by Kelly Thomas

War means fightin and fightin means killing.
Nathan Bedford Forest, civil war general, who rose from Private to Lieutenant General.

Soldier, do you have any complaints? Well, no sir. Oh come on, you must not be happy about something. Well, no not really. Come on, something must be wrong. Ok, now that you mention IT, I don't like it here.

Sound preposterous. Not really. This is exactly what happened recently in a survey of soldier morale in Iraq. Sometimes I think those who are running the Army must be a bunch of idiots. Not that any one is interested, but it doesn't serve any real purpose to suggest at war anything but accomplishing the mission.

When I was in Vietnam, if we had taken a survey of soldiers who were glad to be there, what do you think the response would have been? Well, would you believe that the military has been so stupid as to take a survey on soldier morale, mainly from the lower ranking troops? Do you think they are going to say they are having a good time, especially the Reserve and National Guard units? Give me a break.

War is no day at the beach and the one in Iraq is worst than most. Nothing is worse for conventional soldiers than fighting an urban guerrilla war. It is about as bad as it gets. We are essentially fighting three groups: (1) the constant conflict between the two Muslim groups, who want death to all Americans, (2) foreign Jihadists, many coming from Syria who are zealots and are willing to die-most face little or no prospects and so why not die. (3) The al Qaeda remnants or various cells. (Based on the incident in Spain, they are more organized and philosophical than many of us had believed).

The truth of the matter is that we really don't know. What we do know is that we are bogged down, fighting a war and the prospects aren't good. So, why would we survey soldiers? Let's make it as good for them as we can, but not playing the "happy to be here" game. Stupid.