My feelings on the war in Iraq are complex. In many ways it is a topic I cannot discuss unless we have a lot of time. That is the main reason I have not written anything about the war.
I am still not going to get into too much but on Tuesday I watched the Medal of Honor Ceremony for a 26 year old Navy Seal who died saving the lives of 2 comrades. Last night I watched the Frontline special I had recorded called "Bad Voodoo's War" - a documentary made from the video cameras of a National Guard platoon out of Mississippi stationed in Iraq.
These events hit squarely on the contradiction of my feelings. On one hand, I immediately react, “Bring them home.” I am not sure if any person can listen without that reaction to the Bad Voodoo platoon sergeant tell his men (dads, brothers, sons, friends) as they were getting ready to climb into their Humvees, “Put the tourniquet on your door-side leg now, above your knee and close to your hip. The faster we get that tourniquet cranked down when you get hit the higher the chance you’ll survive and the better quality of life you will have when we get you to safety.” Similarly, after watching the grieving parents receive the posthumous Medal of Honor, it is hard to imagine the war is worth this cost.
However, I worry about what will happen when we leave. If in fact our presence there is preventing civil war and even worse corruption and oppression, is it acceptable for me to say preventing that is not worth the cost for Americans? But at some point every person, or in this case nation, exhausts its capabilities of helping. It seems we are near that point.
I wish I had more time to develop these thoughts here, but this is what I have been thinking about this week. There is a family crouching in their cement block house in Sadr City just hoping and praying that the gunfire and the brutality stays outside their walls. If we say, “Enough, no more Americans,” what happens to that family? Or the better question is probably whether using violence to stop violence is ever the best option…
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2 comments:
I don't really know what to add, because I am similarly confused. I feel we are at our limit, but I fear what will happen when we leave. It's not that I don't have an opinion, I have an opinion on both sides. I suppose I lean towards pulling out American troops sooner rather than later at this point.
Some years ago, sitting in a movie theater with a then 30 year old friend, viewing the carnage of the Omaha Beach landings portrayed in "Saving Private Ryan", her gasps of shock and dismay highlighted the fact that the generations that followed World War II had little or no concept of the sacrifices made in that war. "Did that really happen?" I was asked. Films like "Flag of Our Fathers" and "Iwo Jima" have recently educated a new generation that war has always meant the same things. Yet, by most accounts, men who fought believed in the right of the cause. It seems most of the country at that time did.
We became numbed by the nightly news serving of war in the VietNam era, but even some of those images are seared in our collective consciousness. War has never changed it's relentless visage is that of the bloody carnage of those in it's wake. Whether they be the attempted rescuers, those longing for rescue, or those who must watch in horror, war is hell.
How can we decide for war at the cost of the precious blood of brave, young fighters? Yet, how can we decide against people who do not have even the most basic need for safety for themselves and their loved ones met? Perhaps it would be easier if the war fought was one to be won, not like the ones fought recently that are shrouded with so much political rhetoric and intrigue. It is hard to put one's foot down solidly on a rock, when one is attempting to navigate a swamp full of aligators.
LLZ
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