A Marine's Order: Feed the Hand That Bit You

A Marine's Order: Feed the Hand That Bit You
By Damien Cave
The New York Times
Sunday 30 December 2007

Fallauja, Iraq - Capt. Sean Miller shook his head like a big brother. He and his marines had just walked by a cluster of large orange garbage bins, American-bought, from which thieves had ripped the wheels, and now they confronted a cemetery entrance that Captain Miller had paid an Iraqi contractor to fix. It was still broken.

He snapped a photograph and moved on.

It was one more day on the job here in Anbar Province, where fighting has given way to fixing. But reconstruction was hardly the only thing on the captain's mind. Falluja's past as the epicenter of the Sunni rebellion was with him too.

"The road we just walked down, I lost three marines on that road," said the captain, a compact 32-year-old company commander from Virginia. "I was wounded in Falluja too, so walking down these streets - it's not easy."

"Reconciliation," he said, eyeing some Iraqi policemen nearby. "It's a hard pill to swallow."


Rest of article at: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123007D.shtml

it was the UNITED STATES that invaded Iraq, not the other way around.

I'm sure that however bitter the captain finds the reconcilliation pill, the Iraqis find it a hundred times more bitter.

The original offense was ours. The responsiblility to reconcile and atone is also ours.