Is There Really a War Going On?

World War II ration books that belonged to my parents and grandparents.

I'm not sure it is a good idea to be conducting a war using paid mercenaries. For that is what America is doing today in Iraq and Afghanistan.

After the Vietnam War was derailed by draft resisters--the pictures looked mighty bad on the nightly news--those wacky politicians in Washington came up with an idea they felt would allow them to approve military action, and yet would never get them into trouble with the public.

The all volunteer army was born.

What that has brought about is a nation full of people who believe it is somebody else's job to defend the nation. It puts no one under obligation to the blessings of America.

Since the attacks on our country September 11, 2001, our brothers and sisters have been dying in foreign lands for a paycheck.

All this occurred to me when I found those ration cards you see at the top of this piece, in with all the flotsam and jetsam I'm clearing out of my parents' home. During World War II, Americans skimped on sugar and butter and meat, on tires and on gasoline, so that war production could go forward and save lives and speed up the war's end. So that infantry soldiers would have the calories they needed to march into Germany and Asia.

Americans grew Victory gardens and saved string and aluminum foil in an early form of living the green life, so that, once again, things were not wasted that might be used to help our troops.

In many cases, these sacrifices were organized in Washington to help Americans at home feel they had a part to play. It was tough to see those telegrams coming into towns, day after day, that brothers and sons and fathers were wounded, missing, or killed. Yet if the rest of the country felt it too was sacrificing, even in small ways, it somehow seemed to squalize the burden.

Which leads me to say I think the Bush administration missed an enormous opportunity in 2001, when it did nothing to capitalize on the unity we felt as a nation after the attacks of 9/ll. They seemed to have no talent for psyops, or for leadership, that could take all that anger and patriotism we felt and give it some useful meaning.

Instead we sent out the volunteers. Went back to work. Kept driving our SUVs. Started corrupting free enterprise in the mortgage, banking, and investment businesses. Imported more oil than ever before for our selfish little selves.

I've had two family members serve during this wartime. The whole time they were overseas I kept asking myself: what can I do to help?

But nobody in our government answered.

Somebody up there in the nation's capitol needs to read up on her history. Americans will support even the most terrible conflicts if they believe the cause is worthy and they are included in the work needed to win.

And if you can't convince us at home to help out, maybe we hadn't ought to be letting others die for us.

We have Marines in a big battle right now in Afghanistan. I didn't talk with one person today who said they were worried about those Marines.

I don't think it ought to be this way. I don't think we'll win this way, either.

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Letter from the Afghan Front

Americans--at least the ones I run into--don't talk much about the fact that we are at war. Since I've had several family members serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, the war we are fighting against what we can only label as "terror" is very real to me. My neice, Dana, has recently returned from Afghanistan, and she returned a bit battle scarred I think--not physically, but in spirit. It was tough over there. As I was cleaning out a pile of stuff this morning, I found this email from her, sent at the very beginning of her tour, that I had printed out and saved. She's a good writer and it gives the reader a taste of what it must be like to fly into what would be, to most of us, the unknown. I print it here with only edits for her security. It was written in July 2008. (The photo is of a lighthearted moment with some of her pilot friends here in the States.)
Greetings from Afghanistan,

My trip was uneventful and smooth, with the primary excitement being a delay in the States on my flight from Tampa to Dulles due to a thunderstorm. I made my connecting flight, Dulles-Doha (Qatar), without event, and arrived in Camp As Sayliyah on the evening of the 1st of July. The temperature was 105 at six in the morning when we stepped off the plane.

I spent a couple of days in Qatar, checking in, receiving my general gear issue and enjoying my allowed three beers a night. I was surprised that Camp As Sayliyah is used as a rest and relaxation (R&R) point for troops deployed forward. (Editor's note: I think she is suggesting she wouldn't want to R&R in this particular place, if given a choice.)

I spent the majority of my 4th of July trying to get comfortable in a cargo net of a C-130, using my body armor as a pillow. I slept a little bit, looked out the window a little bit, and otherwise enjoyed the ride to my base in Afghanistan.

I am living in a four person "hooch" which is a plywood building with plywood closets separating the room into four sections. Three of us are living there, but we will soon be down to two as my replacement, and one of the other girls in the room are rotating out. I've never met the other girls as they work a day shift and I work zulu hours, which puts us on opposite shifts.

The days are long, but there is some down time during the shift to sneak out and take a short nap, or go to the gym, so it isn't as bad as it sounds. The showers are decent and the toilets are decent and the chow is tolerable.

None of the amenities are worthy of much complaint or much praise. The purpose of all amenities here is their utility not their enjoyment. I am sure the reconstituted cow milk product from the United Arab Emirates has the requisite calcium--it just isn't something to savor on one's cereal. The base is safe. I'll take some pictures of the things that I can take pictures of, but might not be able to send them out until I get home.

The Himalayas are visible and beautiful (and the gym is great).

I hope and trust that all is well at home.
Love,
Dana

(Below is a pic of Dana in the Gulf on a previous assignment.)

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The War in Iraq and Afghanistan

Our Morale Needs a Moral: A Task for the New President

For the third time in several years a member of my family is serving in harm’s way in the Middle East. More than 1.5 million Americans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan
since the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center. What this means is that I’m pretty much like everybody else in America. We all know someone in our family or neighborhood who has put his or her life on the line in this war on terror.


But something is missing. I keep asking myself what I can do. I’m not a soldier, I’m a civilian and I want to be a part of the fight too. I look around me and I see my friends and neighbors driving their SUVs to the grocery store, getting fat eating pizza and burgers, debating the war with one another, blabbing on television about the presidential candidates, and generally acting as if nothing at all is going on out there. Acting as if our sons and daughters in uniform aren’t dying. I’m just as guilty of this. It calls to mind a prayer Eleanor Roosevelt said she carried with her during World War II:

Dear Lord
Lest I continue
My complacent way
Help me to remember
Somewhere out there
A man died for me today
--As long as there be war
I then must
Ask and answer
Am I worth dying for?

For obvious reasons I don’t identify my relative who is serving in Afghanistan except by the nickname “Lt. Dana.” She sent me the following email recently. I read it as I had just returned from shopping.

"Today we finally have a break in our op tempo. We need it. We lost two more of our own this past week. The most difficult aspect of that for me (because my interaction with the operators is minimal, I usually know of them, but don't know them well personally) is going to the ceremonies and watching grown tough men - the toughest, breaking down and crying, or standing there and trying not to. It is upsetting and infuriating."

After 9/11 we saw how deep was the reservoir of American patriotism. The next president must do two things if we are to successfully pursue this war on terror. He must tap into this reservoir and give us a clear reminder of why we fight. And he must show us all what we can do to help. For the morale of all of us we need a moral reason to go on and for the morale of all of us we need to know that this fight is so important it can’t go on without the help of the American people.

Winston Churchill did this so well. In 1940, when the French threw up their hands and let Hitler walk into Paris, Churchill told the world; “We shall fight on forever and ever and ever …” He used a wonderful word in describing Hitler: he called him “wicked” and in so doing was not only correct in his assessment, made it clear what England was fighting against. “Hitler is a monster of wickedness,” he said. “Insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder.” Then, he took it a step further and told the world what England was fighting for.

"The destiny of mankind is not decided by material computation. When great causes are on the move in the world … we learn that we are spirits not animals, and that something is going on in space and time and beyond space and time, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

I was talking with a friend of mine last year when he was in town from New York. He was rabid in his anti-war sentiment and said to me: “This is Bush’s war!” No, I said to him it isn’t. Because George W. Bush, for good or for ill, is not the president of only those who like him. He’s the president of the United States, and the soldiers fighting are soldiers of the United States. And in that moment I realized that this young man had not yet heard a reason to embrace the cause of fighting these fanatics who would be the first to eliminate him for having the independence of mind to disagree with the leaders of his country.

I don’t know if we’re fighting terror in the right place or not. But I know these extremists are out there and have to be fought either on their home ground or on ours. I know they hate me because as an American woman I can drive and vote and go to restaurants. I know they hate my country because of the very tolerance and freedom of choice we have to debate the conduct of our nation’s war on terror. I hope the next president, whoever he or she is, will find a way to lead us all to a clear understanding—or reminder, if the tapes from 9/11 aren’t enough anymore—of who we are fighting and why we are fighting them. And then ask us all for some kind of sacrifice to help out, whether it’s walking to work once a week or car pooling or buying war bonds or donating time to our USO. Please ask us all for something, because the sacrifice of our troops is so great we need to believe in our hearts that we are worth dying for.