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CounterPunch
November
9, 2002
Personal Possessions:
War and Iraq, a Recollection
by ROSEMARY and WALTER
BRASCH
Two weeks before Christmas 1990, we received a
duffel bag in the mail. Thirty-two pounds of dirty civilian clothes
and freshly-creased never-worn Class A uniforms, cassette tapes,
souvenirs from Japan, about five dollars in pennies, a combat
helmet--and a set of dog-tags.
Only a week earlier, we had learned that
our son, a Marine stationed in Okinawa in an artillery battalion,
would be going to the Persian Gulf. Like almost all troops about
to be put into "harm's way," he had sent home his personal
possessions. During the three years he had been in the Marines,
he occasionally sent home boxes when he was transferred. But
never before had he sent home his duffel bag with neatly-pressed
regulation dress uniforms and his dog tags. It was then we knew
he would be going into combat.
That previous summer we had became active
in a fledgling anti-war movement--and also became leaders for
a military support group in northeastern Pennsylvania. We carefully
distinguished between our support for the troops and our loathing
for the politicians who were leading our country into war that
seemed to be fought because a President and Congress were greased
by the nation's oil industry.
Tuesday night, January 15--Martin Luther King's birthday, the
day of the U.N. deadline, and what would prove to be the day
before the war began--we helped organize the county's first Peace
Vigil. About a hundred of us, candles lit against a moonless
sky, surrounded by news media, stood in front of the court house
of a rural northeast Pennsylvania county of 65,000, talked about
war and hoped for peace. We talked about Kuwaitis in comfortable
exile in Cairo and London encouraging America's involvement,
while our children, spouses, parents, and friends were in an
oil-covered desert preparing to "liberate" their country.
We talked about the necessity of our country to defend itself,
but we questioned how defending Exxon or invading dictatorships
to protect other dictatorships or indulging jingoistic politicians
was protecting us.
In the early days of the air war, when
the "coalition" force was wreaking so much destruction
from aerial attacks, and while the news media seemed to believe
everything the government and military told them, Americans sat
transfixed to the bombardment of Prime Time Desert Storm, overwhelmingly
cheering the war, proud that we were "whipping Saddam's
ass." It was a good feeling, a patriotic feeling, knowing
that our technologically-adept military was doing everything
right. Only later did we add "collateral damage" to
our vocabularies and learn that the Patriot missiles were only
about one-third effective.
While most were planning for a lightning
six day air war, some of us cautioned that this war would never
be won, that it could easily be as long as the Vietnam War, with
just as many casualties. Nevertheless, at least in this war,
the military could prove its capabilities, unlike in Vietnam
when all the king's men had to fight not only those whom politicians
called our enemy, but our politicians as well. A quarter century
earlier, for almost a decade, we had been active in a swirling
protest against war; we shouldn't have had to do this again.
Americans should have learned better. But we hadn't. We destroyed
buildings. We killed people. We had the superior statistics of
war. But we didn't defeat Iraq.
A dozen years later, the "Butcher
of Baghdad" is still in power and more popular than ever.
And in America, a jingoistic president, the of-shoot of a former
president, is consumed by incestuous business interests and bent
on diverting public attention from the economy and myriad domestic
issues. Unable to destroy terrorism in Afghanistan or to find
a 6-foot-5 inch terrorist who is on dialysis and living in caves,
he now wants Americans to invade Iraq and destroy that nation
and its resilient dictator to complete his father's unfinished
crusade.
In the past year, we have learned that
our government has much in common with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia,
our coalition partners at the time and our current allies-of-the-month.
We have learned that our three governments have an overwhelming
desire to restrict free speech and a free press, have instituted
new "rules" to pare away our civil rights, have made
up regulations that put fear into our hearts for exercising our
rights of assembly, and have determined that holding citizens
indefinitely without any charges being filed is justified either
to protect national security or to cover up their own ineptitude.
We have learned that although most of
the terrorists who painted a target upon America lived in, were
trained in, and protected in Saudi Arabia. But, we won't do anything
against that nation which still has one of the largest oil industries
in the world.
We have listened to a President who saw
no hostile fire while in the Texas National Guard, encouraged
by a vice-president and secretary of defense who never served
in the military, tell us Iraq is on the verge of making nuclear
weapons, that it is harboring terrorists, that it needs to be
destroyed. But we haven't listened to Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.),
the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
who says there is "absolutely no evidence" that Iraq
has any intention or capability of making nuclear weapons. We
haven't listened to Gen. Brent Scowcroft, the former National
Security Advisor, who says "there is scant evidence to tie
Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the Sept.
11 attacks." We haven't listened to Rep. Dick Armey (R-Texas),
the House majority leader, who says the U.S. has no justification
in making an unprovoked attack upon Iraq. We haven't listened
to Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during
the Gulf War and current secretary of state, who opposes military
intervention. We haven't listened to James Baker and Lawrence
Eagleburger, secretaries of state who served under the current
president's father, who question the wisdom of attacking Iraq.
We haven't listened to Henry Kissinger, a former national security
advisor and secretary of state, who argues that "military
intervention in Iraq would be supported grudgingly, if at all,
by most European allies."
In our dining room more than 12 years
ago sat a duffel bag. But it wasn't the duffel bag that caused
us to cry for all our sons and daughters; it was a postal tag
on the duffel bag that told us about our government. It cost
our son, a Marine lance corporal who could lose his life in a
country he barely even knew existed, $24.89, almost a day's pay,
to send home the last of his personal possessions. In a multi-billion
dollar war effort, the government didn't even have the compassion
to pay our son's postage.
We need to destroy terrorism. We don't
need more duffel bags returned home. And, most of all, we don't
need to launch an unprovoked attack that will bring home American
youth in body bags.
Rosemary Brasch
is a labor/worker specialist, and family services specialist
for the Red Cross disaster services. Walter Brasch, professor
of journalism at Bloomsburg University, is the author of 13 books;
his latest is "The
Joy of Sax: America During the Bill Clinton Era"
a probing and witty look at the Clinton administration. You may
reach the Brasches by e-mail at wbrasch@planetx.bloomu.edu
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October 26
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