Journalist and author Chris Hedges has an amazing piece up at The Nation this week. I highly recommend his book, War is a Force That Give Us Meaning. Hedges has been covering wars for decades and he knows his subject inside and out. His new piece is about the civilian casualties in Iraq that have been inflicted by US soldiers and marines. He and journalist Laila Al-Arian interviewed fifty combat veterans from the war about what has been done to the Iraqi people in this conflict. The vets - all of whom gave their names, their unit information and commented on events they directly knew about or took part in - tell stories that will change everything you think you know about what we are fighting for. This is a story that has been woefully underreported and Hedges and Al-Arian deserve a lot of credit for the work they've done here. Consider just this bit:

"These aren't terrorists," he recalled thinking. "These aren't our enemies. They're just ordinary people, and we're treating them this harshly." Specialist Delgado ultimately applied for conscientious objector status, which the Army approved in April 2004.

The vets recount killing civilians out of panic, destroying their homes out of frustration and fear and breaking every rule of civil behavior simply because they can - and then later realizing that what they did was wrong. Here's another bit:

Convoys did not slow down or attempt to brake when civilians inadvertently got in front of their vehicles, according to the veterans who described them. Sgt. Kelly Dougherty, 29, from Cañon City, Colorado, was based at the Talil Air Base in Nasiriya with the Colorado National Guard's 220th Military Police Company for a year beginning in February 2003. She recounted one incident she investigated in January 2004 on a six-lane highway south of Nasiriya that resembled numerous incidents described by other veterans.

"We saw him there and, you know, we were upset because the convoy didn't even stop," she said. "They really, judging by the skid marks, they hardly even slowed down. But, I mean, that's basically--basically, your order is that you never stop."

Understand that I am pointing this article out not as someone who is a fool or blindly believes that all conflict is wrong or unjust or cruel merely because it is conflict. I studied American military history - it was what I immersed myself in for years. I taught American soldiers for five years and in that time we talked war over and over and over again. I think Hitler was evil and Stalin was evil and Pol Pot and a whole slew of people in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia were evil and I know that sometimes war happens because bad people want it to. And that we must fight them and stop them and that means people do get bloody and die. I know this, because I spend a lot of damn time learning about it.

But I am reminded of my Military History instructor at UAF - he was the head of the school's ROTC program and an active duty Major in the US Army. We were discussing part of the Vietnam War in class one day and My Lai came up. Several of my classmates - all of them ROTC - said they could understand how it happened; how soldiers had a right to be frustrated and angry over the war and take it out on the civilians around them who might have aiding the enemy. Major Hall lost it - it was the only time I ever heard him raise his voice. He told us never ever did a soldier make war on an unarmed civilian. He said that was the difference between soldiers and thugs and that if you were going to wear the uniform of the US military then you protected civilians - your put your life on the line for them.

Never defend what was done at My Laid he told us; never think there is any excuse.

I know that was a classroom discussion and I know that we can not understand the fear and the pressure and the horror that is felt by the soldiers on duty in Iraq (or elsewhere) that are under fire. But still My Lai was wrong and what is happening over there is wrong - it is not helping, it is not bringing peace in any way to that region. They will hate us for doing these things to them; they will hate us for generations.

Some of them will hate us forever.

And as many of the soldiers in the piece explain, they are not okay now. They did what they did in Iraq because they thought they should, or because they could, or because it just happened but now they are home and all they have time to do is remember. And they are not okay because really - no one would be.

No one would be able to send a little boy flying across road and then be okay.

This is what frustrates me so much about the men and women who have brought us to this place in history. They are stupid - they are arrogant and they are stupid and they took no time to study history or to consider what might happen in Iraq. They were selfish for glory and eager for thrills. They have brought us to a place where children die because we can not slow down; where teenagers are shooting anything that moves because they are so terrified; where we have now paid over $30 million dollars to Iraqi families in compensation for civilian deaths and injuries caused by US forces.

They have brought us to a place of no peace and now, in their own fear of history's judgment they leave us here, with no ability to save anyone. They doom us all, the killers and the killed, because they are so stupid they do not know what else to do.

And all they can do is blame the faceless, nameless, countless insurgents.

"Every good cop carries a throwaway," said Hatcher, who served with the Fourth Cavalry Regiment, First Squadron, in Ad Dawar, halfway between Tikrit and Samarra, from February 2004 to March 2005. "If you kill someone and they're unarmed, you just drop one on 'em." Those who survived such shootings then found themselves imprisoned as accused insurgents.

Go read a book on Vietnam and you will find this is the same war, with the same tactics and will likely have the same outcome. I can't believe we are here; I can't believe in my lifetime that we are here again.