WILLMAR, MINN. - When Specialist Kyle Miller was deployed to Iraq in March, he took pictures of his hometown and surrounding areas and kept them with him…. After just three months in Iraq, Miller, 19, a National Guardsman from Willmar, was killed Thursday by a bomb that exploded near his convoy.
I imagine that there was nothing special about Kyle Miller…unless you count yourself among Miller’s friends or family. The photograph of him portrays a pretty typical 19-year-old boy- open, innocent, perhaps even naive about the world around him. He should have had the opportunity to find out what life holds for him. Instead, he will be buried in a few days, denied the opportunities we want for all our children because of a stupid, wasteful war, and a corrupt, inept excuse for a President who seems to have no difficulty with squandering the lives of other people’s children to achieve his own ends.
Kyle Miller grew up not that far away from where I went to high school in central Minnesota. It’s a place where children grow up dreaming of getting away from. Unless you want to spend your life as a turkey farmer, Willmar doesn’t have much to offer, so the idea of enlisting and seeing some of the world while serving his country probably impressed Miller as an appealling prospect. He may have thought that he was doing a good thing, and in that sense he should be commended.
The sad reality is that Miller deserved better. It’s one thing to sacrifice your life protecting your country from a serious, direct, and specific threat. It’s quite another to have your life taken from you in the service of an inept, lying thug who seems to view the lives of young Americans as means to an end. Of course, no one has credibly articulated just what that end is, and the “stay the course” mantra is only useful for insulting the intelligence of virtually anyone capable of critical thought.
No, Kyle Miller deserved better. He deserved to have the opportunity to find out what life held for him. He deserved to explore adulthood, to meet a girl, fall in love, raise a family. These are all thing we hope to see our own children achieve. Perhaps Miller’s story hits so close to home because Eric is about to turn 19, and when I look at the picture of Kyle Miller, it’s difficult not to see Eric. I cannot imagine what it must be like to lose a son in such a capricious and careless manner. Kyle Miller should be considered a hero, but less certain is just what he died for. If you’re wanting to chime in with “he died protecting our freedoms”, or “he died to keep terrorists from attacking us here”, please save your breath. Miller may have been doing the right thing in his mind, and there is certainly nothing wrong with that. His death, however, is every bit as sad, pointless, and unwarranted as the war that took his life. There was no terrorist threat in Iraq prior to the American invasion, so it would appear that Kyle Miller died fighting a threat of our own creation. Yeah, now there’s something worth sacrificing your child for, eh?
Shane Cole, Miller’s best friend from high school, said his friend liked to do things on the spur of the moment.
Cole, also 19, recalled getting in Miller’s ”7 Dodge Ram pickup truck and going to the Kandiyohi County fairgrounds last winter. They tried to drive up a snowdrift but got stuck and had to dig themselves out. “He would always talk about doing crazy stuff,” Cole said.
And after seeing the movie “Ice Age,” Miller decided they would go snowboarding — for the first time.
When asked how they did, Cole replied: “Not good.”
It was one of the last things they did together before Miller left for basic training.
They also spent time with Cole’s sister, Melissa Medina, who has four boys ages 8 and under. She said Miller liked spending time with her kids, who called him the Candy Man.
“He’s the type who would give candy to them without mom looking,” she said.
In this war, the good die young. The evil, reprehensible men who will never be held accountable for their cavalier approach to wasting the lives of other people’s children live in comfort and safety. Kyle Miller deserved better than being sacrificed for a cause that has yet to be adequately explained or justified. Kyle Miller died for no good reason.
Miller left for basic training late last year and was excited about going but also had fears, they said, and they indicated that he worried he might not come back. But overall, they said, he was “just glad to be defending his country.”
Ah, the folly of youth. What, exactly was Kyle Miller defending his country from?
Kathy Miller said military officials told the family that her son was in the first vehicle of a seven-vehicle convoy when the bomb exploded. He died on the way to the hospital.
Kathy Miller’s son probably never had a chance. He died in a country in which no terrorist threat existed until Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader created one. He died in a country alleged to have weapons of mass destruction, and whose existence was sold to us using fudged intelligence and bald-faced lies.
Kyle Miller was murdered, and yet the person most responsible for his death, Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader, will never be brought to justice for lying his war into a war that has killed more that 2500 (and counting) young Americans. Interesting, isn’t it? Republicans were ready, willing, and able to impeach Bill Clinton for the high crime and midemeanor of getting his knob polished by a zaftig White House intern. But when it comes to killing young American soldiers through lies, doctored intelligence, and piss-poor planning, the Republican majority in Congress raises nary a peep of protest. The moral of this story? If you’re a Republican, you can lie, cheat, and steal. You can even be personally responsible for scores of young American coming back home in boxes. Heaven help you, though, if you’re a Democrat who gets a blowjob in the Oval Office. Yes, NEVER get your knob polished in the Oval Office by an intern wearing a blue dress.
I say this not out of partisan prejudice, though that would certainly be an easy an not altogether inaccurate accusation. What angers me is that the Republican majority is protecting the most inept, incompetent, and immoral President in our nation’s history because he is a Republican. They impeached a Democratic President…because, well, he’s a Democrat and that’s what Republicans do to their political adversaries. Thousand of young Americans have been killed, wounded, and maimed by Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader’s pointless, unjustifiable war. Where’s the justice for them?
I feel for Kyle Miller’s friends and familiy, because they deserve to be able to celebrate his life, not bury him in the cold, hard central Minnesota soil. It’s one thing to realize that over 2500 Americans have died in Iraq. It’s quite another when you realize that behind that number represents an immeasurable amount of pain and anguish that has been created for no tangible reward.
WE DESERVE BETTER. And so did Kyle Miller.
