Day: March 8, 2015

First posted March 08, 2015

Tomas Young was 34 when he died on November 10, 2014 from
wounds he received while serving in Iraq.

The welfare of the men and women who serve in our armed forces and their proper deployment as guardians of our Nation is every citizens concern.

If you are someone who places your political party above the rule of law and the good of the nation you have nothing to say to me. You have no defense.

Young explains why he thought he was going to Iraq in an open letter that he wrote in 2013 to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney:

” I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens.”

Truthdig

Young said, ” I called my recruiter after hearing Bush say he was going to smoke the evildoers out of their caves.” The Topeka Capital-Journal

That is what Bush said on September 17, 2001:

“…we’re going to find those evil doers, those barbaric people who attacked our country and we’re going to hold them accountable and we’re going to hold the people who house them accountable….And the Taliban must take my statement seriously…”

George W. Bush Monday, Sept. 17, 2001

The Taliban were in Afghanistan.

Young expected to serve in Afghanistan; isn’t that where Bush said the evil doers were?

According to an interview Young gave to the Kansas City Star, Young could not understand why he was going to Iraq:

While training in the woods of central Texas, he wondered aloud why the U.S. was in Iraq.

“Shut the … up, Young, ” officers told him.”

Young said in an interview with The New York Times in 2008:

“If I had been shot and hurt in Afghanistan…I would not have
felt my wounds were received in an invalid war”

Imagine the pain of feeling as if your life meant nothing to people
you admired and trusted.

In his letter to Bush Tomas Young wrote:

” I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.”

It is now common knowledge that there were no weapons of mass destruction and documents that were declassified in 2014 affirm that members of the Bush Administration were actively looking for ways to exploit 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq.

MSNBC

Betrayal is a wound to the soul.

In his letter to Bush Tomas Young wrote:

“I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief…

“…Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.”

Tomas Young

I chose this month to post this memorial to Tomas Young and as a tribute to the men and women who serve in our military because March 20th marks 12 years since the invasion of Iraq.

There is more than enough evidence to justify an official inquiry into the allegations of a conspiracy to deceive the American people.

One would think that a sense of moral duty to the people who have suffered as a result of this invasion would prompt us to do the one thing that might help them to heal, which is to seek justice, but there is nothing but silence.

It is this silence, this denial of the obvious, this refusal to see the crushing brutality for what it is that wounds the soul of the person who suffers from PTSD.

Justice is the only way to heal the trauma of betrayal.

Declassified talking points reveal the Bush team had decided 9/11 gave them a pretext for a war they had already planned to launch: “…Various scenarios were outlined:  “US discovers Saddam connection to Sept. 11 attack or to anthrax attacks?” reads one of them. “Dispute over WMD inspections?” reads another. “Start now thinking about inspection demands.”

MSNBC

On April 4, 2004 Young is shot by a sniper and paralyzed from the chest down. He is 24 years old.

Below is a follow up post:

Reuben Chip Santos, 1982-200

Save