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Two Soldiers My Age Beheaded in Iraq

The bodies of two U.S. soldiers who were captured by insurgents in Iraq last week were found discarded in a street earlier today. According to al-Qaida in Iraq, the two soldiers were “slaughtered”, which likely means they were beheaded.

The director of the Iraqi defense military’s operation room, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Mohammed, said the bodies showed signs of having been tortured. “With great regret, they were killed in a barbaric way,” he said.

The two soldiers were Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, Texas, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Oregon. I will turn 25 next month, and I’m also from Houston, Texas. I can’t help but think what it would have been like if that was me getting captured in some city in Iraq. What can you do? If you’re surrounded, you have to surrender. It’s no use meeting certain death by taking one or two more guys with you. There have been enough U.S. soldiers released alive that you have some nonzero chance of seeing your family again. But then you get tortured. And then it’s the end. At the hands of people who lack the basic civility of any self-respecting human being.

It really does make me wonder, what are we doing over there? It’s been over three years now, and we continue to throw lives and money at a situation that just doesn’t improve. We’re not willing to commit the large number of personnel that is necessary to set everything in order, but we’re also not willing to hand the situation back over to the Iraqis and let them protect themselves. Young men and women my age, some from the same city as me, are getting tortured and brutally murdered in Iraq because President Bush won’t admit that “staying the course” on a misguided course is a bad idea.

We have a Congress for a reason. In times like this, when we lack executive vision and leadership, we need some governing body to set our affairs in order. We don’t have the lives or the money to continue wallowing in the Iraqi quagmire. Let the Iraqis govern themselves. People are going without in this country so that we can continue throwing resources at a problem that doesn’t improve. The 2006 midterm elections give us our first chance to let our government know we’re not satisfied with the way things are going.

The Taliban are coming back in a major way in Afghanistan. Al-Qaida is actively targeting American cities at a time when Homeland Security funding is being cut. The war on terrorism is continuing to unfold, and we’re sending men my age to get tortured and brutally murdered in Iraq while the terrorists make progress in places where we lack sufficient attention.

When can we say, we’ve gotten rid of Saddam Hussein, we’ve released these Iraqi people from oppression, so now let’s let them do their job and pull themselves together? If they’re not mature enough to govern themselves, throwing another several thousand young American lives and hundreds of billions of more dollars isn’t going to get us any further along. Let’s find a way to put down this Iraqi mess and fight the real war on terror.