On July 11^th members of the Mujahedeen Shura Council, read terrorist, released a video of your tortured bodies along with a statement that they did this to you in revenge for the alleged rape and murders of Iraqi civilians that were committed by soldiers from your unit. It did not seem to matter that the three of you were not even in Iraq when these crimes were supposed to be committed. It did not matter that this statement only came after the reports of this alleged crime and the impending investigation by the U.S. Army had already been announced weeks after your brutal killings. Nor did it matter that this statement was only a ploy by the terrorists to justify their cruelty and to boast of their supposed Islamic manhood. This statement from them received more attention in our news media than the terrible details of your own murders. In the statement the terrorists bragged of how they had “controlled their anger,” “bided their time,” until they could take revenge on the American soldiers who were responsible for these alleged crimes, and our news media ate it up. For this and so many other instances in our media, government and entertainment communities, I add the next part of my apology.

I am sorry that the majority of our news media does not support your efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. That their articles and news flashes concentrate only on our setbacks and highlight our failures, real or imagined. That they relish and dream for the bold headline of some dreadful act that one of you may commit and then lump you all together when one soldier steps out of line, or even conducts himself in a rightful act of war by killing a still dangerous wounded enemy. That once an alleged crime is reported that they flood the airwaves and newsprint with innuendoes about your guilt and believe all that is reported about your actions by distrustful Islamic sources as if it were the truth. That the news media usually holds you all in such indifference that they call you all soldiers, refusing to call you by your rightful names of, Sailor, Airman, Marine, Coast Guardsman, and by so doing so show no respect for your chosen services that you are so rightly proud to be a member.

I apologize, not for the politicians themselves, but for all of us Americans who keep electing officials who will vote to send you off to war then condemn you and that war when the political tide turns and they scramble for votes like vultures at a slaughter. 

            I am sorry that we as a people do not recognize and take action against an act of treason when it is staring us in the face. Treasonable actions like that of the recent New York Times disclosure of the top-secret money-tracing program that undermines your efforts and safety. Or yet, even more despicable, that we recognize such actions as treason and do nothing about it, thus leaving our young men and women in the military to suffer the consequences of both the act of treason and our lazy indifference.

I apologize to you that there are people in this country who speak out against you and your missions that are not only just tolerated but are, in fact, well rewarded and celebrated. Bill Maher is paid millions to sit before a loaded panel and is applauded by a laughing audience as he calls our children in the military, “low lying fruit” and “the bottom of the barrel.” Cartoonists such as Ted Rall win awards and handsome publishing contracts while depicting all American soldiers as Nazi Storm Troopers when a few misguided soldiers commit crimes at an Iraqi prison, even though the vast majority of our soldiers have never even seen the walls of Abu Ghraib. Another cartoonist, Steve Benson, has twice taken liberties with the Marine Corps’ sacred emblems of honor. Once depicting a gang rape at the foot of the Iwo Jima flag raising because of an alleged rape by three Marines in the Philippines. Yet he drew no cartoons, offered no apologies, when both the military and Philippine government dropped all charges against the three Marines. In another cartoon, Benson drew a blood soaked Eagle, Globe and Anchor, the famous Marine Corps’ Emblem, with the words changed to, “United States Massacre Cover-Up,” in response to allegations of civilians being killed in Haditha. Unjustly, with any hint of wrong doing by any of you, and the media covers all of you in collective shame and with predisposed guilt. 

 Wealthy actors and actresses sit in luxurious safety and spout off about how they support our sons and daughters in the military, but yet condemn their actions and our government, while our enemies take heart with these words and actions against you and shed more of your blood.

 Shamefully all of this continues unpunished as we Americans still refuse to omit these few politicians, ‘entertainers’, cartoonists and celebrities, from our lives and forms of entertainment, but instead generously reward them for their deviant behavior. While still others, who have no idea about your honor, your sense of duty or your courage, say your enlistments were only due to the fact that you could not find a job or that you are too poor, too stupid, to attend college. Your brand of Patriotism is as foreign a concept to these fools as the real threat that now faces our nation. For of all this, my young Heroes, I apologize.


Friday: Part Three Of My Apology

"Copyright 2006.  Michael E. Tank   All rights reserved. No part of this document may be copied, faxed, electronically transmitted, or in any other manner duplicated without express written permission of the author."