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Who Are We That Go So Willingly To War? |
Current rating: 0 |
by Carl N Graves
Email: cngraves (nospam) uiuc.edu (verified)
Address: 803 E Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801 |
21 Sep 2004
Modified: 12:39:05 AM |
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Who Are We That Go So Willingly To War?
Our governments lead us by the hand, to kill and die in actions of destruction in order to make a political point, or to change a point of reference on a map. Those governments are made up of people. Why are they so willing to send lambs to the slaughter? Why do they send the best of our young people to war?
The youths who are sent to fight are not told the truth. They would never go if they truly understood what they were doing. A boy—18 years old, barely an adult—goes into a battle with only the praise of his people ringing in his ears. He has been told that he is a hero because he is “defending his nation”. He is led to believe this “white lie”. He goes through a form of training that not only teaches him to react with base force—to ignore thought and go directly to action—but also brainwashes him into believing that killing others is honorable, necessary and correct. This same youth will soon find out the truth. He faces several possible futures:
1) He could die. If a slow death, he will wonder what he was doing here in the first place; the training dissolving under a cloud of shock, fear and pain. If a quick death, he will never know the true reason for his death.
2) He could be injured. A simple injury would be quickly treated; he would be told how brave he is, given a medal, and rushed back to the fighting before he could truly think about how close he had come to death. A more profound injury would lead to his being sent home, a hero, supported by other soldiers who will make him defend his actions without pause. A crippling injury will make him regret, but often only because of his own injury; he will feel anger, but his military instructors will direct it at the “enemy”, rather than to give him time to think.
3) He could become a “hero”, acting without thinking, and either killing without real understanding, or somehow pulling a comrade from certain death. He would be honored with a medal—and sometimes press coverage—and paraded about as an example of “heroism”.
This youth could have other things happen, innumerable things, but still believe—according to his programming—that what he is doing is honorable, necessary and correct.
One thing that occasionally occurs—unfortunately all too infrequently—is that the youth from one side meets a youth from the other. They spend time together—often for reasons of survival—and discover their similarities. This could easily lead to peace if it were allowed to continue. Unfortunately, one or the other, or both will be killed or captured, and the message: War is not necessary, honorable or correct”, will be lost.
In this time of greater knowledge and greater access to information, why hasn’t war come to a grinding halt? Could it be that the sheer volume of information that is available is blinding us to the truth? Could it be that the violence of modern video games and movies has blinded us to the fact that man killing man—for any reason—is wrong? Have we perhaps moved back to a previous incarnation of ourselves in which violence is so attractive that nothing else matters?
Is there an answer? |
Related stories on this site:
Far Graver Than Vietnam: Most Senior US Military Officers now Believe the War on Iraq has turned into a Disaster on an Unprecedented Scale
If America were Iraq, What would it be Like?
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Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
Comments
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Re: Who Are We That Go So Willingly To War? |
by NRA4Freedom
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
21 Sep 2004
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Yes, there is an "answer". War is hell, no question about it. No one in their right mind wants to be involved in a war. But, the responding question that really answers your question is, "what is the alternative"?
History clearly reveals that as long as evil intent dwells in the heart of man, wars are inevitable. So the only options are to either be killed in the process of someone elses evil intent, to become someone elses slave, or, to fight back...which is, war.
IF you have another alternative, then you are a greater person than any leader of any Nation in the entire history of the entire world.
Let's hear your alternative... |
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Re: Who Are We That Go So Willingly To War? |
by RR
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
21 Sep 2004
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The alternative is how we handled the Soviet Union. |
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Why Americans Back the War |
by James Carroll
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
21 Sep 2004
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THE WAR IN IRAQ goes from worse to catastrophic. Hundreds of Iraqis were killed last week, as were two dozen US soldiers. Planned elections in January point less to democracy than civil war. Kidnapping has become a weapon of terror on the ground, matching the terror of US air attacks. An American "take-back" offensive threatens to escalate the violence immeasurably. The secretary general of the United Nations pronounced the American war illegal.
In the United States, an uneasy electorate keeps its distance from all of this. Polls show that most Americans maintain faith in the Bush administration's handling of the war, while others greet reports of the disasters more with resignation than passionate opposition. To the mounting horror of the world, the United States of America is relentlessly bringing about the systematic destruction of a small, unthreatening nation for no good reason. Why has this not gripped the conscience of this country?
The answer goes beyond Bush to the 60-year history of an accidental readiness to destroy the earth, a legacy with which we Americans have yet to reckon. The punitive terror bombing that marked the end of World War II hardly registered with us. Then we passively accepted our government's mad embrace of thermonuclear weapons. While we demonized our Soviet enemy, we hardly noticed that almost every major escalation of the arms race was initiated by our side -- a race that would still be running if Mikhail Gorbachev had not dropped out of it.
In 1968, we elected Richard Nixon to end the war in Vietnam, then blithely acquiesced when he kept it going for years more. When Ronald Reagan made a joke of wiping out Moscow, we gathered a million strong to demand a nuclear "freeze," but then accepted the promise of "reduction," and took no offense when the promise was broken.
We did not think it odd that America's immediate response to the nonviolent fall of the Berlin Wall was an invasion of Panama. We celebrated the first Gulf War uncritically, even though that display of unchecked American power made Iran and North Korea redouble efforts to build a nuclear weapon, while prompting Osama bin Laden's jihad. The Clinton administration affirmed the permanence of American nukes as a "hedge" against unnamed fears, and we accepted it. We shrugged when the US Senate refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, with predictable results in India and Pakistan. We bought the expansion of NATO, the abrogation of the ABM Treaty, the embrace of National Missile Defense -- all measures that inevitably pushed other nations toward defensive escalation.
The war policy of George W. Bush -- "preventive war," unilateralism, contempt for Geneva -- breaks with tradition, but there is nothing new about the American population's refusal to face what is being done in our name. This is a sad, old story. It leaves us ill-equipped to deal with a pointless, illegal war. The Bush war in Iraq, in fact, is only the latest in a chain of irresponsible acts of a warrior government, going back to the firebombing of Tokyo. In comparison to that, the fire from our helicopter gunships above the cities of Iraq this week is benign. Is that why we take no offense?
Something deeply shameful has us in its grip. We carefully nurture a spirit of detachment toward the wars we pay for. But that means we cloak ourselves in cold indifference to the unnecessary suffering of others -- even when we cause it. We don't look at any of this directly because the consequent guilt would violate our sense of ourselves as nice people. Meaning no harm, how could we inflict such harm?
In this political season, the momentous issue of American-sponsored death is an inch below the surface, not quite hidden -- making the election a matter of transcendent importance. George W. Bush is proud of the disgraceful history that has paralyzed the national conscience on the question of war. He does not recognize it for what it is -- an American Tragedy. The American tragedy. John Kerry, by contrast, is attuned to the ethical complexity of this war narrative. We see that reflected in the complexity not only of his responses, but of his character -- and no wonder it puts people off. Kerry's problem, so far unresolved, is how to tell us what we cannot bear to know about ourselves. How to tell us the truth of our great moral squandering. The truth of what we are doing today in Iraq.
James Carroll's most recent book is "Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War."
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/ |
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Re: Who Are We That Go So Willingly To War? |
by NRA4Freedom
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
21 Sep 2004
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Nice thought, but then, the Soviet Union was not infiltrating the Western World for reasons of conquest. The Soviet Union did not aid and abet too many evil people who would attack us in order to murder thousands of innocent Americans. And while the Soviet Union probably had a few pipe dreams about controlling the world at some point in time in the past, their designs would have had very little in common with a people are ultimately bent on transforming the entire earth into an Islamic "utopia" like Iran. In the end, they left us alone and we left them alone, and they "went out of business" sort of. Fanatical Muslims do not in any way intend to "leave us alone", so, Ignoring evil is no answer...try again. |
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Re: Who Are We That Go So Willingly To War? |
by NRA4Freedom
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
21 Sep 2004
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From a Marine Corps Major in Baghdad:
"A thought from Iraq - "Doom & Gloom about Iraq's future....I don't see it from where I'm sitting."
[For those of you who haven't gotten my "Thoughts" before, I'm a Major in the USMC on the Multi-National Corps staff in Baghdad. The analysts and pundits who don't see what I see on a daily basis, in my opinion, have very little credibility to talk about the situation - especially if they have yet to set foot in Iraq. Everything Americans believe about Iraq is simply perception filtered through one's latent prejudices until you are face-to-face with reality. If you haven't seen, or don't remember, the John Wayne movie, The Green Berets , you should watch it this weekend. Pay special attention to the character of the reporter, Mr. Beckwith (the Journalist in the movie) . His characters experience is directly related to the situation here. You'll have a different perspective on Iraq after the movie is over.]
The US media is abuzz today with the news of an intelligence report that is very negative about the prospects for Iraq's future. CNN's website says, "[The] National Intelligence Estimate was sent to the White House in July with a classified warning predicting the best case for Iraq was 'tenuous stability' and the worst case was civil war." That report, along with the car bombings and kidnappings in Baghdad in the past couple days are being portrayed in the media as more proof of absolute chaos and the intransigence of the insurgency.
From where I sit, at the Operational Headquarters in Baghdad, that just isn't the case. Let's lay out some background, first about the "National Intelligence Estimate." The most glaring issue with its relevance is the fact that it was delivered to the White House in July . That means that the information that was used to derive the intelligence was gathered in the Spring - in the immediate aftermath of the April battle for Fallujah, and other events. The report doesn't cover what has happened in July or August, let alone September.
The naysayers will point to the recent battles in Najaf and draw parallels between that and what happened in Fallujah in April. They aren't even close. The bad guys did us a HUGE favor by gathering together in one place and trying to make a stand. It allowed us to focus on them and defeat them. Make no mistake, Al Sadr's troops were thoroughly smashed. The estimated enemy killed in action is huge. Before the battles, the residents of the city were afraid to walk the streets. Al Sadr's enforcers would seize people and bring them to his Islamic court where sentence was passed for religious or other violations. Long before the battles people were looking for their lost loved ones who had been taken to "court" and never seen again. Now Najafians can and do walk their streets in safety. Commerce has returned and the city is being rebuilt. Iraqi security forces and US troops are welcomed and smiled upon. That city was liberated again. It was not like Fallujah - the bad guys lost and are in hiding or dead.
You may not have even heard about the city of Samarra. Two weeks ago, that Sunni Triangle city was a "No-go" area for US troops. But guess what? The locals got sick of living in fear from the insurgents and foreign fighters that were there and let them know they weren't welcome. They stopped hosting them in their houses and the mayor of the town brokered a deal with the US commander to return Iraqi government sovereignty to the city without a fight. The people saw what was on the horizon and decided they didn't want their city looking like Fallujah in April or Najaf in August.
Boom, boom, just like that two major "hot spots" cool down in rapid succession. Does that mean that those towns are completely pacified? No. What it does mean is that we are learning how to do this the right way. The US commander in Samarra saw an opportunity and took it - probably the biggest victory of his military career and nary a shot was fired in anger. Things will still happen in those cities, and you can be sure that the bad guys really want to take them back. Those achievements, more than anything else in my opinion, account for the surge in violence in recent days - especially the violence directed at Iraqis by the insurgents. Both in Najaf and Samarra ordinary people stepped out and took sides with the Iraqi government against the insurgents, and the bad guys are hopping mad. They are trying to instill fear once again. The worst thing we could do now is pull back and let that scum back into people's homes and lives.
So, you may hear analysts and prognosticators on CNN, ABC and the like in the next few days talking about how bleak the situation is here in Iraq, but from where I sit, it's looking significantly better now than when I got here. The momentum is moving in our favor, and all Americans need to know that, so please, please, pass this on to those who care and will pass it on to others. It is very demoralizing for us here in uniform to read & hear such negativity in our press. It is fodder for our enemies to use against us and against the vast majority of Iraqis who want their new government to succeed. It causes the American public to start thinking about the acceptability of "cutting our losses" and pulling out, which would be devastating for Iraq for generations to come, and Muslim militants would claim a huge victory, causing us to have to continue to fight them elsewhere (remember, in war "Away" games are always preferable to "Home" games). Reports like that also cause Iraqis begin to fear that we will pull out before we finish the job, and thus less willing to openly support their interim government and US/Coalition activities. We are realizing significant progress here - not propaganda progress, but real strides are being made. It's terrible to see our national morale, and support for what we're doing here, jeopardized by sensationalized stories hyped by media giants whose #1 priority is advertising income followed closely by their political agenda; getting the story straight falls much further down on their priority scale, as Dan Rather and CBS News have so aptly demonstrated in the last week.
Thanks for listening. Feedback is always welcome, though I can't promise an immediate response...." |
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Something from the People Who Have a Lot of Boots On the Ground in Iraq |
by no happy faces at the CIA
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
21 Sep 2004
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CIA Analysis Holds Bleak Vision for Iraq's Future
by Douglas Jehl
WASHINGTON -- A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq, government officials said yesterday.
The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, and the worst case is developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome is an Iraq whose political, economic and security stability would remain tenuous.
"There's a significant amount of pessimism," said one government official who has read the document, which runs about 50 pages. The officials declined to discuss the document's key judgments -- concise, carefully written statements of intelligence analysts' conclusions.
The intelligence estimate, the first on Iraq since October 2002, was prepared by the National Intelligence Council and was approved by the National Foreign Intelligence Board under John McLaughlin, the CIA's acting director. Such estimates can be requested by the White House or Congress, but government officials said this one was initiated by the intelligence council under George Tenet, who stepped down as CIA director July 9.
As described by the officials, the pessimistic tone of the new estimate stands in contrast to statements by Bush administration officials in recent days, including comments yesterday by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, who asserted that progress was being made in Iraq.
"You know, every step of the way in Iraq there have been pessimists and hand-wringers who said it can't be done," McClellan said at a news briefing. "And every step of the way, the Iraqi leadership and the Iraqi people have proven them wrong because they are determined to have a free and peaceful future."
President Bush, who was briefed on the new intelligence estimate, has not significantly changed the tenor of his public remarks on the war's course over the summer, consistently emphasizing progress while acknowledging that difficulties still lie ahead.
Bush's opponent, Sen. John Kerry, criticized the administration's optimistic public position on Iraq yesterday and questioned whether it would be possible to hold elections in January as planned.
"I think it is very difficult to see today how you're going to distribute ballots in places like Fallujah and Ramadi and Najaf and other parts of the country, without having established the security," Kerry said in a call-in phone call to Don Imus, the radio talk show host. "I know that the people who are supposed to run that election believe that they need a longer period of time and greater security before they can even begin to do it, and they just can't do it at this point in time. So I'm not sure the president is being honest with the American people about that situation either at this point."
The situation in Iraq prompted harsh comments from Republicans as well as Democrats at a hearing into the shift of billions of dollars from reconstruction spending to security.
Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, called it "exasperating for anybody looking at this from any vantage point." Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said of the overall lack of spending on reconstruction: "It's beyond pitiful, it's beyond embarrassing. It is now in the zone of dangerous."
A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment on any new intelligence estimate on Iraq.
Each of the officials who described the assessment said they had read the document or had been briefed on its findings. The officials included people who have been critical and people who have been supportive of the administration's policies in Iraq. They insisted they not be identified by name, agency or branch of government because the document remains highly classified.
The new estimate revisits issues raised by the intelligence council in less formal assessments in January 2003, the officials said. Those documents remain classified, but one of them warned that the building of democracy in Iraq would be a long, difficult and turbulent prospect that could include internal conflict, a government official said.
The new estimate by the National Intelligence Council was formally approved at a meeting in July by McLaughlin and the heads of the other intelligence agencies, the officials said.
Its pessimistic conclusions were reached even before the recent worsening of the security situation in Iraq, which has included a sharp increase in attacks on American troops and in deaths of Iraqi civilians as well as rebel fighters. Last week, Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, acknowledged that significant areas of Iraq, including Fallujah and Ramadi, remained effectively outside American control. He said it might be some time before Iraqi forces, with American support, can regain control.
Like the new National Intelligence Estimate, the assessments completed in January 2003 were prepared by the National Intelligence Council, which is led by Robert Hutchings and reports to the CIA director. The council is charged with reflecting the consensus of the intelligence agencies. The January 2003 assessments were not formal National Intelligence Estimates, which means they were probably not formally approved by the intelligence chiefs.
The new estimate is the first on Iraq since the one completed in October 2002 on Iraq's illicit weapons program. That document asserted that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, but those findings, used by the Bush administration as a central rationale for war against Iraq, now appear to have been wrong. A review by the Senate Intelligence Committee that was completed in July has found that document to have been deeply flawed.
The criticism over the document has left the CIA and other agencies wary of being wrong again in judgments about Iraq.
Declassified versions of the October 2002 document included dissents from some intelligence agencies on some key questions, including the issue of whether Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. The government officials who described the new estimate on Iraq's prospects would not say if it included significant dissents.
Separate from the new estimate, Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued other warnings yesterday about the American campaign in Iraq, saying the Bush administration's request to divert more than $3 billion to security from the $18.4 billion aid package of last November was a sign of serious trouble.
"Although we recognize these funds must not be spent unwisely," said Lugar, the committee chairman, "the slow pace of reconstruction spending means that we are failing to fully take advantage of one of our most potent tools to influence the direction of Iraq."
Less than $1 billion has been spent so far.
During a hearing, Hagel said that the State Department request was "a clear acknowledgment that we are not holding ourselves hostage to some grand illusion that we're winning."
He went on to say that the request for redirecting the money "does not add up, in my opinion, to a pretty picture, to a picture that shows that we're winning, but it does add up to this: an acknowledgment that we are in deep trouble."
The committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Joseph Biden Jr. of Delaware, was far more outspoken. "The window's closing, the window of opportunity," said Biden, among the harshest critics of Bush's policies in Iraq. "I think it's about ready to slam shut." "The president has frequently described Iraq as, quote, 'the central front of the war on terror,' " Mr. Biden went on. "Well by that definition, success in Iraq is a key standard by which to measure the war on terror. And by that measure, I think the war on terror is in trouble."
© 1996-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/ |
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The CIA Report Not recent Enough for the Major? Try This One on For Size |
by "Another Optimist for Bush" Headstone
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
21 Sep 2004
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Into the Abyss: The Week Iraq's Dream of Peace Fell Apart
by Patrick Cockburn
BAGHDAD - Where freedom was promised, chaos and carnage now reign. A suicide bomber in a car blows himself up in the heart of Baghdad killing 13 people. Air raids by US near the city of Fallujah kill scores more. And so ends one of the bleakest weeks in Iraq's grim recent history.
Between them, suicide bombers targeting Iraqi police and US air strikes aimed at rebels have killed some 300 Iraqis since last Saturday - many of them were civilians. The escalating violence throws into doubt the elections planned for January and the ability of the US and interim Iraqi government to control the country.
The repeated suicide-bomb attacks and kidnappings in the centre of Baghdad are eroding whatever remaining optimism there might be about the success of the government of Iyad Allawi, the Prime Minister, in restoring order in an increasingly fragmented country.
Violence and abductions are ensuring that even tentative efforts at economic reconstruction have ground to a halt. Earlier in the week, the US diverted $3.4bn (ÂŁ2bn) of funds intended for water and electricity projects to security and the oil industry. Many Iraqi businessmen and doctors have fled to Amman and Damascus because of fear of being taken hostage. The abduction of one British and two American contractors this week will make it very difficult for any foreigners to live in Baghdad outside fortified enclaves.
Yesterday, a car packed with explosives blew up near a row of police cars blocking off a bridge in the centre of the Baghdad. Police tried to get the bomber to stop but he drove on into the middle of the parked cars. "I saw human flesh and blood in the street, then I fled," said Mouayed Shehab.
There are big markets in this part of Baghdad on Friday including a famous book market in al-Muthanabi Street where booksellers cover the road with books they want to sell. A few hundred yards away, there are markets selling everything from spices to birds and guard dogs. Police fired shots into the air to force shoppers to flee.
The police had blocked the bridge over the Tigris as part of an attempt to seal off Haifa Street - a focal point of violence in recent days - on the western side of the river where US and Iraqi forces were involved in a search operation and gun battles had been fought earlier in the morning. Haifa Street, with its modern tower blocks and old alleys, is a notorious Sunni Muslim neighbourhood where US forces are frequently ambushed. It is also only a few hundred yards from the Green Zone, the headquarters of the US and Iraqi interim government.
The security forces arrested 63 suspects during their sweeps of Haifa Street including Syrians, Sudanese and Egyptians. They also claimed to have discovered caches of arms, though that does not necessarily mean very much in Iraq where almost all families own one or more guns.
Yet the horrors have spread way beyong the capital. Early yesterday, police found the body of a Westerner with blond hair which had been pulled from the Tigris river at Yethrib village, 40 miles north of Baghdad. He was tall, well built, had his hands tied behind his back and had been shot in the back of the head. The description does not match any of the Western hostages known to be held by kidnappers.
And, of course, Iraqis suffer. The US Air Force has stepped up its policy of trying to assault insurgents from the air while the army avoids ground attacks that could lead to heavy US casualties. In this case, the air strikes were against a compound in the village of Fazat Shnetir 12 miles south of Fallujah. The US military said they had attacked a meeting of militants loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi planning fresh attacks on US forces.
The residents of Fazat Shnetir were later seen digging mass graves to bury the bodies in groups of four. A health ministry spokesman, Saad al-Amili, said that 44 people were killed and 27 injured in the Fallujah attacks with 17 children and two women among the wounded. The floor of the Fallujah hospital was awash with blood. Relatives cried out with grief and called for vengeance.
The truth about who is being killed by the US air strikes is difficult to ascertain exactly because Islamic militants make it very dangerous for journalists to go to places recently attacked. Bodies are buried quickly and wounded insurgents do not generally go to public hospitals. But, where the casualties can be checked, many of those who die or are injured have proved to be innocent civilians.
The surge of violence in the past week is making it less likely there will be free elections in January as promised by George Bush. Elections themselves may not guarantee a way out of the quagmire. Should they not happen though, there are likely to be more weeks like these.
* The family of a British engineer, kidnapped by gunmen from his house in Baghdad two days ago, pleaded for his safe return last night. Kenneth Bigley, believed to be 62 and married with one child, was seized with two other US colleagues by militants during a dawn raid.
His family have been contacted by the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw who explained to them what is being done "to resolve the situation".
© 2004 Guardian Newspapers Ltd.
http://news.independent.co.uk/ |
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On the Ground in Iraq: The Not So Willing Any Longer |
by no simple answers except to leave
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
22 Sep 2004
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A Strident Minority: Anti-Bush US Troops in Iraq
Though military personnel lean conservative, some vocally support Kerry - or at least a strategy for swift withdrawal.
by Ann Scott Tyson
WASHINGTON – Inside dusty, barricaded camps around Iraq, groups of American troops in between missions are gathering around screens to view an unlikely choice from the US box office: "Fahrenheit 9-11," Michael Moore's controversial documentary attacking the commander-in-chief.
"Everyone's watching it," says a Marine corporal at an outpost in Ramadi that is mortared by insurgents daily. "It's shaping a lot of people's image of Bush."
The film's prevalence is one sign of a discernible countercurrent among US troops in Iraq - those who blame President Bush for entangling them in what they see as a misguided war. Conventional wisdom holds that the troops are staunchly pro-Bush, and many are. But bitterness over long, dangerous deployments is producing, at a minimum, pockets of support for Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry, in part because he's seen as likely to withdraw American forces from Iraq more quickly.
"[For] 9 out of 10 of the people I talk to, it wouldn't matter who ran against Bush - they'd vote for them," said a US soldier in the southern city of Najaf, seeking out a reporter to make his views known. "People are so fed up with Iraq, and fed up with Bush."
With only three weeks until an Oct. 11 deadline set for hundreds of thousands of US troops abroad to mail in absentee ballots, this segment of the military vote is important - symbolically, as a reflection on Bush as a wartime commander, and politically, as absentee ballots could end up tipping the balance in closely contested states.
It is difficult to gauge the extent of disaffection with Bush, which emerged in interviews in June and July with ground forces in central, northern, and southern Iraq. No scientific polls exist on the political leanings of currently deployed troops, military experts and officials say.
To be sure, broader surveys of US military personnel and their spouses in recent years indicate they are more likely to be conservative and Republican than the US civilian population - but not overwhelmingly so.
A Military Times survey last December of 933 subscribers, about 30 percent of whom had deployed for the Iraq war, found that 56 percent considered themselves Republican - about the same percentage who approved of Bush's handling of Iraq. Half of those responding were officers, who as a group tend to be more conservative than their enlisted counterparts.
Among officers, who represent roughly 15 percent of today's 1.4 million active duty military personnel, there are about eight Republicans for every Democrat, according to a 1999 survey by Duke University political scientist Peter Feaver. Enlisted personnel, however - a disproportionate number of whom are minorities, a population that tends to lean Democratic - are more evenly split. Professor Feaver estimates that about one third of enlisted troops are Republicans, one third Democrats, and the rest independents, with the latter group growing.
Pockets of ambivalence
"The military continues to be a Bush stronghold, but it's not a stranglehold," Feaver says. Three factors make the military vote more in play for Democrats this year than in 2000, he says: the Iraq war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's tense relationship with the Army, and Bush's limited ability as an incumbent to make sweeping promises akin to Senator Kerry's pledge to add 40,000 new troops and relieve an overstretched force.
"The military as a whole supports the Iraq war," Mr. Feaver says, noting a historical tendency of troops to back the commander in chief in wartime. "But you can go across the military and find pockets where they are more ambivalent," he says, especially among the National Guard and Reserve. "The war has not gone as swimmingly as they thought, and that has caused disaffection.
Whether representing pockets of opposition to Bush or something bigger, soldiers and marines on Iraq's front lines can be impassioned in their criticism. One Marine officer in Ramadi who had lost several men said he was thinking about throwing his medals over the White House wall.
"Nobody I know wants Bush," says an enlisted soldier in Najaf, adding, "This whole war was based on lies." Like several others interviewed, his animosity centered on a belief that the war lacked a clear purpose even as it took a tremendous toll on US troops, many of whom are in Iraq involuntarily under "stop loss" orders that keep them in the service for months beyond their scheduled exit in order to keep units together during deployments.
"There's no clear definition of why we came here," says Army Spc. Nathan Swink, of Quincy, Ill. "First they said they have WMD and nuclear weapons, then it was to get Saddam Hussein out of office, and then to rebuild Iraq. I want to fight for my nation and for my family, to protect the United States against enemies foreign and domestic, not to protect Iraqi civilians or deal with Sadr's militia," he said.
Specialist Swink, who comes from a family of both Democrats and Republicans, plans to vote for Kerry. "Kerry protested the war in Vietnam. He is the one to end this stuff, to lead to our exit of Iraq," he said.
'We shouldn't be here'
Other US troops expressed feelings of guilt over killing Iraqis in a war they believe is unjust.
"We shouldn't be here," said one Marine infantryman bluntly. "There was no reason for invading this country in the first place. We just came here and [angered people] and killed a lot of innocent people," said the marine, who has seen regular combat in Ramadi. "I don't enjoy killing women and children, it's not my thing."
As with his comrades, the marine accepted some of the most controversial claims of "Fahrenheit 9/11," which critics have called biased. "Bush didn't want to attack [Osama] Bin Laden because he was doing business with Bin Laden's family," he said.
Another marine, Sgt. Christopher Wallace of Pataskala, Ohio, agreed that the film was making an impression on troops. "Marines nowadays want to know stuff. They want to be informed, because we'll be voting out here soon," he said. " 'Fahrenheit 9/11' opened our eyes to things we hadn't seen before." But, he added after a pause, "We still have full faith and confidence in our commander-in-chief. And if John Kerry is elected, he will be our commander in chief."
Getting out the military vote
No matter whom they choose for president, US troops in even the most remote bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere overseas are more likely than in 2000 to have an opportunity to vote - and have their votes counted - thanks to a major push by the Pentagon to speed and postmark their ballots. The Pentagon is now expediting ballots for all 1.4 million active-duty military personnel and their 1.3 million voting-age dependents, as well as 3.7 million US civilians living abroad.
"We wrote out a plan of attack on how we are going to address these issues this election year," says Maj. Lonnie Hammack, the lead postal officer for US Central Command, an area covering the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa, where more than 225,000 troops and Defense Department personnel serve.
The military has added manpower, flights, and postmark-validating equipment, and given priority to moving ballots - by Humvee or helicopter if necessary - even to far-flung outposts such as those on the Syrian and Pakistani border and Djibouti.
Meanwhile, voting-assistance officers in every military unit are remind- ing troops to vote, as are posters, e-mails, and newspaper and television announcements. Voting booths are also set up at deployment centers in the United States.
"We've had almost 100 percent contact," says Col. Darrell Jones, director of manpower and personnel for Central Command, and 200,000 federal postcard ballot applications have been shipped.
"We encourage our people to vote, not for a certain candidate, but to exercise that right," he said, noting that was especially important as the US military is "out there promoting fledgling democracy in these regions." Many of the younger troops may be voting for the first time, he added.
Copyright © 2004 The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com |
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Re: Who Are We That Go So Willingly To War? |
by NRA4Freedom
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
22 Sep 2004
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LOL! NOW you "want" to believe the CIA??? LOL! |
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