UPDATE: Welcome to visitors from A Silent Cacophony. It's a pleasure to have you visit us, and we'd like to invite you to look through some of our other posts.

Following a commentary link I happened upon the blog of a soldier at Walter Reed Hospital. I haven’t even read all the entries yet, but I felt compelled to start in on commentary. I can’t tell you the soldier’s name, gender, race, home of record, branch of service, rank, or MOS.

This makes the entire matter ideal, because what we have is an iconic universal wounded soldier. When you examine the Walter Reed scandal logically, all of the above classifiers are null items. The only important classifier is one of us. (Readers can take “one of us” as either “a soldier like us” or “An American like us.”)

The real issue is that this unnamed soldier may be one of us, but is not like us. We’re home, safe, and relatively sound. Blogger Soldier isn’t. There is a human tendency to identify things, and so in my mind, this writer is “Walter Reed Soldier.”

[I]n regards to myself, I am well and I continue to fight. Fight to get better, fight to leave here, and fight to maybe even change the things that are wrong with the system. I am not just one Soldier. I am many. This blog is not my voice, but an echoing of those around me.

I may seem to be at a "low", but I am past that. I have stripped myself of the anger, and the frustration, and the sadness. All that is left is the objectivity. Write what I hear. Write what I see. And that is all. Do I have support? Yes, if not for them, this blog would not be here. And I would not be here. I owe everything to them, and to you dear reader. Because you and they are have seen my face in every Soldier. Because I am every Soldier. I am every Soldier that has has ever been broken and thrown away.

Walter Reed Soldier is pissed off. More than we are, and justly so.

It is easier for me to write than to speak.

And with the high profile types we have walking the campus now it is almost necessary to have a reply to some basic questions set upon the shelf.

Them: How is Walter Reed treating you?
Me: I have recieved excellent medical treatment here.

Them: Why are you here?
Me: Didn't move fast enough.

Them: What can we do to make Walter Reed better?
Me: I cannot speak for Army or DoD policy and I believe this a question better answered by my Commander or the Public Affairs Office, sir.

What I want to say:

Me: Have you visited Walter Reed in the past two years, sir?
Them:No
Me: Then you are part of the problem by ignoring us, sir.

or

Me: Have you visited Walter Reed in the past two years, sir?
Them: Yes
Me: Then you are part of the problem, because you haven't fixed anything yet, sir.

Not that I would ever say that, but I sleep better at night thinking that it might change things.

It isn’t just the asshole Congresscritters who failed Walter Reed Soldier, nor the corporate media. We all failed Walter Reed Soldier, because we didn’t do enough over the last four years to make sure this abomination didn’t happen. We didn’t do enough to stop an egomaniac and a ruthless greedhead from starting a war in order to feed their lusts. We didn’t do enough years ago to throw out the War Party from Congress before they got their war on. (Apologies to David Rees for using what I hope is not a trademarked phrase. I don’t want the legal hassles; I just used the phrase because it was so apt.)

It wasn’t just the Department of Defense, Department of the Army, Congress, and corporate media that failed Walter Reed Soldier. We all did, and unlike the other culprits, I feel the guilt.