Two War Critic Soldiers Killed in Iraq...so much for free speech

[The_dip_sticks 0]

By MARCUS BARAM

Sept. 12, 2007

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Share The last words of the op-ed written by seven soldiers serving in Iraq were courageous and poignant.

"We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through." Sadly, that mission came to an end for two of those soldiers just three weeks after that editorial was published in The New York Times.

Sgt. Omar Mora, 28, and Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray, 26, two of the authors of "The War as We Saw It," were killed in Baghdad Monday when the five-ton cargo truck they were riding in overturned.

Another of the authors, Staff Sgt. Jeremy Murphy, was shot in the head while the group was working on the article.

The controversial Aug. 19 editorial gained international attention for its skepticism about the American war effort: "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."

The news of their deaths arrived as Gen. David Petraeus was finishing his testimony to Congress about the progress of the military's surge in Iraq.

Several senators invoked the editorial during the debate. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) read from the op-ed and Sen. Chuck Hagel referenced it while challenging Petraeus.

"By the way, I assume you read The New York Times piece two weeks ago -- seven NCOs in Iraq, today, finishing up 15-month commitments. Are we going to dismiss those seven NCOs? Are they ignorant? They laid out a pretty different scenario, general, ambassador, from what you're laying out today."

Gray, who grew up in Montana, is survived by his wife, Jessica, and infant daughter, Ava.

Mora, who is survived by his wife, Christa, and 5-year-old daughter, Jordan, was expected to come home to Texas City, Texas, in November, his brother, Roger Mora, said.

Roger Mora, a former airman in the naval service, last talked to his brother about three months ago. "He was under a lot of stress, tired and trying to process his thoughts," Mora told ABCNEWS.com. "He was dealing with the wear and tear of our servicemen and women."

Mora said that when his brother joined the Army in 2004, he begged him not to join the infantry. "He liked to do things that his brother advised him against," he said, adding that Omar wanted to be a Ranger. Omar Mora didn't qualify for the Rangers, because he was not a U.S. citizen but a legal resident born in Ecuador.

Roger said he's proud of his brother and his decision to help write the editorial. "I've always been proud of him. When you read it, it's not stating what people want to hear but it's what needed to be said. As immigrants, one of the things we love about this country is the ability to express our thoughts."

Roger said his brother never mentioned experiencing any backlash from the military after the editorial was published.

Mora's mother wants the Army to explain his death to her.

"I want to know all the details of how he died. I want to know the truth," Olga Capetillo told The Associated Press. "I don't understand how so many people could die in that accident. How could it be so bad?"

Yance Gray's mother, Karen Gray, told The New York Times that her son always had a strong sense of duty. "My son was a soldier in his heart from the age of 5. ... He loved what he was doing."

On his MySpace page, Gray described his desire to meet past leaders, including Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, John F. Kennedy and Winston Churchill. "I have so many questions for those leaders in our time of need," he wrote.

But he emphasized that his wife was his real hero, calling her "the strongest woman I know." And he added that one of his goals was "becoming a great father."

http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/Story?id=3594058&page=2

http://www.click2houston.com/news/14103988/detail.html

Bellow the letter they wrote that was ran but the New York Times.

The War As We Saw It

By Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray and Jeremy A. Murphy

The New York Times

Sunday 19 August 2007

Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. 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. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, 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. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the "battle space" remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers' expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.

However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a "time-sensitive target acquisition mission" on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) 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.

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, 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.

Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.

The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.

Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington's insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made - de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government - places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict - as we do now - will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

At the same time, 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.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, "We need security, not free food."

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are - an army of occupation - and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Soldiers have freedom of speech? News to me.

[Ban Hammer 13,366]

Soldiers have freedom of speech? News to me.

i'm trying to figure out how several of them getting killed in a vehicle accident has anything to do with "so much for free speech"

[jodee 30]

I was thinking the same as you Charles,...

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Free speech doesn't tend to protect a person from bombs, bullets, or road traffic accidents.

[Jasman0717 9]

Too many are dying

[The_dip_sticks 0]

The so called accidents that they were killed in are questionable. Even to the point that senators are now demanding to know exactly what happened. So they say something that apparently did not go well with some one and then they in a accident die. HMMMM

Edited September 14, 2007 by The_dip_sticks

[Heracles 417]

The so called accidents that they were killed in are questionable. Even to the point that senators are now demanding to know exactly what happened. So they say something that apparently did not go well with some one and then they in a accident die. HMMMM

Yeah it was a conspiracy.

[Sinergy 3]

I dont think anyone was killed on purpose for writing a letter. i believe it was something that happened, and hey, if its coming out that they were killed on purpose, then someone is just denying the fact that they were in a WAR.

[Peikko 1,575]

That family members might feel that way (that the accident wasn't entirely an 'accident') is understandable, after all, they have just lost people they love.

That politicians should latch onto this is somewhat straw clutching in my opinion.

[jodee 30]

With my hubby still over there,..and doing daily missions,..I think it might be nice if we could leave this alone..please..

[Ban Hammer 13,366]

The so called accidents that they were killed in are questionable. Even to the point that senators are now demanding to know exactly what happened. So they say something that apparently did not go well with some one and then they in a accident die. HMMMM

a 5 ton truck can overturn quite easily if the driver is unfamiliar with it.

[almaty 19]

With my hubby still over there,..and doing daily missions,..I think it might be nice if we could leave this alone..please..

sister jodee, i am in total agreement..

[Sinergy 3]

With my hubby still over there,..and doing daily missions,..I think it might be nice if we could leave this alone..please..

Glad your husband is doing a great job and i have high respect for any soilder over there, as my dad was there during the first one, but some ppl may want to talk about this. no offence, but if you dont want to read it, there are other topics to choose from. And i say that in the most respect

Edited September 14, 2007 by Ionescu

[DeadPoolX 9]

With my hubby still over there,..and doing daily missions,..I think it might be nice if we could leave this alone..please..

Glad your husband is doing a great job and i have high respect for any soilder over there, as my dad was there during the first one, but some ppl may want to talk about this. no offence, but if you dont want to read it, there are other topics to choose from. And i say that in the most respect

I see both sides to it, really.

I can understand what Jodee is saying and like many of you here, I have the utmost respect for the soldiers out in the field, who're risking their lives on a daily basis. Their job is a very dangerous one and we should all be thankful for the fact that they volunteered for the duty (whether directly or indirectly), so we don't have to do it ourselves.

Having said that, this is a public board, and therefore, with few exceptions, there shouldn't be restrictions on what can be talked about. If someone finds a particular topic displeasing, then they have the choice of either not viewing it or going to the moderators/administrator for assistance.