They were young, intense, disillusioned. Home from the war, on yesterday's fourth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, they wanted to bring the war home to Washington.
They called it Operation First Casualty--citing the adage that truth is the first casualty of war. The premise of the guerilla-theater incursion was that, for all the yellow ribbons and "support the troops" sloganeering, life goes on at home pretty much oblivious to what it's like for American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.
"When I got home, the hardest thing for me was realizing that war does not exist here," said Aaron Hughes of Chicago...
--"Far From Iraq, A Demonstration Of a War Zone," David Montgomery, Washington Post, March 20, 2007
They say that desperate times call for desperate measures, but what I read in the Post this morning is like nothing I have ever seen, not even back in the day of massive student war protests against the draft and the Vietnam War.
No amount of speechifying or peace marching or "counter-demonstrations" could come close to the bald, heartbreaking simplicity of what 13 Army, Navy, and Marine Corps veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan did in the nation's capitol yesterday to demonstrate their frustration about not only the war in Iraq, but this country's attitude toward that war.
Dressed in full desert camo, carrying imaginary assault rifles, they went "on patrol" in Washington, D.C., from Union Station to Arlington National Cemetery. While on patrol, they barked commands, roughly "detained" suspected hostiles (volunteers) with flex cuffs and hoods, took imaginary sniper fire and casualties on the grounds of the Washington Monument and the Capitol steps. At the end of the day, they had a memorial ceremony in the cemetery.
Though fliers were passed out to bystanders, it seems that motorists, tourist, and citizens were by turns, shocked, bemused, and fascinated.
At one point U.S. Capitol police officers stopped the patrol of 12 men and one woman to ask if they had any weapons. They did not, and the police sent them on their way. Extending their arms stiffly--as if cradling M-16's, fingers poised on imaginary triggers, they resumed their patrol.
At one point, the patrol continued onto the grounds of CNN and FOX news, which is news to me, because I saw nothing on television about this yesterday.
The veterans are all members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, and no one, to my way of thinking, has done a better job of demonstrating that, as retired General Barry McCaffrey said one time, "This country is not at war. The U.S. military is at war."
After four years, I am still dumbstruck at how few American citizens are actually, physically touched by this war. One poll I saw said that only eleven percent of the people polled knew, personally, of someone killed or injured in this war. Massive tax cuts have made the wealthy even wealthier, and an all-volunteer fighting force means that young people are not directly affected by this war the way the Vietnam generation was.
With ipods in their ears, video games at their fingertips, and MySpace just a mouse-click away, they don't have to think about this war at all.
The disconnect between this terrible war and the vast overwhelming majority of Americans can be summed up by two asinine statements coming from the so-called Commander-in-Chief himself, who, when asked why the American people were not being asked to sacrifice for this war, claimed plaintively that simply watching the news was stressful and therefore, constitutued a sacrifice.
I'm sorry. I have to repeat that. Our president claims that Americans ARE making a sacrifice...just by watching the news on TV. Wow.
Later, when asked if he was willing to admit that Iraq is indeed embroiled in a horrendous civil war, he stuttered and stammered and finally said something to the effect that, "I live here in this beautiful White House. I'm not qualified to say."
In other words, the man who invaded a country, destroyed its infrastructure, squandered billions in its reconstruction, unleashed historical demons of massive proportions, alienated the entire world against our country, ignored our own war wounded, and presided over the deaths of thousands...isn't QUALIFIED to say.
Who the hell is, then?
Yeah, the guys fighting it. And the guys who have come back from fighting it and have the guts to draw our belated attention to their struggle.
If you are inclined to think that what these men and women were doing In Washington, D.C. yesterday with their pretend patrol was stupid or simple theatrics, then you have not spent any time talking to troops who have returned home from war.
My son, for instance, was telling me about how, in one of his rare opportunities to call home from Fallujah, he actually took the time and trouble to make a phone call to the apartment where some of his old Aggie buddies were living while attending graduate school.
He was calling his friends FROM IRAQ, and he said they hardly missed a beat. Oh hi, how are you, what's going on, we've been real busy with finals... They completely overlooked the powerful significance of what he was doing; the sacrifice he was making, or even the fact that he could die at any time.
"They acted like I was calling from Dallas," he said.
And these are young men who had served with him in the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets, which means they lived in barracks dorms together for four years, marched to class in uniform, trained in war games, studied military history, and some of their number, like him, had gone on to war.
Texas A&M, home to the first Bush library and a conservative bastion of the state--our new defense secretary recently left his position as president of the university--is just about as patriotic an institution as you will find in this country.
And still...they missed the point. And the sad thing is that, in their carelessness, they have no idea how deeply they hurt, not just an old friend and Aggie buddy, but a Marine fighting in the war THEY supposedly supported.
Dustin says when people find out he's been to war, "They don't CARE, Mom," he said to me.
These men and women who have been to war come home with their nerves tattooed to their foreheads...only to find that back home, most people really don't care. I know they SAY they care, but ask people, as a general rule, if they watch the evening news or read the daily paper or online news sources. You would be stunned to find how many DO NOT.
Then ask them where Anna Nicole Smith is buried.
Speaking of...Dick Cheney once gave a powerful speech in which he said that, back in his days of being Defense Secretary, he had flown by helicopter every day over Arlington National Cemetery to his office at the Pentagon. He said, "I will never forget the sight, of rows upon rows of white crosses marking the graves of our heroes..."
Funny thing, that.
Arlington National Cemetery doesn't HAVE rows and rows of crosses.
Nope. Just regular headstones.
Turns out he never looked out the window at all.
Truth is indeed the first casualty of war.
The people who manipulated the patriotism of a nation not only did it cynically, but they did it IGNORANTLY. It has been pointed out, many times, that none of the war's architects had ever, in fact, fought in a war themselves.
Perhaps that is part of what that combat patrol of war veterans was trying to prove when it fought its way down Pennsylvania Avenue yesterday.
They were saying...THIS IS WAR. LOOK AT US. Not at the flag, not at the yellow ribbons, AT US.
As Kelly Dougherty, co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War said, "We are the troops. Supporting the troops means not sending us into a war based on lies."
