47 Valley Military Dead: Forget the wars?
After launching the Iraq and Afghanistan wars based on lies and deceit, the Rio Grande Valley lost approximately 50 of our own soldiers to death and destruction, many of them the result of IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices).
Yet now, some in the media completely want to whitewash that bit of history?
No surprise. Just in case we want to start another war, no reason to keep reminding people of how badly the last two ended.
Oh, and let’s not forget the estimated cost for both wars — between $4 and $6 trillion, according to the Harvard Kennedy School.
The human loss among American military troops — estimated at approximately 7,000, according to USAFacts.
The Edinburg Marine, RIP
From the RGV, approximately 50 troops lost their lives, almost all of them very young, with so many years still ahead of them.
In fact, when I drive past the Edinburg Library, or see its name in print, I am reminded of Edinburg native and Marine Lance Corporal Dustin Sekula, who was only 18 when he was killed in Iraq during the war.
If we don’t remember the sad mistake that these wars cost us in terms of lives lost, not to mention the huge toll it took on our national debt, there’s more of a chance that our future leaders, many of them thieves and scoundrels, will repeat it, echoing that famous quote from American Philosopher George Santayana:
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
As they did in the build-up to invading Iraq in early 2003, after the U.S. already invaded Afghanistan in October 2021, a war that would last 20 years, the media elite with a national platform continues to play fast and loose with the truth, as long as it further their chosen agenda and narrative, the truth be damned.
When we don’t have the required facts in hand that will always help us separate fact from fiction, it’s usually the fault of a new outlet like El Pais, which recently claimed that the U.S. is so mired in debt because “tax cuts, the 2008 financial crisis, and the pandemic have led to high deficits.”
Seriously?
El Pais is considered by many to be the national newspaper of record for Spain, so it carries some clout and respect.
Just toss the respect out the window for now.
The point of the article referenced is dated June 2, 2025, and carried this headline: “Trump plunges the U.S. economy into chaos and uncertainty.”
Whether one likes Trump, or not, his policies, good or bad, one should still insist on getting the truth out of the media.
After all, it was the fabled NY Times, Fox, CNN, the Washington Post, all of them, with the exception of very few news outlets, labeled fringe by Bush, that helped Cheney and Co. lie us into invading Afghanistan and Iraq.
There is proof now in the public domain that W’s administration even carried on focus groups to get the American public ginned up into invading Iraq. They discovered that throwing around the phrase “Weapons of Mass Destruction” was the best option. Which is why you started seeing, hearing “WMDs” pop up everywhere.
The media now hates Trump, and you may as well, but the very least we should ask for is the truth from the national media, and if the AP still wants to call it the Gulf of Mexico and not the Gulf of America, as Trump wants, do we really care? Aren’t there bigger battles to fight?
Like making sure that the reasons given for our approximate $37 trillion in debt just might have something to do with the two wars that we fought and lost to the tune of between $6 and $7 trillion?
Our national media, or foreign media, didn’t give us the truth about Iraq and Afghanistan before we invaded those two countries, and they’re not painting an accurate picture now of why our financial shape is the way it is.
Instead, blame it, in part, on tax cuts.
Right.