[R-G] Two soldiers critical of Iraq war among its latest casualties

[Anthony Fenton]

Two soldiers critical of Iraq war among its latest casualties
By Naomi Spencer
14 September 2007

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/sep2007/sold-s14.shtml

Two Army sergeants who were co-authors of a public letter sharply  
critical of the US occupation of Iraq and the Pentagon’s assessment  
of it were killed in a Baghdad vehicle accident Monday. The deaths  
came as General David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq,  
prepared to deliver congressional testimony declaring the troop  
buildup a success.

Sergeant Omar Mora and Staff Sergeant Yance Gray, whose “The War as  
We Saw It,” written with five other soldiers and published last month  
in the New York Times, were among nine killed when their truck veered  
off an elevated highway and fell about 30 feet.

Those killed included seven soldiers and two detainees. The crash  
also wounded 12 others, including one detainee. The military made no  
mention of hostile fire in its announcements of the incident.

The soldiers were members of the 82nd Airborne Division, part of the  
Army’s Task Force Lightning, a large force charged with stamping out  
resistance in Northern Iraq. Since September 5, the unit has been  
engaged in bloody air strikes and raids as part of counterinsurgency  
operations referred to as Lightning Hammer II. The 82nd Airborne  
Division has borne 53 deaths so far this year, 14 of those in the  
past month.

While perhaps better known than other soldiers to some because of  
their Times commentary, the backgrounds of the two sergeants typify  
the ranks of the US enlisted. Both Mora, who was 28, and Gray, 26,  
were expecting to come home to their wives and families by November.  
Gray was the father of a five-month-old daughter whom he had only  
seen once; Mora is survived by a five-year-old daughter.

Gray, who grew up in Montana, liked to write and to draw. Mora, who  
was born in Ecuador and grew up in Texas, had recently been granted  
US citizenship. His family said he was passionate about fixing cars  
and playing soccer.

Both were described by their parents as independent-minded,  
warmhearted, and disciplined sons who had entered the military out of  
a sense of duty. And, like thousands of other troops currently in  
Iraq, both had been endlessly redeployed. Mora and Gray were serving  
their third and fourth tours, respectively.

Mora’s mother, Olga Capetillo, told the press that her son was deeply  
affected by the conditions in which he witnessed Iraqis living. The  
pain and poverty suffered by children prompted him to often ask his  
family to send packages of cookies and candy. In late August, his  
mother said, a friend died in Mora’s arms.

When he called her for the last time on September 7, she described  
him as withdrawn and exhausted. “He was so quiet, as if he did not  
want anyone to hear him,” she told the Associated Press. “I told him  
that I was counting the days until he would come home, that I would  
give him a big hug.”

“Maybe he had a premonition that something was going to happen to  
him, that he was not going to come back,” Capetillo told the AP. “My  
son escaped death two times before. But this time, no.”

“I want to know all the details of how he died,” she said. “I want to  
know the truth. I don’t understand how so many people could die in  
that accident. How could it be so bad?”

In their letter published August 19, the soldiers described the  
situation confronting the Iraqi population as well as US troops as  
one of extreme peril, chaos and terror. Even as they authored the  
piece, one of the seven soldiers, Staff Sergeant Jeremy Murphy, was  
shot in the head and had to be airlifted out of Iraq. He remains  
hospitalized in the US.

The soldiers called the Pentagon’s appraisal of the war “surreal.”  
“To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago  
outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local  
population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched,” they  
wrote. “We are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the  
conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the  
mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day.”

Without challenging the underlying political justification for the  
occupation, the soldiers sharply disputed the official claims of  
progress and success in Iraq. They wrote, “we operate in a  
bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies,  
one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely  
unclear.... While we have the will and the resources to fight in this  
context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground  
require measures we will always refuse—namely, the widespread use of  
lethal and brutal force.”

“The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the  
streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of  
security.” In contrast to the photo-ops staged by visiting  
politicians, the soldiers wrote, “we see that a vast majority of  
Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force  
that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is  
increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.”

The soldiers clearly saw the ruinous state of Iraqi society as a  
major concern, and one that they recognized was utterly ignored by  
the war’s architects. They wrote that “the most important front in  
the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic  
conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two  
million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to  
two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban  
slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and  
sanitation. ‘Lucky’ Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with  
concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal  
claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider  
normal.”

Their comments elicited a strong but pursed-lipped reaction from the  
Pentagon. In its short statement on the editorial, issued to the  
journal Editor & Publisher, the military attempted to isolate and  
dismiss the soldiers. “It is important to note that as individuals  
voice their opinions on matters, that those viewpoints are  
representative of their personal perspective. With approximately  
160,000 Americans serving in uniform here in Iraq in support of  
Operation Iraqi Freedom, you’ll probably get that many different  
perspectives if you ask each of them.”

To the contrary, while the 82nd Airborne Division soldiers were  
speaking from their own experience, they were also speaking to some  
degree of the common experience for active duty troops. They sent the  
editorial unsolicited and refused payment in exchange for its  
publishing.

Following General Petraeus’s congressional report this week,  
President Bush was expected to announce a token reduction in US  
forces. The White House has emphasized that this so-called drawdown  
does not signal a shift in policy, and that troop levels cannot be  
expected to be reduced to the “pre-surge” level of 130,000 before  
mid-2008, meaning casualty figures will continue to mount.

The latest confirmed fatalities bring the US toll to 34 so far in  
September, and to 690 since the troop surge began in February. Since  
2003, 3,776 US military personnel have died; total occupation force  
casualties stand at 4,074.