On war and soldiers

First off, I can write here with some authority,as I am combat veteran. I served with the Marines in Vietnam during the 1960's. I saw my share and then some. iIshall live with those scars,physical and mental, until I die. Recently I have been watching some movies on the Iraq war. Movies like Jarhead, Redacted, In the Valley of Elah etc. I am amazed at the portrayal of the troops. Once again, like in my war, troops are being demonized. I know from experience how us Nam vets were viewed after such movies as Full Metal Jacket and Platoon. We were the baby killers, the village burners, the monsters. Now the same thing is being done to the valiant men fighting in Iraq.
Both Iraq and Vietnam were great mistakes for America. Both did not need to be fought. Men died needlessly. "War is hell" General William Tecumseh Sherman said, and he is right. Somewhere around the 16th century, we decided to fight war like gentlemen, and developed things like the Geneva Convention(which Bush's government decided didn't apply to the enemy combatants of this war) So lets kill people by rules. Rules which are going to be impossible to follow in the fog of battle. Rules which make no sense to troops fighting an invisible enemy. Colateral damage(killing civilians) is going to happen even in these days of supposedly smart bombs. Friendly fire(one of the greatest oxymorons of all time) is going to happen. Men, no matter how well trained are going to crack. Atrocities happen, both sides, all the time. Take a soldier in Iraq, a National Guardsman, plucked from his family, on his second tour, family suffering, whose tour is extended for 6 months more. How is he going to react? How is a man whose best buddy has been turned into ground round before his eyes by IED going to react next time he sees an Iraqi? How is an Iraqi(or Vietnamese) insurgent going to react after his family has been killed accidentally in the chaos of battle? This is war, those who haven't been will never understand, therefore they have no right to judge. War has produced the massive deaths in trenches in WW I, due to faultly thinking of some general staff. War has produced the Holocaust, which no one did anything to stop. But do not place the weight on the shoulders of the grunt. It is not his to bear. It should be borne by the Hilters, the bin Ladens, the Bushes and Cheneys, the Johnsons and Nixons and the bean counters and liars who persuaded these men they are dying for a righteous cause. Fundamentalist preachers invoke Jesus, Mullahs supplicate Allah. God turns his back away and cries, the tears fall as the soft spring rain drenching my mountains today.
The soldier (we are talking either side here) will bear his scars and sufferings all his life. It will disrupt his marriages, close down his affections, torture his soul, cause him to escape into violence, drugs and alcohol. Due him a service, do not increas his burden anymore, for when the war is over, he will mostly be forgotten and ignored, misunderstood and shunned, relagated to his own private hell which he will either deal with or not. The stories of war, and they must be told, should focus on those who should bear that guilt. God and History will be their final judges.