Why are we here in the netroots and grassroots still fighting to get our troops out of Iraq? Why are we exhausted and hurt from the fight in Congress over the funding of this occupation? Why do we soldier on in the Democratic party?
Wait a minute! As much as we use the word "fight", most of us aren’t soldiers or Marines or sailors or airmen or airwomen and most of us aren’t fighting ‘em over here. Most of us aren’t fighting period.
No matter how exasperated or tired we get writing those letters to Congress and to the newspapers, it is nothing compared to the fighting, the stress, the terror that is going on daily in Iraq and Afghanistan. We aren’t putting our lives on the line although some days a bit of paranoia sets in when there is a clicking on my phone and I wonder if I’ll end up in Gitmo for calling Bush a petty punk despot with blood on his hands and shit for brains.
But there’s not even that much of a possibility of getting our heads bashed in at a rally like the 1960’s or even tear gassed although there was the story of the 70 year old woman being dragged out of a St. Patrick’s Day Parade because she had a peace T-shirt on.
I stopped shopping and started being an activist 3 ½ years ago. After a week where I saw all of my representatives vote to continue the occupation of Iraq rather than start redeployment of our troops, my hands started to go up in surrender. Should I just jump in the car and go back to shopping? Should I use my money I saved for political contributions and spend it on gas instead? What little sacrifice I’ve made isn’t doing any good, so should I just go back to buying Manolos and picking out some new lawn furniture? Should I just get sloshed?
But just when I’ve convinced myself to just kick back and plan that barbecue, I read the diary here of a soldier in Iraq who pleads for us to get him out. And then I remember the young man I met two weeks ago whose friend was killed in Iraq. And I remember the kid just back from Iraq that I met in the local bar who was twitching so badly, he could hardly hold his beer.
Why do we continue to toil, if not fight? We toil for them because optimism of the will beats the pessimism of the intellect. Why we continue on in the Resistance to the Vichy congress and this rogue administration is for folks like this:
(Soldier Boy is responding to a survey on the blog in which we were all asked about ourselves):
From FOB Rustamiyah, 10km east of the Green Zone
* Soldier Boy
* 28. Good gods, I'm getting old.
* Well, I'm not Soldier Girl. Male.
* Georgia
* University of California, Irvine. BA History
* Active Duty Army.
* Liberal
* I'm partial to Edwards, but think its early in the season to make a final call.
* I've registered "Non-Partisan" in California to avoid the election season junk mail. But if I ever vote Republican, I've asked my wife to kill me.
* Your level of rage at the moment: Bitterly resigned. The 15-month tour exstension burned me out. I love fighting someone else's civil war.
* The number of Congressional offices you have called in the last few days: 1 I called Sen. Reid a little while ago to urge them to get me the Hell out of this place. I think maybe I'll call my rubber-stamp GOP Rep. Royce and tell him to get stuffed.
BTW, this is my first post of any kind on DKos, after 3 years of visiting.
by Soldier Boy on Fri May 25, 2007 at 02:36:10 PM MDT
Soldier Boy then posted his first diary at dailykos.com
http://www.dailykos.com/...
And we are not shutting up because of this:
CBS is reporting of an "outrageous delay" in equipping our troops. Marines requested "Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles. Calling it "an outrageous delay," CBS noted, "The Marines in the field asked for 1,200 MRAPs in February 2005 — but so far, they’ve received less than 100." For more of this story go to: http://thinkprogress.org/...
Check out the chart on John Ariavosis' site "Americablog": http://www.americablog.com/
Why, why, why can't Congress see that the Commander Guy could care less about the troops? They are sacrificial lambs for a crumbling empire. How can you believe that these fat cats "support the troops" when the money is obviously not going to the troops either in safe equipment or better pay? A cynical (and probably correct) commenter on the Think Progress site speculates that it costs more to take care of Marines injured in a MRAP than a dead soldier in an unarmored vehicle. Prosthetics and years of psychological treatment is way more expensive than a pine box. This is an outrageous thought but it’s getting harder and harder to believe that our leaders have the troops best interest at heart when these young folks are treated with such little regard except as propaganda tools. Just because these young people volunteered should we look at them as expendable? Do my fellow Americans at the malls really think so?
And we are not shutting up because the war is coming over here more and more:
I spent an hour talking to a kid who had just come back from Iraq and he was a twitching mess. He talked about how it initially was okay when he was part of the original invasion. Iraqis were happy to see him. But he said that it all changed after Falujah and the hate began. And then he began to hate them back. His dad had told him he had to go. But now he didn’t know why. Later that night he smashed up two parked cars as he careened through town.
I was eating at a bar at a grand and fancy hotel on a business trip two weeks ago in Richmond, Virginia when a young man came in and ordered a beer and a whiskey and a cigar. He placed the cigar in an ashtray and the whiskey in front of him. He then lifted his beer and said softly, "This is to my Army buddy. He died in Iraq yesterday." There was a mixture of hardness and hurt in his face with a tiny tear in the eye. " Attention. Is anybody paying attention?" he seemed to say as he stared ahead and lifted his beer.
"Attention must be paid" is a line from "Death of a Salesman". Attention must be paid to regular folks like Will Loman, the traveling salesman. Attention must be paid to the regular folks who defend our nation. Attention must be paid to each person who has sacrificed and whose friends and family are the only ones to call attention to the fact.
I looked around at all the traveling salesfolk that were at the hotel for a conference. I saw men in expensive suits and women in pearls sip martinis while the boy stared ahead.
I looked around and then at him and I felt powerless. I was speechless. Nothing came out of my mouth. Powerlessness is a feeling that most folks don’t like. But when I hear these stories and see these faces, it’s much harder on them than it is on me. It looks like we’ve put our very own troops in a mindset of hopelessness that cannot be good for any of us. It has put young men and women in a place where they must silently toast their friends and hope the wealthy around them might take notice. We have put young people in a place where they have to pay to get internet service to sneak their stories out.
Bush tells us that we are fighting for freedom; ours and the Iraqis. So why do I feel like I’m in a cage pacing back and forth? Why do I feel the walls getting closer and closer? And if I feel that way, what must it be like over there?
No, this isn’t what the great liberal experiment was supposed to be about.
Bring them home now. I can’t stand reading these stories. I can’t stand hearing of mistreatment of these young people by the Pentagon while the self-appointed big wigs wine and dine defense contractors and give billions for futuristic war machines instead of decent armored vehicles and body armor.
I can't stand seeing this scene with the boy, the whisky and the cigar again and again. None of this makes any sense to me at all anymore. No sense at all.
What reactions did you have to last week? I tried to shop on Saturday but ended up just driving around mostly in circles. Yesterday I read Paul Starr's Freedom's Power and made me a little hopeful. Today, we will go to the local graveyard and put flowers on my husband's family's graves. My family is scattered. We don't have that common place like folks here do. I sure wish I had the $3000 that I put into the Senate race back. I wanted to shove it at that young soldier. I ended up pulling the bartender aside to put his second beer on my bill. Little things. Where to put our energy and our money? Where now?