The above photo was taken by a friend of mine at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, an Army hospital in Germany. I won’t claim to know who wrote this graffiti on the wall or where in the Medical Center it is located. But considering that Landstuhl is one of the first stops for wounded US military from Iraq and Afghanistan, I thought it was a bit telling.
My friend (who shall remain anonymous) is actively deployed in Iraq with the US Army. While on a recent patrol, he was wounded and was evac’d to Landstuhl. Luckily, his wound was in no way associated with any “enemy action”, and thus probably isn’t part of any official statistics that you could find from the Army.
While I fully support our troops, I can’t claim to support the political leadership that placed out troops into a war that is costing the US taxpayer $2 Billion a week and will handicap generations of Americans to come; a war that completely ignored the Powell Doctrine, which was created to prevent such things as the Iraq war from happening in the first place. I think that this graffiti portrays a telling under current in the military and is unfortunately the only way that their opinion can be shared.
But at least this year is an election year…make your voice heard and your vote counted.