Thanks to Greyhawk at MILBLOGS, who passed along an appeal from Michelle Malkin (here and here so far), to get some soldier responses to Senator Harry Reid’s public declaration  that the “this war [in Iraq] is lost.”

Here’s my contribution to the effort, sent along to Michelle:

Senator Reid,

It is difficult to write this letter with any civility, but I think enough people will scream so much, with enough cursing and invective, that I will not need to add any more for you to get the point, that you infuriate those Americans who serve in the military with your careless, ignorant, mean-spirited, and frankly, dangerous remarks.

You, sir, are not any average, private citizen. You are a Senator of the United States of America, and whatever your political views or allegiances may be, you must first show loyalty to and serve with honor your country. Yet, you do not do so, and you have disgraced whatever nobility or honor you might have earned serving your constituency.

Even if our efforts in Iraq were an absolute failure, which they are surely not, you abuse your position and the Nation’s trust by declaring that the war is lost. Can you not comprehend how wrong it is for you to make such a statement?! Regardless of your partisan views, which seem to me awfully petty indeed when compared to the national security of our country or the lives of our soldiers, you must have enough sense of decency or patriotism that, at the least, to know that you don’t damage or hurt your nation and the public servants with the most on the line?!

You embolden our enemies, you discourage our allies, you demoralize the troops who serve, and you denigrate those Iraqis who have turned to the US as their hope for freedom, after decades of living under the tyranny and violence of a war criminal and a brutal oppression.

You are a disgrace. Made worse by the fact that you’re wrong.

There are many ways to view our efforts in Iraq. While a private citizen may well believe, and interpret events to indicate, that we have somehow “lost the war in Iraq,” that’s based more on ignorance and media hype than on actual, ground truth. Citizens will only be as informed, well or ill, by the sources of news to which they choose to listen. We live in a free society. But thanks to dishonest and in my view, disloyal Americans such as you, and the media who abet you, a majority of Americans have been misled about what we do in Iraq and what is really going on.

I am an Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) III Vet, mobilized with the National Guard, and deployed to Iraq from January to November 2005. I served as a First Sergeant for 160 guard soldiers. We served in Tikrit, and every one of our soldiers came back without injury. Sure, we didn’t see a lot, just our own slice of Iraq, but we were regularly exposed to mortars and rockets on base, and the threat of IEDs on supply convoys several times a week.

I think you could make a good case that we won the war in a few weeks in 2003: the war against Saddam Hussein’s Army, which collapsed in a spectacular liberation of Iraq. I am shamed to think you probably viewed this event with dismay, for purely partisan reasons.

I think you could make another excellent case that we won the war to establish democracy in Iraq, helping the Iraqis hold three hugely successful elections with huge Iraqi participation (greatly in excess of any modern US elections). I am shamed to think you probably viewed these elections with dismay, for purely partisan reasons.

I think you could make a plausible case that we have defeated the Sunni Baathist based “insurgency,” with the destruction and de facto surrender of so many holdouts among the former regime. I likewise think you could make the same case about Al Qaeda in Iraq, the presence of which you and your supporters adamantly denied for a very long time. They are on the run, they are defeated at every turn, their own intercepted communications say admit that very fact. I am shamed to think you probably viewed these events with dismay, for purely partisan reasons.

Now, as we help the Iraqis grow in strength in defending their own democracy, you say the “war” is lost. Which one? I can’t but help to think that what you really mean, is the defensive war this Administration has been fighting against you and your party colleagues since we invaded Iraq.

If the current surge can be successful at fully securing, once and for all, the security of the Iraqi democracy, this will prove you and your allies wrong. As an American, I recognize what a truly magnificent accomplishment that would represent, for Iraq, and for the Coalition who made that possible.

I am shamed, appalled, and heartsick to think, you would certainly view these events with dismay, for purely partisan reasons.

1SG Jeff Nuding

642 MI BN

42nd ID “Rainbow”

“Rainbow….Never Forget!”

I am. I’m ashamed and appalled that opponents of the war have gone way beyond what we can tolerate as a Nation. It’s one thing for the lunatics like Rosie and Robbins and Ma Sheehan to assail their own country’s foreign policy. Sure, they give aid and comfort to our enemies, too, but not as their intent. (Okay, call me a fool, but I really don’t think they think of our enemies as enemies at all). But Harry Reid is a Senator. What in the world does he think this does, even if he really believes it?

Is he that worried about maybe, just maybe we might be successful in Iraq, that he so desperately wants to help it fall apart?