The fifth anniversary of the start of the War on Iraq was a couple weeks ago, and the Cornell community has been “commemorating” ever since.  One of my lectures last week was centered on the situation in Iraq, a protester on Ho Plaza about peed himself when I said I support the war, and the Cornell Daily Sun is still publishing guest columns by everyone and anyone who has an opinion about the war.  It’s similar to when the 2000th soldier died in Iraq.  Anti-war protesters already had their posters painted and demonstrations planned.  It was as if they were looking forward to it.

I was actually impressed with the Sun on March 25, when they published a guest column by Patrick Byers ‘08, a veteran of three deployments to Iraq.  Unlike all the white people with dreads, Byers has a pretty unique perspective on the war.

In “Life During Wartime“, he writes:

The truth is that it is not the Army that discriminates against other members of the Cornell community. The truth is it is the Cornell community that discriminates against veterans, not openly or intentionally but regularly none-the-less. I wonder where my support group is on campus in any form similar to one established for LGBT? When I report to Gannett for counseling it’s mentioned that I might be better off seeking help through the VA. The truth is my only true resource is the VFW downtown, further extricating me from the Cornell community. I bet I’m not the only veteran who’s felt this way.

Just another manifestation of Open Doors, Open Hearts, Open Minds… eh?

Today, the Sun published another guest column, this time by Perry O’Brien ‘08 who served one tour of duty in Afghanistan.

In “This Winter’s Soldiers“, O’Brien writes of his experience as a medic with the 82nd Airborne Division:

As part of the humanitarian component of our mission, we also offered emergency care to local civilians who had been involved in accidents or caught in the crossfire between U.S. soldiers and Afghan resistance fighters. As might be expected, many of our patients didn’t survive. Rather than preparing these corpses for burial, however, as was always done with dead American soldiers, a different policy was followed for Afghans. After dying, Afghan corpses were routinely used as teaching tools for medical “practice.”

The first time this happened, I was re-stocking one of our trauma stations when I heard an officer yell out from the surgery room: “Who wants to see what a human heart feels like?” Following surgery, the patient’s chest had been cracked open to reveal the thoracic cavity. Soldiers were invited to come into the surgery room, don gloves, and feel around inside the body. Some took pictures. It was an informative lesson on human anatomy, but it was also a flagrant violation of both the Hippocratic Oath and international law, to say nothing of common sense morality.

The rest of the column is basically the same song and dance.  Leftist anti-war activists claim to “Support the Troops, Not the War”… but how can they morally justify supporting the troops when they believe the troops commit horrific human rights violations such as those described by O’Brien?  Answer:  they don’t support the troops.

On the other hand, I don’t buy into the story O’Brien and his fellow anti-war propagandists are trying to sell.  If only they had some semblance of legitimacy, but time after time the “Winter Soldiers” have been shown to be either not actual service members or simply liars.  While O’Brien is obviously no Jesse MacBeth or Micah Wright (fake soliders), I suspect he may be a member of the Beauchamp club.

Let me clarify:  I am not meaning to suggest that there have been no atrocities in the War on Terror. War sucks.  As of yet, there is no scientifically provable method of completely avoiding civilian casualties in a war.  Even worse, sometimes, stupid people get in the military and create non-accidental situations like Abu Ghraib - for which there is no excuse.

That said, these so-called “Winter Soldiers” propose that the United States Military is systematically committing war crimes, carelessly killing innocent civilians, and doing medical experiments on dead bodies.  All it takes is one look into the organizations that sponsor such testimonies to figure out their agenda.  Plus, where is their evidence of such atrocities?  They have nothing.  They are repeatedly proven wrong.

As much as I disagree with Ron Paul’s anti-war stance, at least his position is legitimately grounded in foreign policy reasoning and not in careless lies about the American military.  Why can’t the American left take up that kind of logic rather than vilifying American soldiers?