My husband is in the army national guard and has been deployed since Feb. 13th. We have two beautiful children, a 16 month old and a four month old. He missed our sons first steps and our daughters birth. He has seen her only through pictures, and why? Because our governing officials are a bunch of liars. My husband drives a truck over there, you know the convoys that are always getting hit with RPG's and other explosives, well that's what he does. His unit has been hit quit a few times but thank God nobody has been killed. Although, they have had some injuries in their unit from explosions. I have absolutely no faith left in our government and especially George Bush. He should have gotten the support of the world and since everyone else was against the war, that should have given him a hint that it was wrong. Hell no though, he wanted to charge in with guns a blazing and be the big hero. Well George, you’re not a hero, you are a COWARD, our troops are the real HEROES. If you want to be a hero Bush, bring our soldiers home. If he wanted a war he should have finished the job in Afghanistan. They actually attacked us on our own soil and we still haven't taken care of it. I guess Bin Laden is too much for Bush to handle. I say ship George Bush and family to Iraq and send Congress with them, let them finish the job, I mean the war is over according to Bush so what do they have to worry about. I pray to God that Bush does not get re-elected and let’s hope our next President can clean up his mess. God Bless our TROOPS and God Bless their families.
- Jaime Sutton (an angry soldier’s wife)
Sand Springs, OK
Sentiments like those of Jaime Sutton are increasingly common among today’s military families. Many wives, mothers, fathers, siblings and children of soldiers on active duty in Iraq have come together in organizations like Military Families Speak Out to oppose the Bush Administration’s continued occupation of Iraq. In response, the Bush administration and the pentagon have threatened to reprimand soldiers’ families and have even tried to shut down the organization’s web site which features letters like Jaime’s. These letters illustrate a more and more widespread discontent amongst the soldiers in Iraq and the growing opposition to the occupation among the American people as a whole.
The fact that the US/British invasion and occupation of Iraq was based on lies and deception is now widely accepted, and many people in the US are recognizing that Iraqis are not embracing our forces as “liberators.� In fact, the ongoing occupation of Iraq, while it is primarily a criminal act against the rights and interests of the Iraqi people, is also a crime against the American soldiers who are dying for Bush’s policy decisions.
On October 15, Stars and Stripes, the official newspaper of the US Armed Forces, quoted top U.S. officer in Iraq Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez as saying that “…the morale of the soldier is good. He’s being taken care of, he’s accomplishing his mission, he’s being successful in the warfighting.� However, the newspaper later published the results of an informal poll that showed 34 percent of soldiers stationed in Iraq saying their morale was low, and 49 percent of the soldiers saying the morale of their unit was low. The survey also said that one third of the soldiers polled think that their mission doesn’t have a clear definition, and think that the mission they are on has “little or no value.�
The many soldiers who are surviving Iraq uninjured face other disruptions to their own lives. Writing in The Nation, commentator Christian Parenti mentions a soldier who owns a business as a contractor, and has a wife and two children. He quotes the soldier: “If I am not home by Christmas, my business will fail.� Soldiers and their families face untold hardship and difficulties in their lives, not to mention to mental and emotional anguish of war.
A high number of soldiers have become so distressed with their situations that they took their own lives. Fourteen soldiers, according to Agence France-Presse newswire have committed suicide. Most of the suicides occurred after May when the US President George Bush declared “major combat operations� to be over.
People stateside are also becoming disenchanted with the Iraq war/occupation and the President himself. According to a poll done by Pew Research Centre for the People & the Press, support for the occupation is falling quickly. In September 64 percent of Americans supported the idea of keeping US troops in Iraq “until the country has stabilized,� but now that number has dropped to only 58 percent. The increasing public ambivalence about the occupation in Iraq is no doubt due in part to the increasing number of attacks on Coalition soldiers, peaking at about 35 attacks a day in lat October 2003. Over two hundred soldiers have come home in body bags since May.
The discontent with the war in Iraq, along with other issues, has contributed to a decline in Bush’s approval rating. Since September, though there have been fluctuations, his approval ratings have been in the 50s, a steep decline from his 88 percent approval rating after September 11. According to a recent Time/CNN poll, only 28 percent of the American public considers Bush a “good� President, while 23 percent view him as “poor�.
And there is little evidence of increasing stability in Iraq. The bombing attack on UN Headquarters in Iraq, assassinations of prominent Iraqis and the October 27 multiple bombing attacks all evidence the increasingly unstable situation of Iraq under occupation. The quick and easy war promised by Bush has turned into a quagmire without a visible end.
The occupation has also taken a financial toll on the US as well. Recently, Bush stunned the nation by asking for another $87 billion to finance the continuing occupation and (partly) rebuilding of Iraq, in addition to the $79 billion already spent. “There isn’t enough money to fund schools,� said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) in the People’s Weekly World recently. “Yet we’re going to ask the American taxpayers to keep coughing up money for this quagmire that we’re in now in Iraq.�
These two requests alone add up to $166 billion (on top of a $480 billion deficit projected for next year—already a record high). To put this amount in context, the National Priorities Project (NPP), located in Northampton, Massachusetts lists selected services that $100 billion could pay for:
• Three times current federal spending on K-12 education
• Enough to provide health care to all uninsured American children for five years
• Four times the current international affairs budget
The vast majority of the world, including major powers in the UN Security Council, recognizes the unjust nature of the war on Iraq, and has therefore refused to pay for it. Bush now wants the American people to foot the bill for his adventures in the Persian Gulf. Also, because of Bush’s tax cuts, this means that working people will have to pay a disproportionate share of the bill. Of course working people and people of color are disproportionately drawn to the military because of lack of economic opportunities elsewhere.
The situation of New York City is illustrative of the injustice in these policies. The city was thrown into crisis mode earlier this year, and will most likely be thrown into crisis mode again next year for the same reason—because of a shortage of $4 billion dollars in the annual budget. The NPP estimates that the cost of war to NYC will be $2,379,300,000—an amount that would make up 60% of the budget.
Move On, the national peace initiative, recently sponsored a television advertisement exposing the impact on the US of the Iraqi occupation. “We could have built ten thousand new schools…or hired almost 2 million new teachers…we could have rebuilt our electric grid…we could have insured more of our children. Instead, George Bush wants to spend that $87 billion in Iraq. If there’s money for Iraq, why isn’t there money for America? The truth is, we’re not being led, we’re being misled.�
Though the leaders of the war drive tell us that the war and occupation were in our “national interests,� the facts speak to the contrary. While, as we mentioned above, the main victims of the atrocities of war are the Iraqi people, it is also clear that neither the U.S. soldiers nor the U.S. people benefit from the occupation. In fact, through the loss of young working class men and women—especially men and women of color—as well as the loss of much needed funding that could go to desperately needed social programs, the American people also pay a terrible price for the criminal policies of the Bush administration.
For more information:
Military Families Speak Out
www.mfso.org
National Priorities Project www.nationalpriorities.org
Move On
www.moveon.org
Dan Margolis is from Worcester, Mass. and is a frequent contributor to Dynamic.
Oct. 17, 2003 - U.S.-led coalition forces try to resuscitate a soldier, left, as another has a head wound treated, right, after an attack on a Humvee on the main road about 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Baghdad. The U.S.-led occupation army faces harassing attacks from a shadowy array of Iraqi and possibly foreign foes – die-hard Sunni Muslim loyalists of the toppled Baathist government, other Iraqi nationalists who want the Americans out, terror bombers who may be driven by Islamic fanaticism. In Shiite Muslim areas, the Americans have an uneasy, sometimes bloody coexistence with the armed militias of clerical factions.
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