A soldier silenced

Over at Operation Truth, there is a short article from Daniel Goetz, a soldier in Iraq. Go there and check it out. I'll quote some of it here, but really, read the whole thing.

My dismay [with the army] melted away in the patriotic euphoria that enveloped the country in the run-up to our invasion of Iraq. Like the rest of the America, I clung fervently to the justifications for it. The underlying righteousness was my source of motivation when we crossed the Kuwait-Iraq border in March of 2003. In the months that were to follow, those justifications collapsed - and with them, my confidence in a nation. In those days, my colleagues and I would often patrol the streets of Baghdad with the infantry in a bid to quell boredom. We were also looking for hope among the Iraqi people; we could live vicariously through their optimism, and perhaps therein find meaning for our occupation. But hope betrayed us as the insurgency swelled....

Today, I find the greatest challenge of the army is to find honor in service. I don't ever regret having joined because I've learned so much about myself and about America. I have faith in both, but yearn for hope to become reality. I want to go home as badly as I want to be proud of my country again.

So a soldier is unhappy with what is happening in Iraq. He had a blog which went into even more detail about what is wrong with the war in Iraq. That's not really the suprising or scary part of this. On October 22nd, Daniel was silenced. Here is the last post on his blog. (Thanks to The Tattered Coat.)

I thank all of you who have been so supportive recently. I have never before received so much positive feedback, and it was very heart-warming to know that so many people out there care. Having said that, it breaks my heart to say that this will be my last post on this blog. I wish I could just stop there, but I can not. The following also needs to be said:

For the record, I am officially a supporter of the administration and of her policies. I am a proponent for the war against terror and I believe in the mission in Iraq. I understand my role in that mission, and I accept it. I understand that I signed the contract which makes stop loss legal, and I retract any statements I made in the past that contradict this one. Furthermore, I have the utmost confidence in the leadership of my chain of command, including (but not limited to) the president George Bush and the honorable secretary of defense Rumsfeld. If I have ever written anything on this site or on others that lead the reader to believe otherwise, please consider this a full and complete retraction.

I apologize for any misunderstandings that might understandably arise from this. Should you continue to have questions, please feel free to contact me through e-mail. I promise to respond personally to each, but it may take some time; my internet access has become restricted.

posted by Daniel at Saturday, October 22, 2005

Anyone else feel a cold wind blowing as you read those last two paragraphs? And his blog is now gone. You can still find some of it by Googling its name, All The King's Horses, and clicking on the cached response.