consider the decision to invade Iraq a mistake. Yet publicly calling
for a pullout, even at a slow pace, remains so controversial that very few
of Galloway's fellow columnists or editorial writers have dared embrace the
idea.
You can't even write about it without having your patriotism or your
manhood threatened. Just before Christmas, when I penned a short, neutral,
piece for E&P Online on Al Neuharth's call for a pullout "sooner rather
than later" in USA Today, I received hundreds of angry letters, many of
them calling him (and sometimes me) a traitor. Some expressed the wish that
Neuharth would be tried and executed. The fact that he was a decorated
soldier in World War II didn't do him much good.
Galloway tells me he's gotten mostly positive feedback to his column, from
soldiers, retired generals, and mothers of 18-year-olds from Texas
informing him, "I'm not going to see my son killed in that war." But John
Walcott, Knight Ridder's Washington bureau chief, says, "We have gotten
some angry e-mails, some of them arguing that any criticism of
administration policy undermines the morale and mission of U.S. troops in
Iraq."
He had opened his Jan. 5 column this way: "There may be 50 ways to leave
your lover, but there may be only one good way out of the deepening
disaster that is Iraq: Hold the elections on Jan. 30, declare victory and
begin leaving." His reasoning: there's no way to truly win and no way
Americans will be willing to pay the price of a stalemate, particularly
since the war was based on "false premises and bogus assumptions."
A stern critic of how the war was fought from the beginning, Galloway last
year called for the dismissal of Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. Those
who reject withdrawal, he warns, continue to embrace the Vietnam syndrome
maybe the war was a mistake, but now we're there and we have to make the
best of it.
"I say, bullshit, we can start to leave now," Galloway declares. "We can
argue we overthrew Saddam and freed Iraq. This would give us a fig leaf to
cover our nakedness as we get out." He points out that Robert McNamara
recognized our cause in Vietnam was futile in 1965 but told President
Johnson we could not cut and run. "We only had 1,100 dead in Vietnam then,
less than we have now in Iraq," Galloway says, bitterly. "That's just one
panel on the wall of the Vietnam Memorial. Instead, we 'stayed the course'
and now there are 58,000 names on that wall."
Yet he doesn't expect the press or the public, still reflecting a "9/11
mentality," to suddenly rise up against the war. The United States finally
had to change course on Vietnam because of the draft and the high casualty
rate. Soldiers in Iraq have not yet rebelled, partly because they are not
draftees, and partly because, Galloway explains, "the ordinary soldier sees
his friends die and he has to believe it is for something. Even if no one
can explain what cause he is fighting for he will fight and die for the
other guy."
[Homestead] Have the vote, declare victory, begin the pullout,
Gene GeRue, 01/27/2005