Galveston soldier died doing his duty

A mother's pain over her son's death in Iraq after he had seen firsthand the futility of the current mission. From Mark Collette with the Galveston County Daily News:

Sgt. Omar Mora, a U.S. citizen for just a few weeks, had struggled to make sense of the war for which he had volunteered....

An infantryman, within three years he earned the rank of sergeant in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. A legal permanent resident in the United States, Mora wanted to join the Army Special Forces, which requires citizenship. He received his citizenship papers a few weeks ago.

November would have marked the end of his 15-month deployment.

The Capetillos last saw their son in April, when he was on leave after a roadside bomb damaged his ears and left one of his friends without an arm.

He eventually redeployed, and in August saw another friend shot in the head, a wound that later killed him, the Capetillos said.

Mora and six other soldiers were then in the process of writing an editorial that later ran in The New York Times. Six of the men were sergeants.

Questioning The War

“To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched,” the group wrote.

They said recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable simply didn’t jibe with realities on the ground. They then went on for paragraphs describing those nuances.

“We are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse — namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force,” they said.

The most important front in the counterinsurgency is improving basic social and economic conditions — the front on which the United States has “failed most miserably,” they said.

My nephew is in the 82nd Airborne Division.

Tags: Iraq, occupation, deaths, soldiers, 82nd Division