Every once in a while some of us, Progressives, Liberals, Democrats, whatever label you want to apply to the oxygen breathers on Planet Earth who believe that economic and social progress are absolutely necessary to water Democracy, stop, stand up, scratch their heads, and say, “WTF? I’ve been giving the fight the best I’ve got and it looks like I just can’t climb out of the ditch of mud and dung created by the righties. Am I wasting my time here?” An alternative might be, “Just how expensive are houses in Canada, anyway?”

Many of you know the feeling: this has been a long hard struggle to beat back the organized forces of the rightwing political and social assault on the America that the Founding Fathers envisioned. Fatigue and burnout affect the reality based community much more than it does the fantasists.

While this online magazine was established to discuss veterans’ affairs, and matter relating to that topic, the intermixture of politics, social matters, the VRWC, and fighting back the aggressions of the POTL are impossible to avoid. Veterans of past wars view the veterans of the Iraq quagmire and cringe at the cruelties imposed by a cabal of criminals that sent them to fight with no plan of success, improper and inadequate equipment, food, water, and an inefficient logistical system. We see them come home, maimed, savaged by war, and billed for the food they are fed in hospitals, not paid for months at a time, refused needed follow up treatment by a Veterans Affairs department more interested in budget trimming than in care and support.

We don’t see our dead brothers and sisters though. A malAdministration more interested in public relations and maximizing the profits of corporations has decreed Americans may not see the many flag draped coffins returned to our soil, observed only by the ceremonial guard of honor at Dover and Travis Air Bases. Parents and wives who requested to meet their loved ones at the air bases have been callously refused this courtesy. They are denied the chance to honor their loved ones at the point of entry in the country they ostensibly died for.

This is shameful.

They sneak them into the country as if the bodies of our brothers and sisters were some sort of contraband. They are offloaded in the dead of night, quickly transshipped to their final destination, most often a civilian funeral director, or directly to a cemetery for interment.

Have you seen the film Gardens of Stone? If not, do so. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093073/ If you have, watch it again. An idealistic young man believes in the struggle his country has involved itself in, and eagerly goes to fight in a war older hands tell him is unwinnable.

Over on Daily Kos there’s an interesting diary entry. Low and middle level officers are deciding this thing in Iraq has become a debacle. My limited experience tells me that if the officers are thinking this way, so are many of the EM. (Thanks to wkm for pointing this out on a comment.)

Brian at One Veteran’s Voice points us to a revealing article in the LA Times about how the EM has decided this catastrophe must stop. (registration required)

We’re losing. The Iraqis want us out, and say it’s all right to kill the Coalition (principally American) occupiers until they leave.

How many more Americans must die to enrich the oil companies?

Time to go, before it becomes a fighting retreat.